had come again in the summertime that year, and the cold increased in
the succeeding months. At Christmas time there was fifty feet of ice
on Lake Michigan, and by the last of February the lake was frozen to
the bottom. Paul Bunyan was then engaged in logging off the Peninsula
country, and of course his operations were halted. He cut the ice into
blocks and hauled them out on the lake shore with Babe, his big blue
ox, who could pull anything that had two ends on it. This was done
so that the ice would melt more quickly when normal summer weather
returned. Then he moved his outfit to the old home camp in the Smiling
River country, where severe weather was never experienced.
Paul Bunyan had done no logging around his old home camp for seven
years. The remaining timber was so far from the river and on such steep
hills that profitable logging seemed impossible. However, it was the
best to be had, for elsewhere it would be weeks, even months, before
the snow drifts would melt away from the tree tops. Paul Bunyan tackled
the tough logging problems before him with characteristic courage. He
was sure that his inventiveness and resourcefulness would, as always,
triumph over every obstacle.
His most stubborn and difficult problem was that of getting the loggers
to the woods in the morning in time to do any work and getting them
home at night in time to do any sleep. One plan after another was
tried and dropped, failures all. Paul Bunyan began with an attempt to
work one day shift, but the loggers could not get to the woods before
lunch time; lunch finished, they had to start at once for the camp.
Two shifts were then put on, but little work could be done at night,
except when the moon was full. Paul Bunyan then sent the great Johnny
Inkslinger, his timekeeper and man of science, to investigate the
Aurora Borealis as a means of artificial lighting. Johnny reported
that it was pretty but unreliable, and he doubted if even the blue ox
could move it down from the North in less than six months. The learned
Inkslinger then sat down and figured desperately for a week, trying to
devise a method of working three twelve-hour shifts a day. With such
a routine one shift could be doing a day’s work, while a second shift
was coming to work, and a third was going to camp. Johnny Inkslinger
was, beyond a doubt, the greatest man with figures that ever lived, but
here his mathematics failed him. Paul Bunyan then thought of making
a campsite in the timber, and he dug for water in the high hills. He
succeeded in reaching a mighty vein, but it was so deep that it took
a week to draw a bucket of water out of the well. It was out of the
question as a water supply for the camp.
Now Paul Bunyan had to fall back on a last plan, a far-fetched one that
seemed well-nigh hopeless. This was to build a great sled, something
on the order of a lunch sled, and have Babe, the blue ox, haul the
loggers to and from work each day. It was a desperate plan, and no one
but Paul Bunyan would have had the courage to attempt it. It must be
remembered that the blue ox measured forty-two ax handles and a plug
of chewing tobacco between the horns; an ordinary man at his front had
to use a telescope to see what he was doing with his hind legs, he was
so long; he had so much energy and such delight in labor that no one
could hold him when he started for the woods in the mornings; he was
so fast that Paul Bunyan’s foreman, the Big Swede, who was as tall as
the trees, could not begin to keep up with him. Only Paul Bunyan could
travel so fast. Whenever Babe moved the camp he traveled at a careful
pace, but even then some of the loggers were made seasick; and all of
them became so irritable when a move was being made that they fought
constantly among themselves. If the comparatively slow camp-moving pace
of the blue ox thus upset them, his timber-going gallop would be apt to
ruin them completely. Paul Bunyan remembered how the Big Swede, hanging
to Babe’s halter rope, was hurled through the air, only striking the
ground once in every quarter of a mile or so, when the blue ox rushed
to his delightful labor each morning. A lunch sled full of loggers
would be dragged by Babe in much the same fashion; it would be in the
air most of the time, and when it did strike the ground loggers would
be scattered like autumn leaves. The loggers who would hang on until
the woods were reached would have the living daylights shaken out of
them. A common lunch sled would not do; one must be invented that would
hold the road.
So Paul Bunyan devised the serpentine bobsled. It was a long, low-built
contraption; the runners were made in short sections, connected by
double joints. When it was completed and lay in the road that led
from the camp it looked like a squat fence, for it snugly fitted the
contours of the hills and vales over which it extended.
“There’s a rig that’ll hold the road,” said Paul Bunyan with pride.
“Now I’ll invent something equally good to hold Babe to a slow pace.”
Several mechanical devices were tried without passing the first test.
The sled lay idle. The loggers got sore feet, and they traveled so
slowly that they began to take twelve hours to reach the woods. There
was one shift on the road, going, and one coming all of the time. Not a
tree was being felled.
“There’s no way out of it but to try the grizzlies,” Paul Bunyan told
his timekeeper.
Among the other livestock on Paul Bunyan’s farm, which was down the
river from the old home camp, was a herd of grizzly bears. The great
logger often amused himself by playing with them, and he had taught
them many tricks. Not the least of their stunts was for each bear to
hang from a tree with three paws and try to claw Paul Bunyan’s mackinaw
with the other paw as he dodged by.
“I’ll station them at the trees which are left standing along the
road,” said Paul Bunyan, “and when Babe roars by they’ll hook him. They
may only frighten him into a faster run, but I think surely they’ll
slow him down.”
The next morning the loggers, for the most part, joyfully crawled upon
the serpentine bobsled. The timid and cranky among the loggers were
pessimistic, of course, and declared noisily that this would be the end
of them. But Shanty Boy and the other bards laughed at their fears,
and at last every logger in camp was on the sled. Paul Bunyan ordered
the Big Swede to hitch up the blue ox and start in half an hour, and
he departed for the woods with his herd of grizzlies. He stationed one
of them at every tree close to the road. When he reached the timber he
straddled a hogback and sat down to wait for the outcome of his daring
attempt.
In a short time he heard a faint thunder down in the valley, then he
saw enormous balloons of dust twisting up in cyclonic bursts from the
foothills, next he heard the crashing sound of hoofbeats that got
louder and louder.... Through clouds of dust he saw Babe’s tail brush
lifted like a triumphal banner and the glitter of his horns.... The Big
Swede, hanging to Babe’s halter rope, soared and dived....
The bears had failed. Indeed, they had failed terribly, for when Babe
came to a halt in the timber Paul Bunyan saw bears paws hanging from
both sides of him. Only one bear had saved his paw, and he was holding
a tree in a frenzied clutch. Babe had carried away bear, tree and
all. Paul Bunyan rushed back over the road, and as he came to each
unfortunate grizzly he mercifully dispatched him. He carried them all
into camp.
“Bear meat for Sunday dinner,” he said to Hot Biscuit Slim, as he threw
the bears into the kitchen yard.
Paul Bunyan then had Johnny Inkslinger bring his medicine case, and the
two hurried to the woods. But only a slight number of the loggers had
been made truly ill by the terrific speed with which Babe had hauled
them over the hills. The double-jointed sled runners had slipped over
rocks, logs and gullies as easily as a snake glides over a string. Not
once had the sled bounded from the road. Not a logger had suffered a
jolt. Some of them were dazed and breathless, others were choked with
dust, but most of them were no more than badly scared by their terrific
journey.
“Aye tal you it ban no use try hol’ Babe down,” said the Big Swede,
with rare eloquence.
“The sled worked perfectly, at any rate,” said Paul Bunyan. “We can
depend on it. But those good bullies of mine are going to need a lot of
encouragement to stand that ride every morning.”
He was quite right. His loggers thought nothing of the perils of
falling limbs, which are called “widow-makers” to-day in the woods.
Breaking up log jams, jumping rolling logs, dodging butts of trees
which bucked back from the stumps when they fell--all this was in
the day’s work. But even the serpentine bobsled could not banish the
terrors of riding behind the blue ox each morning. “I’d ruther try
ridin’ a peavy handle down the West Branch.” “I’ll tell you Babe went
so fast I acshuly _seen_ the wind, an’ I never seen anything more
sickenin’ in my life!” “What if Babe ud a throwed a shoe now? I bet it
’da tore through us like a cannon ball!”
Paul Bunyan frowned as he hearkened to their complaints. His loggers
seldom thought of anything but their labor when they were in the woods.
If they were complaining now, what would happen when the bunkhouse
cranks got into action after supper? There would be much gloomy
grumbling, and perhaps rebellious talk. When the loggers went to bed
they would brood over the cyclonic morning ride instead of getting
fortifying sleep. Then they would soon balk against riding behind the
blue ox. To avoid such an event he must call on his bards to cajole,
humor and inspire the men until he could devise new methods to solve
his logging problems. With this idea in mind he took Shanty Boy aside,
placed him on his knee and explained the situation.
“I shore will do my best,” said Shanty Boy. “But looky here, Mr.
Bunyan, I ’low I’ll have to lie to ’em right smart.”
“How so, my lad?”
“Well I’ve alus done the best I knowed how when I set out to be
amusin’. So, if I’m goin’ to make my stories any thicker, I’ll jest
about have to stir a few lies into ’em.”
“Son, nobody loves a liar.”
“Thet’s jest it, Mr. Bunyan. I got a powerful good reppytation fer
truth, an’ I can lie quite a spell afore I’m ketched. But if I do get
ketched Mark Beaucoup an’ them Rories’ll chaw me up. You’ve learnt all
the loggers to hate lyin’ jest like you do yourself. I’d probably get
spiled if I was ketched. Besides, I jest nacherly hate to lie. Yet, no
lyin’, no loggin’, seems to be the fact o’ the matter.”
Paul Bunyan pondered doubtfully for some time. Moral issues baffled him
always. But at last he spoke with decision.
“Logging must go on. You may lie, if necessary, during the period of
emergency.”
“Them’s orders, Mr. Bunyan. But what if the gang gets hostile an’
starts to chaw me up?”
Again Paul Bunyan hesitated. It was against his policy to interfere in
the logger’s personal affairs. Then, firmly:
“A man with your talent should not have to lie, Shanty Boy, in order
to entertain his mates. But you know best, of course. If you are
discovered, tell the men that all complaints must be lodged with me
before they act upon them. Be cautious and discreet, and honor and
glory shall be yours.”
“I will, sir. Thank ye, sir, Mr. Bunyan.”
Shanty Boy went bravely to work carrying out the great logger’s
commands. For some time it was not necessary to tell more than two or
three lies a week in order to take the logger’s thoughts off their
sickening morning rides. They were not great lies that he told, either,
but only plausible exaggerations. Most of his stories were still true
ones, and he told them better than ever. He inspired the visiting bards
as never before. Each night he sent his mates smilingly to sleep,
entirely forgetful of the ordeal that awaited them in the morning. But
this was not natural, and of course it couldn’t last. The loggers lost
weight every day, and they began to complain of hurts in their innards.
The bunkhouse cranks got their dismal chorus started, and Shanty Boy
had to tell real big lies to hush it.
He lied wonderfully indeed, once he was well started. He got so funny
that the loggers had to strap themselves into their bunks while they
listened to him. They went to sleep laughing, as a rule, and the night
long they would chuckle in their dreams.
Shanty Boy grew bolder with success. He told, with a bare face, stories
about snakes that had many joints, and how they would separate into
pieces and crawl a dozen ways at once. He called them joint snakes.
He told stories about a snake that would put its tail in its mouth
and roll down hill. He called it a hoop snake. When the loggers got
a little tired of snakes, he told whoppers about possums, then about
coons, and so on. At last he got around to fish, and he told so many
good fish stories that the loggers would not let him switch to another
subject. He ran out of ideas, but the loggers would not let him get
away from fish.
One night as he was trying desperately to invent a tolerable lie about
fish he remembered a story of a whale that he had heard his grandfather
tell, insisting that it was the gospel truth. It was the old story
about Jonah and the whale, and the loggers had never heard it. They
became indignant when Shanty Boy repeated it for the plain truth, and
some of them began to shout at him. For the first time in his life he
got stage fright. He felt that he was telling the gospel truth, but
the memory of his previous lies overwhelmed him. He tried vainly to
continue his narrative about Jonah’s life in the whale’s belly, but
his tongue failed. He dropped his head, and he fixed a shamed gaze
on his feet. First he heard nothing but the pounding of his heart;
then an angry mutter ran along the bunks. It grew into a fierce growl.
Then Shanty Boy heard the tramp of feet, and he looked up to see Mark
Beaucoup and the bunkhouse cranks advancing upon him.
“She’s lie!” yelled Mark Beaucoup. “_Sacre!_ but she’s tell a beeg wan.”
He shook a huge brown fist under Shanty Boy’s nose.
“Now you are feex yourself. Stan’ up w’ile I knock you down!”
The loggers left their bunks and made a pressing crowd around their
discomfited bard and his challenger.
“I was coun’ for you stan’ up. Wan--two--t’ree----”
Then Shanty Boy remembered Paul Bunyan’s “All complaints must be lodged
with me” and courage returned to him.
“You bunkhouse cranks shore give me a misery,” he said contemptuously.
“You jest go an’ tell my story to ol’ Paul an’ see what _he_ says about
it.”
The loggers stared at him with amazement.
“By gar!” exclaimed Mark Beaucoup. “De fool wan’ me tell dees to ol’
Paul! She’s wan’ me tell dees, dat crazy t’ing!”
“Thet’s what I said,” growled Shanty Boy. “Run along afore I get into
one o’ my tantrums.”
Knowing Paul Bunyan’s furious opinion of liars, the loggers were
smitten with horror. Of course this story might not be a lie, but most
likely it was, and what old Paul would do to him for telling it! Mark
Beaucoup was triumphant. Soon Bunkhouse 1 would have another king; it
should know a rule of iron instead of laughter.
“Come wit’ me,” he commanded his friends. The other loggers, except
Shanty Boy, followed them to Paul Bunyan.
As Paul Bunyan listened to Mark Beaucoup he was struck with a powerful
regret for having inspired his greatest bard to leave the path of
truthful narration. Desperate circumstances had seemed to justify the
step. But what a risk he had taken just to save a few weeks logging!
The faith his loggers had in him lay in the balance. Now it seemed that
he must lose this faith or sacrifice a hero. He had never dreamed that
Shanty Boy would recklessly tell such an incredible story. Surely he
had not told it unthinkingly. No doubt he could explain it. Paul Bunyan
sent for him.
It was with a heavy heart that the great bard walked through the lines
of silent, accusing loggers. It looked like the end of everything for
him. But he kept his courage, and, as he walked slowly on, his nimble
mind was leaping from idea to idea, seeking a solid defense. But what
proof could he offer for such a story? His grandfather _knew_ it was
true, but the old man was far away in the Southern mountains. He alone
must prove somehow that he had not lied.... Paul Bunyan’s boots loomed
before him.... He must think hard ... hard....
“This story must be _explained_,” said Paul Bunyan in a stern voice,
at the same time flashing him a look of the utmost sympathy.
“I ’low the story is beyond explainin’, Mr. Bunyan, but I never lied
when I told it,” said Shanty Boy, bravely.
“Prove it!” roared Mark Beaucoup and his followers.
Shanty Boy drew himself up pridefully and he fixed upon the multitude a
gaze of lofty scorn.
“I never lied!” he declared. “I never lied, for when I lie my neck _it
swells_! An’--now--look!”
He jerked open the collar of his shirt and exposed his muscular throat.
There was not a sign of swelling about it. The loggers lifted a mighty
cheer, and Mark Beaucoup, baffled, beaten, completely outwitted, could
only swear:
“She’s don’ swell--by gar!--she’s don’ swell!”
Paul Bunyan could not restrain a windy sigh of relief. The trees bent
before the blast and dust clouds rolled through the ranks of loggers.
Now was the moment to complete the victory.
“Get to your bunkhouses!” Paul Bunyan roared.
Shanty Boy was carried on the shoulders of yelling admirers to
Bunkhouse 1. Mark Beaucoup and the bunkhouse cranks did not venture to
follow them until the lights had gone out. Then, humbled and quiet,
they sneaked into their bunks.
As a result of his troubles Paul Bunyan came near to abandoning logging
operations in the Smiling River Country. But one night he got an idea,
an idea so simple and sound that he was astonished at not thinking of
it before. He put it into practice at once, and when the loggers awoke
the next morning they saw wooded hills at the very door of the camp.
Paul Bunyan had simply thrown a cable around each hill, and the blue
ox, who could pull anything that had a top on it, had snaked every one
into camp. So the logging then went on easily until the new summer had
melted the ice and snow and Lake Michigan was filled with water once
more, and had new fish in it.
Shanty Boy’s triumph was complete. Not only did he have great honors
from Paul Bunyan, but his mates now revered as well as admired him. His
ventures from truth had held off revolt from the bunkhouses. He had
convinced the loggers of the truth of the grand old story of Jonah and
the whale. And he had made them all fear swelled necks as the result of
lying. This last effect persists to this day, for everywhere loggers
are still known as the most truthful of men.
THE KINGDOM OF KANSAS
No region of Real America, save Kansas, boasted of its weather in Paul
Bunyan’s time. In the heyday of the mighty logger the climates and
seasons were not systematized; they came and went and behaved without
rule or reason. There were many years with two winters, and sometimes
all four seasons would come and go in one month. The wind would
frequently blow straight up and then straight down. Sometimes it would
simply stand still and blow in one place. In its most prankish moods it
would blow all ways at once. The weather was indeed powerful strange in
those days and it got itself talked about. And nowhere were its ways
more evil than in Utah.
When Paul Bunyan moved his camp to the state of Utah for the purpose
of logging off its forests of stonewood trees he was not careless of
the climate; he merely failed to suspect its treachery. Besides, other
troubles beset him. The gritty texture of the stonewood timber dulled
the edge of an ax bit in two strokes. At the end of their twelve-hour
day in the woods the loggers had to sharpen axes for seven hours. They
were always fagged out. Then there was only one small river near the
forests, and Babe, the blue ox, who had got hayfever again since coming
West, drank it dry every fifteen minutes. The loggers thirsted, and
they were bedeviled by sand in their blankets and in the beans, for
every time Babe sneezed he raised a dust storm that rolled its clouds
through the cookhouse and the bunkhouses and covered the great plain
and the hills around the camp. A spirit of dark and evil melancholy
settled on the loggers.
Paul Bunyan hoped for an adequate water supply from the December snows.
And he brought all his inventive powers to the problem of felling the
stonewood trees. In eleven days and nights he devised eight hundred and
five systems, machines and implements, and from this galaxy he selected
a noble tool.
Paul Bunyan’s new invention was the double-bitted ax, which is used
everywhere in the woods to-day. Paul Bunyan devised it so that a faller
could chop with one blade, then twist the handle and whet the other
blade on the gritty stonewood with the backward swing.
But even with the new axes the logging went on slowly. The camp supply
of elbow grease gave out, and the loggers suffered stiffened joints.
The December snows were light, and the thirsty blue ox continued to
drink the entire water supply. The bunkhouses came to be dens of
ominous brooding and quiet instead of gay and noisy habitations.
Finally the shipment of webfooted turkeys from the Great Lakes arrived
too late for Christmas dinner. The loggers became dour, gaunt,
embittered men.
Then came New Year’s Day and outrageous fortune. When the loggers went
to work at the first thinning of darkness they attributed the peculiar
oppressive warmth of the morning to an unusual Chinook wind. There
was, however, no wind at all. Then the rising sun shot blazing rays
into a cloudless sky. Even then the loggers did not realize that they
were witnessing an Event. This was the beginning of a notable year, the
Year of the Hot Winter. As the sun climbed higher the heat grew more
intense. The Christmas snow had vanished at the first burning touch of
day. The ground baked and cracked. The stonewood trees glittered in a
fierce light. Each logger threw off his mackinaw, muffler, sweater,
stagged shirt, woolen overshirt and undershirt; his paraffin pants,
mackinaw pants and overalls and his Arctic socks, heavy wool socks,
light wool socks and cotton socks. All heavy clothing was speedily
thrown aside, and everywhere in the plain, in the valleys, and on the
hillsides were piles of garments, and by each pile a logger toiled,
clad only in drawers and calked boots. But still sweat dripped and
trickled from their bodies; they labored more and more languorously.
Each quarter of an hour the blue ox, with lolling tongue, dashed madly
for the river and drank it dry.
Paul Bunyan was distressed by this change in his affairs, but he was
not daunted. Confident that his loggers would do their best in the
meanwhile, he again retired to solitude, hoping to devise something
that would conquer the hostile and unnatural season. He returned with
the great timber scythe, with which he could fell a full section of
timber with one swing of his mighty arms. Carrying the timber scythe
over his shoulder, Paul Bunyan strode toward his camp. His tread was
vigorous despite the deadening heat. Benevolent ideas stirred his
heart. He himself would do the arduous labor of felling the stonewood
trees; the loggers would be asked only to do the lighter work of
trimming and bucking the trees into logs. They were a fine bunch of
savages; ordinarily they would not allow even Paul Bunyan to do their
natural work. Perhaps they would resist such intrusion now. But the
great logger was sure of his persuasive powers.
As he neared the camp, busy as he was with philanthropic thoughts,
he failed to note an unusual silence in the woods and about the
bunkhouses. Not until he saw Babe and the Big Swede sleeping in the
stable was he made aware of the extraordinary. Paul Bunyan went next to
the camp office. Johnny Inkslinger, that tower of energy, was sleeping
at his desk! His fountain pen had dropped from his hand, and as it
was fed by hose lines from twenty-five barrels of ink, a black stream
gushed from its point and flooded the floor. A chorus of faint snores
came from each bunkhouse. The cookhouse looked gloomy and deserted. In
the woods the axes and saws lay where the loggers had left them. For
one hundred and seventy-nine minutes Paul Bunyan stood silently in the
midst of his camp, tormented by wrath, regret and sorrow. His outfit
had failed him. After all these years of comradeship in labor they had
allowed a mere hot winter to provoke them into faithlessness. He had
left them without an idea that they would be untrue to the job while he
was scheming to make it a success. But they had weakened. Very well,
he thought, after his brief period of emotion, he would perform their
labor for them while they snored. They should awaken to shame.