this was easily accomplished by the inspired toil of the loggers. The
country was flattened by hitching Babe to each section of logged-off
land and then turning it over. As Duke Dryface had surmised, the land,
though rolling on _top_ was flat _underneath_. So the one-time sinful
soil of Kansas now lies deeply buried, and only the barest vestiges of
the grand life devised by King Bourbon survive anywhere in the Kansas
country.
ORATORICAL MEDICINE
Before the second season in the Hickory Hill country there had never
been a great sickness in Paul Bunyan’s camp. The health his loggers
constantly enjoyed was due to the skill of Johnny Inkslinger, who
was physician and surgeon, as well as timekeeper, to the good and
mighty Paul Bunyan. His surgical feats were marvelous. When ears were
bitten off, for example, in the playful jousts with which the loggers
amused themselves, it was no trick for Johnny Inkslinger to sew them
on tightly again. And when a logger got his face walked on by calked
boots the timekeeper would fill the resulting cavities with bread
crumbs, slap on some red paint, and the victim of play would return
to the frolic, happy and unmarred. But it was digestive ills which he
understood completely; for Paul Bunyan’s loggers like the laborers
and farmers of to-day, had most of their physical miseries in the
mysterious regions about the stomach. His knowledge was gained by the
most arduous study and extensive research. The timekeeper wrote reports
and figured all day, he dosed the loggers and operated on them in the
evening, and the night long he read doctor books. His Sundays and
holidays he spent among the wild creatures of the forests and seas, and
these he studied shrewdly and patiently. He examined fleas, he explored
whales, he once found the bones of a moose who had died of old age,
and he tracked the animal to its birthplace, noting all its habits and
methods of life on his way. His knowledge was monumental and complete,
but he was content to remain a timekeeper in position and name.
In the second season on Hickory Hill the life of the camp went on as
usual for a long time. For twelve hours each day the axes rang in
the undercuts, the saws sang through bark and grain, and there was
everywhere the death shudder, the topple and crashing fall of lofty
trees. The blue ox placidly snaked the logs to the riverside, following
the Big Swede, who, lost in dreams every trip always walked on into
the water. The fumes and exhalations of the great cookhouse were
never richer with delightful smells. In the evenings the bunkhouses
were loud with gleeful roars as the loggers punched and kicked each
other in their pastimes. As the work went on Paul Bunyan grew certain
that this would be his greatest season among the hardwoods. His heart
warmed toward his men. He planned for them feasts, revels, largesses,
grand rewards. All his thoughts were benevolent ones as he directed
operations. Then, at the height of his record-breaking season, Babe,
the blue ox, got a misery.
It was a sly, slow, deceitful illness. It was first marked in the
decline of his sportiveness and affection. It was his habit, when
yoked and harnessed in the morning, to make for the woods at a roaring
gallop. Always the Big Swede would grip the halter rope and try to
hold the blue ox to a walk; always Babe would plunge on, dragging the
Big Swede after him; and always the dutiful foreman would hit the
ground once in every ninety feet, yell, “Har noo!” and then be yanked
into the air again, for Babe would pay no heed to the bouncing boss. In
the woods the blue ox always had to be closely watched, for he would
chew up the trees in his jestful moments as fast as they were felled,
and on the great drives he would prankishly drink the river dry,
leaving the astounded rivermen mired in the mud of the stream bed. He
was forever gouging the Big Swede with his sharp horns or tickling Paul
Bunyan’s neck with his tongue.
When this playful spirit of his slackened and he began to walk slowly
to the timber each morning, it was first thought to signify the
approach of maturity, with its graver moods. But when Paul Bunyan
discovered him one day, standing with his front feet crossed, his head
bowed, his cud vanished, and with tears rolling from his half-closed
eyes, the great logger was alarmed. He called Johnny Inkslinger from
among his ledgers and ink barrels and ordered him to drop all other
work until Babe’s ailment was diagnosed and cured.
Though he had studied all animals exhaustively, Johnny Inkslinger
had never practised veterinary medicine, except in treating Babe’s
inconsequential attacks of hayfever and asthma. If he took the case
he would be assuming a great responsibility, he told Paul Bunyan; he
must have at least forty-seven hours to consider the matter. The great
logger, having due respect for the scientific temperament, granted him
this, so the timekeeper retired to his office.
Paul Bunyan waited patiently, despite the fears and anguish that smote
him when Babe looked at him with beseeching eyes. Work had been stopped
in the woods, and the anxious loggers spent most of their time around
the stable. The cooks, remembering Babe’s fondness for hot cakes and
fried eggs, brought him tubfuls of them most delicately cooked, but he
would only nibble at them politely, then turn away. Once indeed his
old jestful spirit returned when the Big Swede came near him. He set
his hoof on the foreman’s foot, and at the anguished “Har noo!” he
seemed to smile. But what a difference there was between that shadow of
merriment and the one time gay bellow that always followed the joke!
Paul Bunyan and the loggers were deeply touched.
Johnny Inkslinger finally announced in a scientific speech that he was
prepared to examine and treat the blue ox. He was certain, above all,
that this illness was not caused by indigestion, for Babe’s stomach had
always seemed to be iron-clad, invulnerable. When the hay supply ran
low in the wintertime Paul Bunyan would tie a pair of green goggles
over Babe’s eyes and he would graze for weeks on the snow. He was fond
of the wires that bound his bales of hay, and he had always eaten them
without apparent injury. So Johnny Inkslinger ignored Babe’s stomachs,
but every other part of him, from muzzle to tail brush, was minutely
scrutinized and explored. Nothing escaped observation. Six intrepid
loggers with lanterns were lowered by ropes into his throat to examine
his tonsils when he stubbornly refused to say “Ah!” But no diseased
condition could anywhere be discovered.
Johnny Inkslinger was baffled, but he would not give up. For sixty-one
hours he sat in the stable, watching every movement of the blue ox
and making pages of notes about each one. And all of the time he was
thinking with the full power of his scientific mind, bringing all his
vast medical knowledge to the solution of his problem. Then, just as
he had reached the darkest depths of hopelessness, a flashing idea
saved him with its light. The idea did not spring from his science or
knowledge; indeed, it seemed to be in opposition to them. It was a
simple idea, simply inspired.
His gaze had been fixed for some time on the hump which the blue ox
had on his back. It was such a hump as all ailing animals contrive,
but, unoriginal as it was, it was yet the source of an original and
startling idea, that the hump in a sick animal’s back, instead of
being the _result_ of the sickness, was really the _cause_ of it!
Johnny Inkslinger jumped to his feet with a shout of joy. He saw in the
idea, not only the salvation of Paul Bunyan’s logging enterprises, but
the root of a great fame for himself as a veterinarian as well. His
jubilant calls soon roused the camp.
Paul Bunyan listened somewhat doubtfully as the timekeeper revealed
his idea and plans. But he was not one to oppose a scientific man with
mere logic, so he gave orders that the great treatment devised by
Johnny Inkslinger should be carried out. For five days the loggers
toiled, erecting a scaffold on each side of the blue ox. Runways were
built from the top floors of the scaffolds to Babe’s back. Then all was
ready for the first treatment. For three hours loggers carrying pike
poles, peavys, sledges and mauls climbed the scaffolds and extended in
lines on each side of Babe’s humped spine. Then Paul Bunyan grasped
the horns of the sick creature, Johnny Inkslinger and the Big Swede
seized his tail, the command, “Get ready!” was given, then, “Let’s
go!” Paul Bunyan said, and the army of doctors began the cure. All
that day, through the night, and for seventy-six consecutive hours
thereafter the loggers attacked the hump in Babe’s spine, while Paul
Bunyan, Johnny Inkslinger, and the Big Swede attempted to stretch it to
its former shape by tugging on the poor animal’s horns and tail. Babe
mooed dolorously indeed while this treatment was being performed, and
the tears rolled from his saddened eyes in foaming torrents. But he did
not resist. Intelligent animal that he was, he knew that his friends
were only trying to drive away his misery. And kindly of soul as he
was, it was no doubt as much to give them the pleasure of success as
to stop them from prodding, pounding and stretching his spine that he
made a heroic effort to act as cured ox. Pretty deceiver! Once he had
straightened his aching back, how lustily he began to devour bale after
bale of bitter-tasting hay from his manger! How speedily he emptied
tubfuls of hot cakes and fried eggs, while Hot Biscuit Slim, Cream Puff
Fatty and the assistant cooks looked on and cheered! Never did Babe
depart more friskly for the woods than on the morning he was pronounced
cured. The Big Swede, hanging to the halter rope, only hit the dirt
once in every mile and a half!
[Illustration]
The work of logging was soon in its old routine, but Paul Bunyan
was not satisfied. Babe could not hide his spells of trembling; he
moved feverishly; his expression was haggard, his mooings hollow.
Johnny Inkslinger, still flushed with the fire of his grand idea,
was impatient with Paul Bunyan’s worriment. But he could not quiet
the great logger’s fears. When it was noted that Hickory River would
suddenly rise three or four feet above its normal level and as suddenly
fall again, Paul Bunyan set a close watch on the blue ox and discovered
that there were times when the hump in his back became greater than
ever before, and that torrents of tears often poured from his eyes in
fits of weeping, thus flooding the river. Firmly, but without anger,
Paul Bunyan ordered his timekeeper to devise another treatment.
Johnny Inkslinger reluctantly admitted his failure and again brought
his powers of thought to consider the perplexing sickness of the blue
ox. But he did not labor with the materials of his knowledge and
science. He longed to glow again with the tickling heat of originality,
to taste once more the sweet fat of his own ideas. So he sat and
thought, awaiting inspiration, while his doctor books stood unopened on
the towering shelves of the camp office. And at last he was rewarded by
an idea that floated from mysterious darkness like a bubble of golden
light. It was midnight, but his ecstatic shouts awakened the camp. The
loggers, thrilled and alarmed, rolled from their bunks and ran in their
underclothes to the camp office. A white-clad host soon filled the
broad valley and covered the distant hills. Johnny Inkslinger then came
out of the office, carrying a box that had held ninety-five tons of
soap. He mounted this box and began to speak. His eyes flamed, his hair
waved, his hands fanned the air. He was voluble. “Doctor or prophet?”
Paul Bunyan asked himself sadly as he strode away, after listening for
a short time. But the loggers were enchanted as the speech went on.
Johnny Inkslinger ended each period with a mesmeric phrase, and after
he had repeated it thrice at the ending of his speech the loggers made
a chant of it. “Milk of the Western whale! Milk of the Western whale!
Milk of the Western whale!” they roared, as they swayed and danced in
their underclothes. The chant rose in thunders to the sky, it rolled
over the hickory forests, and it shook the rocks of far mountains. It
reëchoed for hours after the loggers had returned to the bunkhouses.
Paul Bunyan considered the situation bravely and calmly. He admitted no
vain regrets that he had never studied doctoring himself. He pronounced
no maledictions on his timekeeper’s puzzling mania. He simply
considered the plain facts of his problem: if Babe died the great
logging enterprises would be halted forever; Johnny Inkslinger was the
only man who had the science and knowledge to cure the sick ox, and if
humored he might return to his senses; a change to the Western coast
might benefit Babe, and the milk of the Western whale would surely do
him no harm. So the mighty logger decided to move his camp to the West,
and there let Johnny Inkslinger give him the whale’s milk cure.
There was great rejoicing in the camp when Paul Bunyan gave orders for
the move. The blue ox, seeming to realize that it was made for his
benefit, acted as though he was in high spirits when he was hitched to
the camp buildings and the bunkhouses loaded with loggers. He skipped
and capered along the trail behind Paul Bunyan, Johnny Inkslinger
and the Big Swede all the way to the Mississippi. But there he was
attacked by innumerable squadrons of Iowa horse flies. He smashed them
unmercifully with blows of his tail until the ground for miles around
was strewn with their mangled bodies, but the carnivorous insects
persisted in their assaults until Babe became blindly enraged. He
lowered his head and began a furious charge that did not end until
he reached Colorado, where he fell exhausted. The loggers had been
made violently seasick by their bouncing journey over the hills, and
Paul Bunyan was compelled to call a halt until they and the blue ox
had recovered. While waiting, Paul Bunyan and the Big Swede built a
landmark by heaping dirt around an upright pike pole, and the great
logger was so pleased with the creation that he gave it a name, Pike’s
Peak.
The trip to the coast was made without further misadventures, and the
loggers were set to work at once to build a whale corral, for Paul
Bunyan wished to get the cure over as soon as possible, so that his
stubborn timekeeper would begin to do some real doctoring. The loggers
grumbled loudly at working with picks and shovels; such foreign labor
demeaned them, they said. But the exhortations which Johnny Inkslinger
delivered from his great soap box, and the alarming condition of the
blue ox, who now made no effort to hide his sickness, but lay quietly,
with closed eyes, overwhelmed their prejudices, and they made the
dirt fly in spite of their dislike for shovels and picks. For nine
days and nights they threw dirt like badgers, while Paul Bunyan and
the Big Swede scooped it aside and piled it into big hills. Then the
whale corral was finished, and Paul Bunyan sent the loggers to the
bunkhouses. They were so sleepy and weary that they began to snore
before they had put away their tools.
Paul Bunyan kicked a hole in the seaward side of the corral, and
the waters of the Pacific roared into the basin. When it was filled
he began his famous imitation of the bawl of a lonely whale, and so
perfect was his mimicry that in less than an hour an approaching school
of the leviathans was sighted. They swam hesitatingly about the opening
to the corral for a time, but as Paul Bunyan continued to call ever
more cunningly and appealingly, they at last entered the trap. The Big
Swede then got his stool and milk bucket, while Paul Bunyan scooped
dirt into the corral gate. Johnny Inkslinger was called from the
office, and all was ready for the first milking of a creature of the
seas.
The Big Swede, who had been raised on a dairy farm in the old country,
selected a cow whale that looked like a good milker, and Paul Bunyan,
using all his wiles of manner and tricks of voice, soon had her playing
about his hands. At last she was gentle and quiet, and, while Johnny
Inkslinger held up her tail, the Big Swede came into the water with his
bucket and stool and began milking with all the energy and skill that
had won him the name of Sweden’s greatest milker in his youth. With
the vigorous pressure of his hands, the whale’s milk was soon gushing
into his bucket with such force that a dozen fire engines could not
have equaled the flow. The gentled whale made no resistance, and the
pail was soon filled with healthful, creamy milk. But just as the Big
Swede was about to rise from his stool the whale’s calf, who had been
swimming angrily about, suddenly charged the great milker and upset
him. His head lodged in the milk bucket; he was bent double; and before
he could recover himself, the little whale had butted the breath out
of him and had spanked him blisteringly with his corrugated tail.
This incident frightened the mother whale, and she escaped from Paul
Bunyan’s hands; the Big Swede floundered about and yelled from the
depths of the milk bucket; and the whole school of whales plunged about
the corral in a wild panic. Worst of all, the first milking was spilled.
And indeed they were the whole day securing one bucket of milk. Not
until Paul Bunyan thought of letting a whale calf suck his finger while
the Big Swede was milking its mother were the sea-going dairymen able
to get away from the corral with one milking. But at last the great
milker limped to the shore with a foaming pail. He was breathing in
wheezes, his clothes were in tatters, and the back of him, from head to
heels, was marked from the tail blows of the little whales. He was the
sorriest of sorry sights, but he had a feeble smile, nevertheless, in
return for Paul Bunyan’s praise.
Babe took his first dose of whale’s milk resignedly and then closed his
eyes again in weariness and sighed with pain. Paul Bunyan’s emotions
smothered his caution; he ventured to express his doubts about the
cure. Johnny Inkslinger immediately ran to the office, brought out his
great soap box and mounted it.
“It is a nature cure!” he cried in ringing tones. “It cures slowly
because nature cures slowly, but it cures surely and divinely! It is a
great cure because it is a great idea, a marvelous idea, a heaven-sent
idea, an original idea, my own idea, and it is the idea that will save
us all!”
Paul Bunyan looked for a moment into the glowing eyes of his timekeeper
and sighed. He did not reply.
For a week the three milked the whales twice daily and dosed the blue
ox, while the loggers slept away their weariness. Babe took the whale’s
milk meekly, but at each successive dose he swallowed more sluggishly,
and after the fourth day he would not open his eyes while he drank. On
the day the loggers came from the bunkhouses he refused to drink at
all. Only an occasional twitching of his eyelids showed that life yet
remained with him.
“He is dying,” said Paul Bunyan.
Johnny Inkslinger mounted the great box which had held the ninety-five
tons of soap and began to speak.
“Fellow loggers and Paul Bunyan,” he began. “This miraculous idea, this
saving and transfiguring idea----”
“Silence!” commanded the good and mighty logger.
So compelling was the power of that grave and august voice that the
loggers hardly breathed as it sounded, and the wind subsided until it
made only the faintest whisper among the trees. Then Paul Bunyan made
one of his great orations. He did not require a soap box, he made no
fantastic gestures, and he spoke simply and smoothly. He reviewed his
enterprises and the deeds of his loggers; he dwelt especially on the
achievements and faithfulness of Babe, the blue ox. His plain sincerity
held the loggers spellbound; for sixty-nine hours the speech went on,
and they did not so much as move an eyelash. In conclusion, Paul Bunyan
told them that Babe would surely die, and as logging could not be done
without him, their last labor together would be to dig his grave. He
did not blame Johnny Inkslinger, he said; the best of men may be led
astray by their imaginings and fall into evil ways. He had been a
great doctor once, and he was a noble scribe still. Then Paul Bunyan
solemnly and warningly spoke of the shadowy workings of fate, and in
somber utterance he portrayed the pathos of yearnings, the frailty of
blessings and the ultimate vanity of all endeavor. In the last three
hours of his oration his voice sounded as a tolling bell. Mournfully,
mournfully, the moments marched on, and a darkness came over the hills
and the sea. From the eyes of each motionless logger the tears streamed
unchecked; they formed in puddles around each man’s feet until all of
them stood knee-deep in mud. When the oration was finished and they
had extricated themselves and cleaned their boots, they made ready,
and they left with Paul Bunyan for the North, where he had decided to
dig Babe’s grave. The Big Swede stayed with the dying ox, and Johnny
Inkslinger hid himself in the shadows of his office.
For a long time he remained there in an agony of thought. Remorse
tormented him, though Paul Bunyan had not judged him guilty. But he
suffered most from the humiliation of failure. It was his first,
but--the thought came like a blinding flash of light--had he
failed--yet? His reservoir of ideas was inexhaustible; as long as
breath remained in the blue ox he could try other ideas on him. Think
now! It had become as easy for him to summon grand ideas as for a
magician to conjure rabbits from a hat, and almost instantly he had
one, a superb notion, a glorious thought!
Johnny Inkslinger rushed from the office and roused the Big Swede, who
was sitting in apathetic sadness by the blue ox.
“Listen now!” commanded the timekeeper. “You are to sit here and repeat
continuously in a soothing voice, ‘You are well. You are well. You are
well.’ Do you understand? Well then--no questions now--do as I have
told you and Babe’s life will be saved. Do not fail, for all depends on
your faithfulness! When I have returned with Mr. Bunyan I will finish
the cure myself.”
The timekeeper, exulting in the certainty that his method would
positively restore health to the blue ox, then started out on the trail
of Paul Bunyan and the loggers. They should quit their melancholy task
and return to find Babe on the road to recovery. He would complete the
cure, and logging should go on as before.
The Big Swede at once began to repeat the words, “You ban well,”
according to orders. For thirty-one hours they came from his tongue
without interruption. Then his mouth got dry and hoarseness invaded his
throat. The phrase was uttered with an effort. Then he had to resort to
whispering in Babe’s ear. And finally even his whisper failed him.
The Big Swede had once nearly choked to death after making a high
dive into muddy earth, and he had only been saved by copious doses
of alcohol. The new oratorical cures were not understandable to him,
but he remembered the potency of alcohol in clearing out the throat,
so he got up and ran to the camp office, where he found the great
carboys of the medicine once highly prized by Johnny Inkslinger. Taking
three of them under his arm, the Big Swede returned to the blue ox.
He took a huge drink from one of them, and he was again able to go on
with the treatment. For a few hours it was only necessary for him to
drink once every thirty minutes to drive away the hoarseness, but it
resisted stubbornly, and the periods between the drinks grew shorter
and shorter. By the time the Big Swede had opened the last carboy of
alcohol his brain was addled by the fumes of the liquor, and his heart
was softened by its influence until it beat only with sympathy for the
blue ox. He forgot what he was to say, and instead of repeating, “You
ban well,” he began to sigh, over and over, “Poor ol’ sick feller.
Poor ol’ sick feller.” Fortunately this horrid perversion of Johnny
Inkslinger’s idea did not last. The Big Swede’s vocal cords finally
gave out, the alcohol smothered his will and closed his eyes. He could
not resist the fogginess that crept over his brain, and at last he fell
over and began to snore.