to put the mill in a condition to operate. It was a good mill as it
stood, outside of the solid saw, and he did not intend to rebuild it.
That would take time, and he wanted to have new bunkhouses and the
old camp routine as soon as possible. In order to keep his men from
thinking about their troublesome memories it was necessary to have
most of them in the woods again and to be with them himself. Then the
bunkhouse bards would start the camp stories and songs once more, and
the loggers would be protected at night also. So, to work.
Experienced as he was with inventing, Paul Bunyan was not long in
getting an idea which solved his problem. First, he had the loggers who
were detailed on mill construction build blocks of concrete under the
floor beams of the millhouse. While they were completing this labor
he got one of his old inventions and made many new models of it. This
invention was the steam-drive potato masher, which he had devised for
Hot Biscuit Slim, after the chief cook had originated mashed potatoes.
In this invention Paul Bunyan had made the first known use of the steam
cylinder. He now took a battery of steam-drive potato mashers and
installed them on the new concrete blocks under the mill. Steam pipes
were connected between them; and the new mill system was ready for a
trial.
Paul Bunyan wiped the sweat from his dripping eyebrows and wrung out
his beard; then he gave the signal to turn on steam. The potato mashers
pumped up and down perfectly at the rate of five hundred strokes a
minute. Each stroke thrust the mill building up forty feet and down
forty feet. The big carriage moved forward, carrying a pine log; the
solid saw met its bark and grain; then the log carriage, flashing
up and down with the millhouse, moved swiftly ahead, and the first
cant dropped on the rolls. The new mill was a success! Paul Bunyan’s
inventive mind had triumphed again! True, the mill men got a little
seasick from going forty feet up and forty feet down five hundred times
a minute; but they soon got accustomed to this and declared that they
preferred the bouncing saw mill to the ordinary quiet kind.
Now Paul Bunyan remembered Ford Fordsen.
“You would rebuild a mill because of a slight mistake,” he chuckled,
reaching into his pocket for the bunkhouse genius. “Come now; I will
show you how really simple it was to solve the problem of the solid
saw.”
But Ford Fordsen was not in Paul Bunyan’s pocket, of course. He had
not been there for a long time. Paul Bunyan quickly guessed that the
bunkhouse genius had escaped while his leader was seated. The great
logger’s last sitting had happened just one month ago, when he heard
his returning timekeeper’s report. Certainly Ford Fordsen had gone to
the woods with news of Johnny Inkslinger’s discovery.
Knowing the difficulties which the Big Swede had been having with the
blue ox, knowing also the foreman’s lack of oratorical powers, Paul
Bunyan feared greatly for his loggers. He ran at once for the timber
where they were supposed to be working. The loggers were gone, and
their felling tools also. And neither the Big Swede nor the blue ox was
anywhere in the woods. The boughs of the last felled trees were already
dead and dry and the stumps of these trees were browned by the suns
of many days. The woods were still but for the wind whispers, and the
breathing silence of the deserted timberland was mournful to the great
logger. His was a somber, frowning countenance as he returned to camp.
He looked in Babe’s empty stable before he passed, and two dark objects
in the manger attracted him curiously. They were strange engines, and
not of his devising. He had not seen their like before. He could lift
one in his two hands; and he did so, turning it around and around,
observing its upright boiler, its drums and cables, and the hewn logs
to which it was bolted. Wondering how the engines had come to the
manger, Paul Bunyan put them in his two mackinaw pockets and tramped on
over the mountain towards Nowaday Valley, knowing that there he would
find his loggers.
It was late afternoon when the leader-hero reached the Big Fir timber
which covered the slopes around Nowaday Valley. Through the trees he
saw a blue that was bluer than the sky. Babe mooed gently as his
master approached, but his gaze remained fixed on the border where the
green valley floor met the timber. Smoke was rising there; and now Paul
Bunyan saw roofs and people among the firs.
“My loggers and the women folks,” said Paul Bunyan, not very cheerfully.
He strode on through the forest, and ere long he saw that smoke was
coming from such an engine as he had in his pockets. Ford Fordsen was
at the levers; now he jerked one, and a drum revolved swiftly, winding
a cable which whipped and slashed underbrush as it was hauled from the
timber. Then a big log to which the cable was fastened crashed through
the small trees, plowing a deep furrow as it was dragged on. Now Ford
Fordsen jerked another lever, the big log was lifted, and then it
was lowered easily to a car which was standing on two shining steel
rails....
A whistle shrilled. Paul Bunyan saw his loggers coming in droves from
the woods. Ford Fordsen left his engine and approached the great logger.
“So the inventor has become the industrialist also,” said Paul Bunyan
grimly. “I suppose you will now compete with me in oratory----”
“That is my affair.” Ford Fordsen interrupted his old leader coolly.
“My only business with you, Mr. Bunyan, is to inform you that you must
keep your ox away from my donkeys.”
“Donkeys?”
“I have named my skidding machines donkey engines. Your ox, your
skidding machine, made cunning and conscienceless from jealousy, has
escaped from your foreman; he waits until night; then he plunges out
of the woods, seizes my engine in his teeth and makes away with it. He
has stolen two of them. I demand their return.”
Paul Bunyan drew them from his pocket and dropped them to the ground.
“I do not care about your donkeys, your engines, your skidding
machines,” said the great logger. “I have come for my men.”
“Try and get them,” said Ford Fordsen amiably.
“You may have learned inventing and industry,” said Paul Bunyan. “And
you despise history. But I shall now teach you the worth of oratory.”
“I grant you the privilege of attempting it,” said Ford Fordsen
pleasantly. “Instead of giving the loggers oratory I have given them
the ten-hour day. And they have found other things.”
Paul Bunyan would not argue the merits of the ten-hour day with Ford
Fordsen. Regretting that he had ever encouraged this man by praising
his one noble invention, stagged pants, the great logger said no more,
but went on into Nowaday Valley. He stopped at a place where there were
many cottages. They were evidently used for bunkhouses by his loggers,
as the men had come this way after leaving the woods. They were curious
bunkhouses indeed, for the walls of each one were painted in bright
colors; there were curtains in the windows, and every bunkhouse had
a neat and pretty yard of grass and flowers. Paul Bunyan thought it
strange that his bully loggers should tolerate this; but he did not
allow the thought to trouble him. He began to speak with his rarest
eloquence.
If he had delivered such an oration in the old home camp his men would
have listened to him for days without thinking of eating or sleep. They
would have been moved continuously by whatever emotions the sounds of
the orator’s rich phrases evoked; and at the end they would have obeyed
his most extravagant wish.
But now the loggers did not even come out of their bright bunkhouses to
hear him. Now and again a face appeared at a window or in a doorway,
but it was always the face of one of the women folk, seeming hostile
or curious, but otherwise unmoved. Knowing that his oratorical powers
had never been greater, Paul Bunyan was at last affected by a fear that
the loggers were now ruled by a force stronger than his own. He put
even more vigor and color into his oration, but he now spoke with less
confidence....
Then one of the women folk came out of the bunkhouse. She stopped and
looked up at the great logger with brave curiosity; and he in turn was
so perplexed by the strange sight of this creature, who had something
of the appearance of a logger, but was yet so unlike one, that he
studied her and abandoned his oration. Was it possible that such frail
and useless-seeming creatures could have powers surpassing his own?
Then Paul Bunyan did what every true man, whether ditch-digger or king,
has often longed painfully to do. He now did that which men are forever
attempting in their imaginings. He lifted the woman person in his hand
and observed her as a naturalist observes a small kitten or a mouse.
This specimen of the women folk did not seem to mind the liberty which
Paul Bunyan took with her. She sat comfortably in his hand, with her
ankles crossed, and opened a case which hung from her arm; she gazed
unconcernedly into a mirror which was in the lid of this case; then she
patted powder on her nose and cheeks, turning her head first this way
and then that way.
Paul Bunyan could not understand this woman person. She could not be
explained by any of his ideas. She looked even less like a logger, now
that he saw her closely. Her feet, for one thing, were ridiculously
small, and the thin-soled slippers on them would not last a day at work
in the woods. Her socks were of transparent, shimmering stuff, and they
were pink, like the New Iowa clover. He had never seen anything except
a cook’s apron which was like the garment she wore, and he had never
seen anything at all compared with the curving soft shapes revealed
in this garment. Her face was something like a boy logger’s face, but
her eyes were not boy’s eyes; for some different spirit shone in their
brown lights. Her strangely cut hair was combed straight down over her
forehead and its clipped ends made an even line above eyebrows which
were no greater than threads. Her arms were round and white and firmly
fleshed, but they seemed to have little muscle. Her small hands surely
could not reach around an ax handle; nevertheless she was proud of
them, for she now polished her fingernails on her pink socks and then
admired the new glitter of them.
“I still do not understand this woman person,” whispered Paul Bunyan
to himself. “I have observed her closely, but the secret of her power
is not yet known to me. Surely my bully loggers will yet prefer my
oratory to these weak women folk. I must try again.”
The woman person looked up at the gusty murmur; and on her small red
mouth, and in her sunny brown eyes, was a smile. And Paul Bunyan saw
also the tiniest of cups in each of her powdered cheeks. These, too,
were marvelous and new to him.
“I have had an adventure which I can talk about for a long time,” said
the woman person. “Now put me down.”
Paul Bunyan marveled still more at the imperiousness of this voice,
which was yet so soft, so gentle and low. He had seen one logger chew
off another’s ear for less arrogant words. And now that he looked
for them he did not discover ears on this woman person. But she had
certainly not profited by the lesson.
“You have not yet learned bunkhouse courtesy?” asked Paul Bunyan
conversationally.
The woman person shrugged her shoulders and wrinkled her nose. She
seemed to consider this a good enough answer, for she did not speak.
Paul Bunyan wanted to chide her, and he was surprised that he found no
words for it. He felt embarrassment.
“Tell me, please,” he said bashfully, “how you women folk won my
loggers.”
“Oh!” she replied, blushing a little, “we wanted husbands and babies.”
More mysteries! More words without meaning to him! This was an
explanation perhaps, but it explained nothing.
Now the woman person grasped two hairs of Paul Bunyan’s beard, one in
each small hand, and pulled them playfully, smiling such a smile as he
had never seen on any logger’s face.
“You must go away, you know,” she said softly. “We are all so happy
here.”
Paul Bunyan heard a pleading strain in her strange singing voice, but
he could not interpret this sound. He saw her wistfully smiling eyes
and mouth, but he could not read what he saw on her face. He felt the
softness of the woman person in his hand--and he understood her a
little. He learned something of her strength, alien as it was to any
strength he had known. And he thought: I have lost my loggers; for
neither history, invention, industry nor oratory can prevail with them
against this woman person.
Gently Paul Bunyan put her on the ground. The woman person’s walk was
like a dance as she left him. In the door of her bright bunkhouse she
turned and blew him a kiss. And was gone. Paul Bunyan waved his hand.
The gesture was not for the woman person; it was a farewell to his
loggers.
Paul Bunyan spoke no more; but he returned to his camp at once, taking
the blue ox with him over the mountains. He told his remaining men of
the women folk and let them go. Soon or late he would lose them, and
he let them go now, that they might not be held too long from their
desire....
The sinking sun flashed its last blaze of red over a camp that was
deserted of all save the great heroes and the mighty blue ox. The
Big Swede had returned and he slept; Johnny Inkslinger figured; and
Babe mooed dolorously as the shadows clouded the silent timber. And
Paul Bunyan, the supreme inventor, the noble historian, the master
orator, the grand field marshal of industry, mused in sad resignation
on the vanity of man’s enterprises. The logging industry, which he
had invented, would go on as long as trees grew from the earth, and
his name would be heard forever on the tongues of men. He would have
power, but it would be only the power of a vast spirit breathing in the
dark, deep woods. He would have the glory he had dreamed about in his
beginnings ... but glory was a poor consolation ... his life work was
done....
The shadows got dense ... the shapes of the heroes, and the shape of
Babe, the blue ox, and the shapes of buildings, mountains and trees
merged in the darkness. And there history leaves them.
[Illustration]
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical and spelling errors were corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs
and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support
hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to
the corresponding illustrations.
Page 83: “wreck” was printed that way.
Page 186: “Pugent Sound” was printed that way.
Page 209: “vigorously he in every action” was printed that way.