Part 10

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.

One stride brought him into the first clearing made among the stonewood trees. Without losing a second, he threw the timber scythe from his shoulder, he grasped its handles, then took a long swing, and the first section of trees thundered to the ground. On he went, making a circular swath. As he stepped with his right foot the sharp scythe blade crashed through the trees on the cutting stroke, and as he stepped with his left he brought the scythe behind him with a vigorous swing. On and on he labored, his steps coming faster as the circle widened. Every seven hours he paused to whet the blade of the timber scythe on a bundle of the stonewood trees which he carried in his hip pocket. The hot winter drove its fires upon him, but his passion of toil repelled them with a stronger flame. The great logger’s walk became a run; the dazzling blade of the timber scythe flashed in strokes of inconceivable rapidity; the sections of stonewood trees fell in a steady roar.

Then Paul Bunyan began to sweat. He had labored before this, but never so savagely, nor in such penetrating heat. Only the man who raises a good sweat for the first time can realize what an astounding store of perspiration the human body can hold. On occasion it gushes from innumerable springs, seeming inexhaustible. It streams down the crevices and valleys of the body and floods the flat spaces; it soaks the clothing and drips to the ground. Imagine then what happened when Paul Bunyan’s stored perspiration was unloosed. As he toiled on, ever more fiercely, his sweat flooded his boots, it surged over their tops and foamed towards the ground like two Niagaras. His swinging body and flying arms flung out clouds of spray. These strange waters coursed over the plains in torrents and gathered in heaving pools. The little river was submerged, drowned, exterminated. The waters crept towards the camp. Paul Bunyan, more and more engrossed with his labor as time went on, did not note the rising flood. His circle grew wider and wider. It left the plain and swung around the bordering slopes. Section after section of the trees was felled, only to be covered by water, for the stonewood timber was too heavy to float. But Paul Bunyan labored around and around the circle, quite unaware of the tragical consequence of his efforts.

For five days and nights the loggers lay in their bunks, too lazy to get up to eat, too lazy to do aught but drowse and dream. But at twelve o’clock on the fifth night the waters had reached the bunkhouses, and they learned of their peril. Yells of fear arose from every quarter, and in a few moments the whole camp, with the exception of Babe, the Big Swede, and Johnny Inkslinger, was aroused. Fright made the loggers forget the hot winter, and gave them energy. When they looked out on a vast lake glittering in the moonlight, and saw in the dim distance the twin rivers roaring from Paul Bunyan’s boots, they knew that speedy and efficient action was necessary to save their lives. The best swimmers swam out to the tool house and brought back hammers, saws and nails. Each logger then began to build a boat from his bunk, and for three hours they worked feverishly and silently constructing the vessels. When the last one was finished the word was passed along and in a few moments the boats, each one carrying a logger and his blankets, swarmed from the bunkhouses. Before the armada had gone twenty feet the boats all filled with water and sank, while the loggers uttered lamentable cries. These changed to sounds of rejoicing, however, when it was discovered that the water was only waist deep. The loggers rescued their bundles from the boats and scampered to the shore like a holiday host at a beach.

But their joy did not last; it quickly gave way to dread. Paul Bunyan, toiling more desperately every moment, was rapidly moving around the circle. In a short time he would be upon them, and at any instant he might discover the fate of his trees, the flooding of his camp, his complete disaster. The loggers all understood the reason for the mighty man’s wrathful labor. Their sense of blame confused them and smothered their native courage. The host began to move over the hills, haltingly at first, and with heads bowed like penitents. Then, as the volleying thunder of Paul Bunyan’s timber scythe sounded nearer and nearer, they lifted their heads and struck a faster pace. Then guilty fears possessed them and every logger of the lot began to gallop madly. Someone yelled, “Ol’ Paul’s a comin’!” and the warning cry was echoed from thousands of throats all over the hills. The loggers were taken by panic; the runaway became a stampede. By dawn they were making such running leaps that each logger would hit his chin with his front knee and his head with his back heel at every stride. They were so scared that they never stopped until they got to Kansas.

Now Kansas at that time had the only kingdom that was ever known to exist in this country. The ruler of Kansas was King Bourbon, and Topeka was his capital. The Kansas country was then one of the pleasantest in Real America. It was rolling land, like that everywhere else, but its heavy vegetation and its forests were beautiful and unique, and the climate and seasons were always spring; and indeed the history of Paul Bunyan’s time tells of a year in Kansas that had thirteen months of spring.

The forests were mostly whisky trees, which grew amid carpets of cigarette grass and were entwined with beervines. The greatest of these forests was around Lake Topeka, and by the lake was the capital city, where the nobility and gentry of Kansas led a pleasurable life and envied no one.

When Paul Bunyan’s loggers reached Kansas they were so exhausted from their long run that they had no eyes for the beauties of that region; they only felt that it invited them to rest and promised them security. So when they came to the banks of Rolling River they dropped on the soft and fragrant masses of cigarette grass, and rested in the cool shade of the spreading whisky trees, with the bliss known only to the utterly weary. For a long while they were not aware of the virile odors of the beervine blossoms, and they heard but faintly the melodies of the huge but gentle piano birds who were everywhere in the forest, either flitting from bough to bough or sitting in their nests. And even when they were rested and soothed by the sweet airs and tinkling melodies the loggers enjoyed the originality of their environment but a short while, for each one became conscious of a raging hunger.

“Let’s look for a nose bag!” the cry up and down the columns and lines. The loggers all arose with the intent of foraging in the forest, and they would no doubt have appeased their hunger at once, if an impulsive curiosity had not made them take a last look at the river. A great gasp of astonishment went up, then a terrific crash of laughter shook the vast forest and silenced the piano birds. The loggers, one and all, dropped again to the ground and rolled and bounced about in convulsions of merriment.

Rolling River was a stubborn and valiant stream, and, unlike tamer rivers, it refused to follow the easiest course. From its source extended a range of hills which decreased in height until it was merged in the slope of a far valley. Rolling River made its way up and down these hills, cleaving each summit. At the place where the loggers were resting the river always had a hard fight, as one hill was nearly equal in height to the one that preceded it. Sometimes Rolling River would fail here; the waters would part at the summit, and one end of the river would go rushing on and the other end would slide back down the hill for a fresh start.

It was then that the giddyfish which dwelt in this stream would perform so clownishly as to tickle any observer into fits. Bewildered by the waters’ abrupt desertion of them, and perplexed as to which end of the river it was best to follow, numbers of them would hesitate on the hilltop, agitated and floundering, then half of them would take out after the lower end of the river and half of them would take out after the upper end. They could make great speed by leaping along like kangaroos, using their long fins and tails. But they traveled clumsily, and their limber tongues lolled from their mouths as they leaped down the hillside, all of which made their every action seem inexpressibly humorous.

There was never an army of men who enjoyed a good laugh more than Paul Bunyan’s loggers. And when they saw the giddyfish galloping after the river they laughed till they cried. When the river finally made it up the hill and began to roll on as usual the loggers could hardly stop laughing even then. But they remembered their hunger, and they again got up to search for food. But no sooner had they started than the river parted again, and once more the loggers rolled and laughed over the performance of the giddyfish. And indeed for fifty-seven hours the loggers were unable to get away from the riverside, for no sooner would they start to leave than the stubborn river and the clownish giddyfish would repeat their hilarious performance. The loggers would no doubt have laughed themselves to death, or else starved, had not King Bourbon come along with his race horses and jockeys and saved them.

King Bourbon had his jockeys make a wall of horseflesh between the laughing loggers and the river, and they were then able to stagger back into the safety of the forest. The king then made the loggers a speech of apology and warning. He told them that the only crimes punishable by death in Kansas were dealing from the bottom of the deck, throwing a horse race or a fight, and shooting craps with loaded dice. Those convicted of such crimes were sentenced to watch the giddyfish until they laughed themselves to death. The king then asked the loggers at what games and contests did they excel, and when they told him of their expertness at spinning logs in rough water his face shone with a joy that made it brighter than the diamond in his necktie; for this new sport promised to be a thrilling one. He ordered his lord bookmaker to bring them on to the capital and find a place for them in the life of the city. After giving this order, he courteously lifted his plug hat to the loggers and, followed by his jockeys, he set out for Topeka, which was over the next hump.

After three days the loggers were themselves again and they began to explore the delights of the city.

Topeka, under King Bourbon’s rule, was a city of amusements. There were eleven racetracks, and on each one there were seven races every afternoon. Each morning there were five baseball games, the first one beginning at four A. M. Boxing and wrestling matches, swimming and running races, driving and jumping contests were to be seen each Sunday in the stadium which faced Lake Topeka. In the time between races and contests the people played poker, solo, rummy and pool, and shot craps in the palace, which was the one public building in the city. In its single vast room there were countless tables for the players, and these tables were circled by a bar of such circumference that a man would grow a beard while walking the length of it. The glitter of the glasses and mirrors back of the bar was so brilliant and the jackets of the bartenders were so white that a beholder seemed to look on ice and snow which dazzlingly reflected sunlight. But the eye was soothed indeed when its gaze dropped to the dusky mahogany bar and searched the amber depths of a huge glass which frothed with the sharp and fragrant liquid brewed from foamy beervine blossoms. Even more was the eye delighted when it caught the jolly winks that bubbled from the most potent and jovial beverage, the aged sap of the whisky tree. One part of the bar was a great free lunch counter, which was always loaded with filling and peppery food. Here the nobility and gentry of Topeka ate and drank, King Bourbon, his lord bookmaker and his lord bartender among all the rest. The cooks, waiters and dishwashers had been working three shifts on the free lunch counter, but King Bourbon generously offered Paul Bunyan’s kitchen crew employment there, and the lord bartender then had to divide the day into forty-eight shifts in order to have work for everyone.

The loggers were royally received into the grand life of Topeka. The skill they displayed in spinning logs on the lake each Sunday won them an honored place in the kingdom. They became tireless players of poker, solo, rummy, craps, and even of pool. They drank huge quantities of beervine brew and whisky tree sap. The free lunch made them forget the delights of Paul Bunyan’s dinners. Soon they ceased to consider themselves as working loggers, and they repelled with scorn proposals to try a new life of toil, which were slyly made by followers of Duke Dryface, who was a cousin of the King.

The duke was secretly planning a revolt. He had renounced Topeka life, and he now lived among the serfs who brewed the beervine blossoms, aged the sap of the whisky trees, and made all of the materials that composed the grand life of Topeka. The serfs were called Cornmen, after a harsh cereal which they had devised, and which they all raised in clearings among the whisky tree forests. Duke Dryface planned to drive the king and his nobility and gentry from the country and clear off the forests, level the hills and make the whole state into a flat corn country. The king thought him simply a harmless old crank, and would listen to no warnings against him. But, nevertheless, the duke had a revolt well planned for the coming Fourth of July celebration. After bribing the bartenders, he had substituted raw sap for the mild and gentle aged liquors to be served on that day; he had the Cornmen all grandly inspired, and perfectly drilled, instructed and armed; though he had not converted the loggers, he had directed the bartenders to fill their glasses with triple-distilled, high-powered redeye sap on the night of the Fourth, and he was sure that he could capture them and keep them in bondage until the last whisky tree was felled. The duke did not fear Paul Bunyan, for he thought the loggers’ stories about him to be drunken exaggerations; he thought of him as some plain leader whom they had basely deserted, and who would no doubt be happy to see them punished by slavery. He kept the strength and extensiveness of his power well hidden, and the loggers lived on blissfully in ignorance of their real danger.

For many days and nights after the stampede of his loggers Paul Bunyan had toiled on, swinging his timber scythe with undiminished rapidity. He had not observed the desertion of his men, or the flooding of his camp, or the fate of the stonewood trees. But at last his energy and strength began to fail, his pace slackened, he swung the scythe with slower strokes, and the intervals between the rolling thunders of falling trees became longer and longer. Then the timber scythe dropped from his hands, and he sank to the ground. Now he saw for the first time the shimmering distances of salt water which covered the stonewood trees and all but the tallest buildings of his camp. For seven hours he gazed on the lamentable scene, then his head dropped to the ground. He was not disheartened; he was only tired. He slept.