A MATTER OF HISTORY
Threeweeks after his cataclysmic fist fight with his foreman, Hels Helsen, Paul Bunyan was up and around, thinking of his next move. Dakota, once a great timberland, was now a brown, barren country; its logs and stumps had been covered with blankets of dust when the Mountain That Stood On Its Head was destroyed, and the mountain itself was now only clusters of black hills. The greatest logging camp of all history was situated in a vacant prairie. It was preposterous.
But the mighty logger did not revile fate, nor did he lift his voice in lamentations. Neither did he have words of condemnation for the belligerent audacity of the Big Swede, who, chastened and meek in defeat, now gazed worshipfully on his conqueror. Still wearing the bruises and scars of battle, he limped around his bunk a few times and then said mildly:
“Aye tank aye soon be back on yob noo, Mr. Bunyan.”
“We have no job now. There is no timber within hundreds of miles of us.”
Paul Bunyan shook his head sadly; but presently consoling thoughts came to him, and then proud joy flashed in his eyes.
“But what does the ruin of a season’s loggingmatter?” he said cheerily. “We have made history; and that is what matters. After all, industry is bunk; making history is the true work of the leader-hero. And this fight of ours was the first dramatic historical event since the Winter of the Blue Snow. This idea would be a great consolation to you also, but you lack imagination.”
“Yah,” said the Big Swede humbly. “Aye yust wan’ yob, Mr. Bunyan.”
“And a job you shall have,” said Paul Bunyan with great heartiness. “We will move at once to—but that is something to be thought about. Wherever we go you shall have full command over the blue ox. And, next to myself, you shall be in command over the loggers. Now that there is peace and understanding between us we can perform impossible labors.”
For several hours the great logger talked on, and there was more of enthusiasm than of purpose in his speech, for he was still shaken from the knocks and strokes the Big Swede had given him three weeks before. The foreman went to sleep at length, but all night Paul Bunyan was wakeful with troublous fancies and bright but insubstantial ideas. In the morning, when his mind was calmer and his thoughts more orderly, only one of the notions that had come to him seemed worth while. This was the idea of a double drive, one under his direction, and one in the charge of the Big Swede, but both of them side by side. It should make a unique race. There was some stuff of history in the idea.
So Paul Bunyan determined to forget the DakotaDisaster and make practical preparations for the new achievement at once. First, he inspected the bunkhouses and found that the loggers had set them up and repaired the bunks. Next, he examined the cookhouse, and he saw to his pleasure, that the cooks had it clean of dust and that pea soup was once more bubbling on the stoves. Babe, the big blue ox, was suffering from hayfever, and he sneezed dolefully at long intervals, but the old eager, jovial look was in his eyes; they shone like blue moons when Paul Bunyan looked him over.
Satisfied, the master logger returned to his office. He found the Big Swede on his feet, and there was only a slight limp in his walk this morning. It looked indeed like good luck was returning, and Paul Bunyan thought of the double drive with great hope. In a splendid good humor he jested with his foreman as he opened his roll-top desk to examine his papers. But the great logger’s merriment was quickly hushed as the desk top rolled up and a frightful sight was revealed. The shock of battle had shaken the ink barrels into pieces, and the shelf on which they stood was now covered with a black mass of broken staves. Below were his ledgers. In dismay Paul Bunyan pulled them out and opened them. Nearly every page was wet and black, and the old figures were almost illegible. The Ledgers from 1 to 7, for example, seemed to be entirely ruined. Ledger No. 1111 had black pages up to page 27,000, and its other sheets were badly smeared. Even Ledger 10,000, the last one in the row, had streaks and daubs on most of itssheets, and only the last 3,723 pages remained unstained. Paul Bunyan was appalled, and only his brave heart could have kept courage in such discouraging circumstances.
He wished to be alone, so he gave the Big Swede instructions to groom the blue ox and trim his hooves. When the foreman was gone, Paul Bunyan sat down, and, having dug a young pine tree out of the earth, he began to brush his beard and ponder.
The damage done to his precious records was a terrible blow, and he thought first of how he might repair it. As he had said, his main desire was to make history; his imagination rose above mere industry. His records contained the history of all his operations, even to their most minute details, and if no one could read them his work up to the present time was all wasted. The loss of his grand history was, to Paul Bunyan’s mind, the most terrible part of the Dakota Disaster. But his loggers, of course, were only interested in their work; and the Big Swede, too, was now anxious to show his conqueror that he would be an obedient, efficient foreman on the next job. It was Paul Bunyan’s duty to find a good one for them, and one that would make a fitting beginning for a new history also. Resolving to devote his energies solely to realizing this hope, he shook off regret and forced a smile and a jest.
“It is no use crying over spilled ink,” he said.
So he put the old ledgers away in the chest which held his souvenirs, and he brought out a set of new ones. In them his new records should be made, hisfuture history written. It should be an account of splendid deeds and give him enough glory. He found many gladdening thoughts, and when he gave orders for a move he showed his men the same cheerful face that they had always known.
The loggers hustled and bustled, and in a short time the camp buildings were lined up and fastened together. The grand cookhouse was put in the lead, Babe was hitched to its skids, and Paul Bunyan and the Big Swede took stations in front of him. “Yay, Babe!” the leader said, and the move began.
Happy were the loggers as the camp flew over the prairie, though not one of them knew where it was going. All were certain, of course, that they were headed for some vast timberland where great logging could be enjoyed. They supposed that Paul Bunyan planned a surprise for them, as he had not given his usual graphic and prophetic speech before the start was made. The word was passed along that the new job was too wonderful to tell about. But this was only part of the truth. Paul Bunyan’s mind was indeed filled with the idea of a unique double drive, but he did not yet know where the project could be carried out. A wide, gentle river with timber on both sides of it was needed; and once found, he would have to use his inventiveness to the utmost in order to divide the stream so that two drives could be made side by side on it.
Paul Bunyan traveled far with his camp in search of the ideal river. Powder River looked promising at first; it was a mile wide, but then it was only a footdeep. It deepened and got narrow in one place, but this was only a deceitful twist of the stream, for it presently turned and ran on its edge for the rest of its course, its waters a mile deep and a foot wide. Hot River, in the Boiling Springs country, flowed placidly and honestly enough all its way, but it was of a temperature to scald the calks off the loggers’ boots. And Wild River, though it was a white water stream, would have served for a double drive; but it was alive with cougarfish, a species resembling the catfish of the Mississippi; but the cougarfish were larger and incomparably more savage and had claws on their tails. Careful Paul Bunyan would not risk his loggers among them.
At last the master logger had only one hope left. It lay in the Twin Rivers country. Twin Rivers were ideal for a double drive, as they were two fat streams which flowed lazily, smoothly, and side by side through a wide valley. But that country was the scene of Paul Bunyan’s first logging; it was there that he had invented the industry; and, having no loggers then, he had uprooted trees by handfuls to get his logs. Consequently, second growth timber was not to be hoped for in the greater part of that region. In the lower part of the Twin Rivers valley there might be some new timber, for there Paul Bunyan had taught the blue ox the art of skidding; and he had sheared off most of the trees instead of uprooting them. No doubt there were some new trees on this land, but most of the logs for a double drive on Twin Rivers would have to be procured elsewhere. Howhe was to get them he did not know. But he was staunch and inflexible in his determination to make the second event of his new history a tremendously successful one.
cougarfish
So Babe was turned toward the Twin Rivers country, and in a few hours the loggers were getting glimpses of familiar scenes as the bunkhouses sailed over stump-covered valleys and hills. They still had no word of Paul Bunyan’s intentions, and they were astonished when, at nightfall, the camp was halted at the upper end of Twin Rivers valley and they were told that here was to be their camping place for the season.
There was no moon this night, and from the bunkhouses nothing of the country could be seen except Twin Rivers, which showed surfaces of blurred, tarnished gray in the darkness; they looked like two wide, lonely roads with a tall black hedge between them. Heavy grass was discovered around the camp buildings, but there was no indication anywhere of timber, or even of brush. But the loggers were too tired to wonder; they had been riding for two days behind the blue ox, who could outrun a cyclone, and they were thankful for the chance to rest and sleep.
Paul Bunyan lay in his camp office and listened to the peaceful snores of the Big Swede, who could sleep so well because he lacked imagination. But the great logger’s thoughts and visions banished any hope of rest for him. Work should begin at once, and a great idea must precede it. His determination for the double drive was solidly fixed; hewouldget agood plan for it. Now then: first, for a drive there must be logs; next, for logs there must be trees; then, for trees there must be timberland, as trees cannot be conjured from nothingness. Now, all around him was nothing but logged-off land; perhaps it would be possible to invent a way to log off logged-off land.... Thunderation! what preposterous notions he was getting! But all his ideas seemed to be as absurd. As the night hours crawled slowly on Paul Bunyan began to doubt his powers. Had the fight with the Big Swede left him a little crazy? Perhaps. At dawn his mind was in a turmoil; he felt that he had brought himself face to face with the supreme crisis of his career, and it looked like he was not to meet it successfully. If so, the meanest swamper in camp would despise him. And the Big Swede—how soon he would lose the humble worship that Paul Bunyan had pounded into him and be filled with a cold Nordic scorn for this Latin victim of imagination!... What was wrong with his ideas? Why didn’t they swell with their usual superb force and burst into a splendor of magnificent plans? Was this new history of logging, then, to be a history of failure?...
In a torment of thought, Paul Bunyan could lie still no longer. Darkness was passing fast now; he threw off his blankets and tramped to the office door. He drew it open, then—motionless, unblinking, breathless—he stared for sixty-six minutes. At last he rubbed his eyes; but then he again stared as woodenly as a heathen idol. He could only believe that his rebellious imagination was deceiving him, that the incrediblesight before him was certainly unreal. For he saw trees everywhere; on both sides of the river they reached to the horizon.
They were in exact rows, like trees in an orchard, and each one was a large, smooth, untapering column, flat-topped and without a trace of bark or boughs. Again and again Paul Bunyan rubbed his eyes, thinking to see the strange forest vanish. But it remained, and he rushed out at last and seized one of the trees. He pulled it up easily, and he was more amazed than ever, for it had a sharp point instead of roots. He walked on out into the forest and pulled up others here and there, and they were all exactly alike in shape and size.
So delighted was Paul Bunyan with his miraculous good fortune that for a long time he only walked back and forth among the rows of Pine Orchard—for so he named the forest,—and every moment he found some new feature of it that was wonderful and enchanting. For one thing, he could walk through it without difficulty, as there was room between the rows for one of his feet. He saw that no tedious swamping would be required for the logging-off of this forest—no cutting of brush and trimming of limbs. It would be unnecessary to build the usual trails for the blue ox. As the logs would all be of like size, driving them down the rivers would be play for his men.
At last he tramped back to camp and called the loggers out of the bunkhouses. They came forth groaning and yawning, but when they saw Pine Orchard they too were tremendously enthusiastic about thebeautiful logging it offered, and some of them got their axes and saws and began felling at once. The trees were as tall and as large as the medium trees in an ordinary pine forest, but acres of them had been notched and sawn off when the breakfast gong rang. Paul Bunyan, with a cyclonic sigh of relief and content retired to the office to do the first figuring for the new history.
Logging went on at a record-breaking rate during the late summer; early autumn passed, and the loggers still felt that they were enjoying the happiest work of their careers. The Big Swede seemed perfectly contented with his position now; his gentleness and patience with the blue ox could not be surpassed, and he bossed the felling crews efficiently when Paul Bunyan had to leave them to toil over the new ledgers. The great logger himself had not been happier in years, for the logs being all of a size made the figuring simple now, and he spent all but three hours a day in the woods.
With the coming of the snapping frosts of late autumn the operations had reached the lower part of the Twin Rivers valley, and the smooth, bare trees of Pine Orchard were all piled neatly along the banks of the stream. Now the second growth of regular pine trees was reached, and the work of limbing, bucking and swamping again became part of the loggers’ duties. But they were fat and saucy from their easy months in Pine Orchard, and the first day’s felling in the old-fashioned forest brought down a record number of trees. However, it also brought more figuringfor Paul Bunyan, for he now had to keep accounts of a thousand sizes and lengths of logs. This kept him from the woods, though the Big Swede really needed him now because of the problems which develop incessantly in regular logging. Again Paul Bunyan came to feel the need of a great figurer, recorder and secretary; but where was one to be found who had both the size and knowledge to care for his vast bookkeeping system and enormous history books? It was folly to hope for such a man, so Paul Bunyan stuck bravely to his desk and made the best of his situation.
And the logging went on without many discouraging incidents until one morning in November. Then Paul Bunyan looked out and saw that the Twin River next to the camp had risen six feet, though the other Twin was at its normal level. Wondering at the unnatural flood and fearing for the logs piled on the landings, the leader-hero set out at a great pace to discover what was obstructing the flow of the Left Twin. Where the river curved around a cliff he saw what appeared to be a boot as large as his own; it was resting in the stream, and, as it reached from the cliff to the bank between the Twin Rivers it made a perfect dam, and the river had not yet risen to the top of it. Paul Bunyan’s gaze traveled up the bootleg and reached a corduroyed knee; then he saw that a remarkable figure was seated on the cliff, the figure of a man who was nearly as large as the master logger.
Remembering the danger to his logs, Paul Bunyan seized the foot that was damning the river and liftedit without ceremony. The released waters boiled and thundered as they rolled on, but above the roar Paul Bunyan heard a voice, soft and mild for all its power, saying, “I beg your pardon.”
The master logger could not restrain an exclamation of delight.
“Educated! By the holy old mackinaw!”
He pulled aside the trees from which the grand gentlemanly voice had issued. There sat a man. And such a man!
His long but well-combed hair was level with the tree tops, though he was seated among them. Some black, straight strands of hair fell over a forehead of extraordinary height, a forehead which was marked with deep, grave wrinkles. His black eyebrows resembled nothing so much as fishhooks, breaking down sharply at his nose. His large, pale eyes looked through old-fashioned spectacles. His nose was original; it sloped out to an astonishing length, and a piece of rubber the size of a barrel was pinched over the end of it. He was certainly an educated man. He wore a necktie, for one thing; yes, and there were papers resting on one raised knee; in his right hand was a pencil, and many others were behind his ears. Now he was figuring with incredible speed; then he thrust the rubber in his nose against the paper, shook his head three times and the sheet was clean.
Paul Bunyan wanted to shout and jig like a school-boy, so jubilant was his logger’s soul made by the sight of this marvelous man. Here was the one person who was needed to make his camp a perfectlyorganized industry, to guarantee the success of his plans to become a maker of history. By hook or crook he must have him.
He tapped the engrossed figurer on the shoulder.
“Paul Bunyan, the master logger, the maker of history and inventor of note, the only living Real American leader-hero of industry, addresses you,” he said impressively.
“I have heard of you,” said the other, extending his hand but not rising. “I am John Rogers Inkslinger, the master figurer, the one and only Real American surveyor. But you must excuse me now, for I am endeavoring to solve the one problem that has ever baffled me. I have been working on it steadily for two months, and still the answer evades me.”
He at once began figuring again, and Paul Bunyan, a little awed, had no words to say at that moment. He had no idea of what a surveyor might be, and he feared that John Rogers Inkslinger was something greater than himself. He would find out. So he said:
“I am a figurer also, though not a great one. Yet I might help you. What is your problem?”
“I am looking for Section 37,” said John Rogers Inkslinger.
“Section 37?”
“Yes. I have only found thirty-six sections in each of the townships which I have surveyed here. There should be thirty-seven.”
Paul Bunyan was delighted that he could solve the problem so easily. “When I first logged off lowerTwin Rivers valley,” he said, “I had no logging crews, but only Babe, my big blue ox. The method I used was to hitch Babe to a section of timber—this ox of mine, Mr. Inkslinger, can pull anything that man can walk on—, snake it to the river, shear off the trees, and then haul the logged off land back to its place. I handled a township a week in this fashion; but I always left Section 37 in the river on Saturday night, and the stream would wash it away. Now I judge that you survey the land as I measured it; consequently, you have only found thirty-six sections in each township.”
“Bless my soul!” cried John Rogers Inkslinger admiringly. “I should have looked you up before. But I supposed you were an ordinary man of the forests. You would certainly make a great surveyor. You must leave this common life you are leading and come with me. Together we will soon have every section of land in the country staked out perfectly.”
“I have a different idea,” said Paul Bunyan.
Whereupon he unloosed his eloquence, and for the rest of the day his richest phrases were lavished on the surveyor. And this man, sure of the greatness of his own accomplishments, listened with strong doubts for a long time. But at last he was convinced that logging was the greatest of all occupations and that Paul Bunyan towered far above him as a hero.
“I can only think of you with awe and admiration,” he said at last. “But I have my own work, inconsequential as it now seems. So I cannot become your figurer at present. Think, Mr. Bunyan, of RealAmerica’s uncharted rivers, her unstaked plains, her unplumbed lakes! It is my missionto—to——”
His speech ended in a yell of fright as a monstrous red tongue was thrust before his eyes; it passed moistly over his face, it rolled oozily behind his ear; then he heard a “moo” that was as loud as muffled thunder, but affectionate and kind. The surveyor wiped his face and his spectacles and turned fearfully to see Babe, the ox whose hair was blue as the sky, gazing at him, with a pleading tenderness in his bulging eyes.
“Even Babe wants you to come with us,” said Paul Bunyan, his beard shaking in a chuckle. “Such a powerful argument. Now what inthunderation——”
John Rogers Inkslinger had let out a scream of horror that sent Babe galloping back through the timber.
“My instruments!” cried he. “Your infernal clumsy ox has trampled them and demolished every one. What misfortune!” He jumped to his feet and began looking for his books and papers.
“Gone!” raged the surveyor. “That blue devil has eaten them! All of my records, the history of my works—gone! gone! gone! Eaten by an ox! His four stomachs are crammed with them! Gone! gone! gone!”
“Stop that caterwauling,” said Paul Bunyan impatiently. “When my ledgers were ruined, I simply observed, ‘There is no use crying over spilled ink.’ The hero is even more heroic in disaster than in triumph. Be true to your pretensions.”
“Pretensions, the devil!” said John Rogers Inkslinger peevishly. “If you had the true figurer’s soul you would give me your sympathy instead of unconsoling platitudes.”
Then the tears began to fall from his eyes and made great splashes in the river. Paul Bunyan, saying no more, grasped his arm and marched him toward the camp. The two heroes walked silently until they were out of the timber and had started over the country where Pine Orchard had stood.
Then Paul Bunyan said conversationally, “I found a very original forest here. But it offered splendid logging.... Thunderation again! What ails you anyway?”
For John Rogers Inkslinger had once more burst into yells of agony.
“My stakes!” he cried. “My surveyor’s stakes! Two years’ work ruined, utterly ruined! The stakes that marked my section lines—you have felled them all and dragged them all to the rivers for logs! My stakes that were to have stood forever—gone! gone! gone!”
He choked and gasped, he clutched wildly at nothingness, and then he fainted into the appalled logger’s arms....
That winter was the only period of his career in which Paul Bunyan knew the affliction of a guilty conscience. It was true that he had not injured the great surveyor willfully, but the fact that he had destroyed another man’s work could not be ignored. He had done irreparable damage and for the peace of hissoul he must somehow make amends, devise consolations and give heart balm and recompense. He only asked that the surveyor make any demand of him, that he give him any opportunity to do a service that would make up for the loss.
But the winter long John Rogers Inkslinger brooded in the back room of the office and would speak to no one. Each day regret bore heavier on Paul Bunyan’s generous heart; Christmas was a time of deep gloom for him; and when the first sunshine of spring brightened the valley, even the approach of the great double drive did not cheer him. He had abandoned his ledgers, and he spent all of his time in the woods; he had no wish to record the destruction of the surveyor’s work.
The double drive was a huge success, and the rivermen returned from it singing the praises of Paul Bunyan, who had bested his foreman in the grand race. But the great logger himself had only cheerless thoughts as he came to the camp office. Another move must now be made, and the sad business of repaying John Rogers Inkslinger must be attended to at last. He would place his camp and crew, his foreman and the great blue ox, himself and all his august talents unreservedly at the surveyor’s disposal. Better long years of surveying than to leave this blot on his history. It would be wretched work for him and his men, he mused unhappily, as he opened the office door, but he could not oppose conscience. His mind formed the words of a contrite, submissive speech, he tramped on into the office and prepared toutter them; then out of the back room rushed John Rogers Inkslinger; his eyes were shining, his face was flushed with happiness, his hands were raised as though in appeal.
“Paul Bunyan, greatest of Real Americans!” he cried. “I have read your histories, and in the pages of them I have learned the grandeur and glory of your deeds, the extent and influence of your power, the might of your mind! I now know your inventiveness, your heroism, your majestic thoughts, your generous heart! To think that I roared about Paul Bunyan using my miserable stakes! And still you smile upon me! Oh, Glory! I beg pardon humbly and ask only to serve you henceforth in yourenterprises——”
“Here now,” said Paul Bunyan, dumfounded, incredulous of his hearing, greatly embarrassed. “How could you have read my ink-soaked ledgers?”
John Rogers Inkslinger answered him by bringing out one of the volumes and opening it. On the black pages were figures and letters of white; with white ink the great figurer had painstakingly traced out the old dimmed entries, and now every volume was as readable as it had ever been.
“There!” he declaimed. “There, Mr. Bunyan, is the proof of my worth and zeal. I found the ledgers, and when you were on the drive I traced out their messages. From them I learned to worship you. Give me a desk and let me serve you as well hereafter.”
Overcome by emotion, Paul Bunyan turned and stared unseeingly at the lands which had once been Pine Orchard. Visions of tremendous accomplishmentsswept before him; he now had the perfect organization he had always dreamed about, and there could be no good reason for another failure. But he had a new responsibility also; he was now more deeply in debt to this man than ever. For, even as his fists and feet had won him the faith and loyalty of the Big Swede, so had his mind and heart, as revealed in his history, won the extravagant devotion of the greatest figurer. Only mighty works would keep it. Well, he should not fail. Resolutely he faced the unfortunate surveyor, the restorer of ruined accounts, the man who should win fame with him as the greatest figurer of all time.
“Timekeeper Johnny Inkslinger,” he said, “shake hands.”