EVIL INVENTIONS
Paul Bunyanknew nothing about women, but he had heard of them with little liking for the stories he heard. History, industry, invention and oratory were, to his mind, the four grand elements of human life. And women, as they were revealed in the loggers’ stories, cared little about these elements. Women seemed to lack inventiveness especially, and this was man’s greatest quality. Women, the great logger had heard, were often marvelous cooks; but men had invented both can-openers and doughnuts. Women were excellent makers of garments; but men had invented calked boots, mackinaws and stagged pants. Women were assiduous readers of poetry; but men had invented most of the poetry that these creatures cared about. Even in the writing of history, where inventiveness is not allowed (orwasnot, rather; for nowadays, such is progress, many historians are good inventors also), women had apparently done nothing. Paul Bunyan, in the early days of his camp, often marveled when he heard his loggers hurrahing and stamping as they talked about the people called pretty women. He himself could not see their use in the grand parts of life. But when he knew his men better he decided that women were creations of the loggers’ fancies, that they were incredible and fabulous.
For Paul Bunyan’s loggers only cared to feel effects; they had no wish to think about causes. They would make a reality out of any fancy that delighted them; they never inquired beyond their pleasures. When they were told that they were making history they heard the statement with a thrill, but they did not pretend to know what it was all about. As for inventions, they used them joyfully, but they thought that Paul Bunyan’s new devices just happened. “We always sharpened our axes by rollin’ rocks down-hill,” the loggers would say. “We’d run alongside, holdin’ the ax blades on the stones as they rolled. But in the Big Dust country they was no rocks an’ no hills, so ol’ Paul made grindstones.” That was their story of the invention of the grindstone, an invention to which Paul Bunyan had given weeks of intense thought. And as for industry, why, a man just went out and did what old Paul told him to do. Oratory was great stuff; it made a man feel powerful good to listen to it; but, holy mackinaw! how was a man to remember all the things that old Paul said? But they did like oratory; yes, they liked it right well.
Now Paul Bunyan came to know that his men were great only in the performance of their work. They were not comprehenders and creators. They could hardly distinguish between knowledge and fancy. Thus the great logger came to doubt the existence of women. He came to consider all the loggers’ ideas as fancies and drolleries, little men’s nonsense. He seldom listened to them; and as time went on he forgot women along with the other notions with which theloggers amused themselves. In oration after oration Paul Bunyan emphasized the fact that logging was the greatest industry, and that loggers, therefore, were the greatest laborers; they should have no pride or thought outside the operations of Paul Bunyan. They believed this finally; and then their bunkhouse songs and stories were all about work in the woods and the river drives, and women were very seldom thought about. Johnny Inkslinger’s oratorical medicine swamped them with ideas one time; and later they were seduced into poetry; but they had become bully loggers again in the He Man country.
They would have kept the new innocency of their souls, no doubt, had the forty-day flood been a week shorter. During the first week of the flood the loggers were excited about the strange rain which was streaming up from China, then the muddy foaming waters which filled the valley below their place of refuge became a monotonous sight. Some of them began to tease the buffalo boys, and others played with the blond wolves, the high-behinds, the tigermunks and the other animals which Paul Bunyan had brought into the cookhouse. But these wild creatures had been so frightened by the flood that they would not learn tricks. Paul Bunyan invented picture cards for his men and the games of poker, rummy and cribbage; but the bunkhouse cranks were so violent at play that it had to be given up. Then the loggers could only tell stories, and sing and jig for amusement. During the last week of the flood, camp stories being told out, the loggers remembered women; and they became so interestedin songs and stories about them that they were sorry when the flood was over and a spring day dawned on a new green land. This morning Paul Bunyan called, “Roll out or roll up!” but he got no answer. The surprised leader stopped and looked into the cookhouse. He saw Shanty Boy and three other bards standing with their arms over each other’s shoulders. The quartet was singing:
“Here I sit in jail, with my back to the wall;And a red-headed woman was the cause of it all!”
“Here I sit in jail, with my back to the wall;And a red-headed woman was the cause of it all!”
“Here I sit in jail, with my back to the wall;And a red-headed woman was the cause of it all!”
“Here I sit in jail, with my back to the wall;
And a red-headed woman was the cause of it all!”
“Red-headed woman?” Paul Bunyan stroked his beard in perplexity. “Woman? I think I have heard that word before. Woman ... m-m-m-hmm ... now I remember. Those creatures so strangely fascinating to plain men. I doubted their existence. At any rate, I hope we never meet with any. I have had difficulties enough from ideas, poetry and floods. My loggers shall now have hard work again and forget these tempting memories.”
Once more he roared the noble call to labor. The loggers heeded it this time, and they came out smiling blushingly. Thereupon Paul Bunyan made them a straightforward speech, beguiling phrased, however; and when it was done the loggers thought only of their work tools and of the handsome, odorous timber which covered the new slopes below them.
They got new tools from the camp office; and when the sunlight made golden trails among the pine trees the loggers were already wet with honest sweat, andmany trees had dropped from their cutting. They worked without great exertion, for they were soft from their long rest, and Paul Bunyan had warned them against sore muscles and exhaustion. As the sun rose higher the spring air got warm and drowsy, and it breathed a troublous languor into their beings. The loggers went to extremes in heeding Paul Bunyan’s cautionary advice; and in the afternoon they toiled listlessly whenever they worked at all; but most of the time they leaned on their axes, or against trees, and expressed unusual wonderings. When the Big Swede remonstrated with them they replied that they felt weary and sore from their labor even now; old Paul would roar, they said, if they did not take care of their selves. They went on arguing loudly, neglecting their work, but the Big Swede had little time for argument. Babe, the blue ox, was now so exuberantly frisky in all his motions that the foreman had to watch him constantly. During this one short argument Babe had knocked down ten acres of trees with gay swings of his horns and had trampled them into splinters.
“Har noo!” yelled the Big Swede, hastily leaving the lazy loggers. And as Babe jerked him this way and that way, lashing the foreman with his lively tail and making playful pokes at him with his horns, the Big Swede grumbled, “By yeeminy! Aye tank dese crazy t’ings lak rain fall oop play hal with may yob!”
The Big Swede was easily discouraged, but Paul Bunyan had his usual hopefulness as he planned the reorganization of his camp. Johnny Inkslinger had left for the old home camp to discover how JohnShears and the great farm had fared in the flood and to get Shagline Bill’s endless freight team started with loads of new supplies. The great logger himself had brought his workbench out of the camp office and set it up at the edge of the new pine forest. Then he planned a sawmill. It was not to be such a grand mill as he had erected on Round River in the Leaning Pine country; but he wanted a good one that would cut at least 10,000,000 feet of lumber in twelve hours. In six months he should have enough lumber to make a fair set of temporary bunkhouses for his men. In the meantime, it was good that the spring nights were so cheerful and warm, as the loggers could sleep in the open air without injury or even discomfort.
In a week the plans were finished, and, for a millhouse Paul Bunyan moved the back room of his camp office over to the banks of the Moron River, which had become a mature, decent, dependable stream since the flood; and he put a big crew of his loggers to work, making concrete beds for the saws and edgers and installing the mill machinery. Work dropped to nearly nothing in the woods. Paul Bunyan left the mill construction under the supervision of Ford Fordsen, camp tinker and the only bunkhouse inventor, and he went into the woods to make his men get out logs for the new mill.
Now Paul Bunyan was astonished and puzzled when he heard his loggers re-telling the stories with which they had amused themselves during the last week of the flood. Instead of working, one logger would leanagainst a tree and remark that he had always liked a little flesh on them himself; and his partner would reply that every man had his own taste, but as for him, give him the cute little kind that a burly could tuck under one arm. Then a swamper would come up and say that he didn’t care much about shape, but he did like red hair and a wide mouth. And a limber would join the group and say that he guessed he was peculiar, but he didn’t have much use for the frolicksome ones, but he liked them quiet and sort of dreamy-eyed. Each man would argue at length for his own inclinations, carefully respecting, however, the preferences of the others.
Paul Bunyan lost patience upon hearing such nonsense; and he gave sharp orders that there was to be no more talking in the woods. Logs were needed for the new mill; his men were to get down to business and forget their vain imaginings; for it was doubtful if such fantastic creatures as they talked about really existed.
For the first time in camp history Paul Bunyan’s loggers felt that their leader was driving them, and they worked sullenly. Their aroused memories troubled them greatly as the spring got more of languorous warmth, and it was torment for them to keep their thoughts to themselves as they worked. But at night they were free to speak; and as they lay in their blankets among the trees they talked for hours in soft voices, gazing dreamily at the moon and stars, and sighingly breathing the warm, odorous air of thespring night. And in their sleep, memories gave them perilous dreams; and they rolled and tossed and pulled covers and talked tenderly between snores.
But these memories—if they werenotfancies—were not so hurtful as poetry and ideas, for they allowed the loggers to work, once Paul Bunyan had stopped conversation about them. When the new mill was completed, the mill pond was black with logs. Paul Bunyan came in from the woods, and Ford Fordsen showed him his finished work with pride. The boilers were loaded with steam, said the bunkhouse genius; the rollers were in their oiled boxes, the chains were over the sprockets, and the belts were tight around the pulleys; and the great shining bandsaw was waiting with sharp teeth for its first bite from a pine log.
Paul Bunyan heard his fellow inventor with admiration, for there was no room for envy in the great logger’s soul. He had an honest comradely smile for Ford Fordsen as he lifted his hand and gave the signal for the sawing to begin. Now the exhausts roared, the main shaft began to revolve, the chains rattled and squeaked, and the rolls and pulleys whirled. But the great bandsaw did not move. Ford Fordsen ran into the mill to discover the trouble; he returned at once, frowning a little, but not disconcerted.
“A slight mistake, Mr. Bunyan,” he said crisply.
“Yes? Explain this slight mistake, Ford Fordsen.”
“It is only aslightmistake. But we will have to rebuild the mill.”
“Well; I am happy to hear that it is only aslightmistake,” said Paul Bunyan. “You can rebuild the mill at once, I suppose.”
“In six months perhaps. I prefer to make my own plans and invent some new machines that match my own ideas. I am rather glad of thisslightmistake.”
“Impudence!” roared Paul Bunyan. “Tell me at once what is wrong.”
Ford Fordsen was thrown from his feet, but he got up with dignity.
“You have the advantage of me in size,” he said pounding wrathfully with his fist on the great logger’s toe. “But I, too, am an inventor now, and I claim equal rights with you in invention. You may have history, for history is bunk; you may have oratory, for your voice is larger than mine; and you may have industry, for you possess the blue ox. But as forinvention——”
“Before you become an orator in spite of yourself tell me, as inventor to inventor, if you like, about this slight mistake,” said Paul Bunyan calmly.
“But I have told you that the mill must be rebuilt!” said Ford Fordsen impatiently. “However, if you must know, the slight mistake is this: The men who put in the concrete base for the headrig got to talking about women, and their minds left their job. They ran concrete around the saw, and now the lower part of this hundred foot band is frozen as in solid rock. The mill, you see, must be rebuilt; and I must be about it.”
“Women again!” grumbled Paul Bunyan. “Ifthey do not exist my men soon will have invented them. If they do exist in other lands it is easy to see why there is no great industry, no marvelous inventions and no making of history in any place but my camp. Even as memories or fancies they are nuisances. But here: I must attend to this cocky little fellow.”
He reached down and seized Ford Fordsen between his thumb and forefinger and then raised him to a level with his eyes.
“Your grand and exceptional notions trouble my poor head,” said Paul Bunyan, “so I must work with my own simple ideas. You shall be at work with your felling ax once more this afternoon.”
“I warn you that I’ll not do foul, sweaty labor again, Mr. Bunyan,” said Ford Fordsen composedly. “If you put me back in the woods I’ll preach the ten-hour day to the loggers. And I ask you to return me to the ground. I find this high altitude uncomfortable.”
“Audacity!” exclaimed Paul Bunyan, so astonished that he nearly dropped this astonishing bunkhouse genius. “The ten-hour day! Thunderation! What an unheard of thing! Is the sun shining? Do I wear whiskers? Do men chew with their teeth? Is Babe a blue ox? And—do loggers work twelve hours a day? What devils do trail me! Ideas; poetry; floods; women; the ten-hour day—what next? By the holy old, roaring old, oilyold——”
What would certainly have been the grandest curse of history was interrupted by the appearance of Johnny Inkslinger on the summits of the Cascades.Paul Bunyan’s wrath and chagrin vanished and the light shone once more into his eyes as his interested gaze followed the timekeeper’s progress. Shagline Bill’s endless freight team circled down the mountains behind Johnny Inkslinger. Paul Bunyan dropped Ford Fordsen carelessly into his pocket and stepped up the slopes to hear the news.
Johnny Inkslinger had a condensed report of fifteen thousand, seven hundred and twenty-one pages which dealt with the destruction of the great farm and the transformation of the Smiling River country in the unnatural rain. But he gave a more cheerful account of a new country which he had discovered. It was just over the mountains, he said, in the region called Nowaday Valley. There he had procured a good load of camp supplies. There were people in that country, the timekeeper went on to say, people of a very strange sort. He described them, and he ended his description by doubting if even one out of a hundred of these people could become a logger. Some were too ponderous, others were marvelously fragile, and everyone held an ax awkwardly.
“I have heard of such creatures,” said Paul Bunyan. “They are real, then. But not another word must be spoken about them. If my loggers were to hear that some of this species which they remember so ardently were at hand, I’d have more trouble than poetry gave me. We must keep this a secret, Johnny Inkslinger.”
Then they rose and walked over to the cookhouse, where the kitchen crew was unloading the freightwagons. Paul Bunyan had forgotten Ford Fordsen. But the impertinent bunkhouse genius had escaped from the pocket during the conversation. He now journeyed towards the woods, where the loggers were doing little but talk over their memories. And it is not difficult to imagine how much work was done after the enraged inventor arrived with his news of Johnny Inkslinger’s discovery.
Paul Bunyan, with energy that was unusual even for him, at once began 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 ashis 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 inoratory——”
“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 escapedfrom 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 troublehim. 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,” whisperedPaul 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 tohim! 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 acamp 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.
Bearded old man lying on ground