THE OLD HOME CAMP
Theold home camp of Paul Bunyan, was in the Smiling River country; it lay in a great plain, between this sunny stream and the flowered banks of Honey Creek, which lazed on past the camp ere it joined the river. When the sun got low in the West, the shadow of old Rock Candy Mountain crept over the camp. On hot summer days the frost-hued mountain was a freshening sight; at night it looked like a huge dish of white ice cream. Raspberry trees covered its lower slopes, and in the Junetime they were heavy with berries as big as apples. The lemonade springs bubbled from among these trees, and their waters rippled through blossoming strawberry bushes as they coursed towards the river. In the twilights of the fruitful season the songs of the jaybirds that nested in the raspberry trees sank to a soft and sentimental chorus; and their slumbrous melodies, mingled with the cheery “jemine-e-es” of the jeminy crickets that lived among the strawberry bushes, made a beauty of sound harmonious with the spirit of eventide.
Fat man bending over
The old home camp had been built in the midst of a grove of maples. It had been deserted for seven years, and only a few moss-covered bunkhouses yet remained. Some bare sections of land, deeply corrugated, showed where the great cookhouse had stood; and trails thathad been packed by the trampling of thousands of calked boots were still marked through lush growths of grass.
Paul Bunyan’s farm was the source of his supplies; it was ruled by John Shears and worked by the scissor-bills. It covered the rich bottom lands below Honey Creek, and it extended for miles over the bordering hills. Huge red clover blooms tossed and nodded on crowns and slopes when the warm June breezes blew. When the two happy but sensitive bees, Bum and Bill, had got enough honey from them to fill the thirty-five hundred barrels which were required for the loggers’ hot cakes each winter, John Shears and the scissor-bills mowed the hay and baled it. Then the milk cows were pastured on the stubble until wintertime. They did not have such grandiose names as are given to cows nowadays—no one in Paul Bunyan’s time would have thought of naming a kind, honest heifer Wondrous Lena Victress or Dairylike Daffodil Sweetbread;—they were simply called Suke, Boss, Baldy and S’manthy, but they were queenly milkers. Boss was the great butter cow; John Shears had only to put salt in her milk, stir it a bit, let it stand for a while, and he would have tubfuls of the finest butter in the land. Suke’s milk made wonderful bubbly hot cakes. Baldy’s milk never soured, and it was especially good in cream gravy. S’manthy’s milk was pretty poor stuff, but she had a vast hankering for balsam boughs, and in the winter she would eat them until her milk became the most potent of cough medicines. It saved Paul Bunyan’s loggersfrom many an attack of pneumonia. The grand flocks of poultry, which were ruled by Pat and Mike, the powerful and bellicose webfooted turkey gobblers, performed marvels of egg-laying and hatching. The snow hens, for example, would lay only in the wintertime; they made their nests in the snow and laid none but hard-boiled eggs. There were great vegetable gardens in the bottom lands; there the parsnips and carrots grew to such a depth that the scissor-bills had to use stump-pullers to get them out of the ground. It took two men an hour and a half to sever the average cabbage from its stalk. The potatoes grew to such a size that Paul Bunyan invented the steam shovel for John Shears to use in digging them out. In the chewing tobacco patch the tobacco grew on the plants in plugs, shreds and twists, and it was highly flavored by the natural licorice in the soil.
It would take pages to describe all of the marvels and splendors of Paul Bunyan’s farm.
For five years now Paul Bunyan had not visited his farm or the old home camp. He himself knew nothing of farming; first and last he was a logger, so he had left his farm completely in the control of John Shears when the great move was made from the old home camp. He trusted without doubts his boss farmer, who was a powerfully religious man. Only his violent piety had made him a failure as a woods boss. The loggers could notbearto be preached to, and John Shears had insisted on preaching to them through every meal. But he managed the scissor-bills ably; they were men who had failed to make goodas loggers and who had the calm and meek spirit of born farm hands. John Shears had easily taught them to venerate him as a prophet, and they willingly worked sixteen hours a day for him, though the loggers had never worked more than twelve.
After Paul Bunyan’s departure, John Shears had faithfully improved the farm, and at last it became so productive that even the endless freight teams of Shagline Bill could not move all its hay and produce to the far-away logging enterprises. Then only the simple routine of farm work remained to be done, and this hardly fetched fourteen hours of labor a day from the scissor-bills, even in the harvesting season. John Shears, always a terror for work, got dissatisfied. He began to dream of strange, tempting projects of irrigation and land-clearing. He let himself imagine Paul Bunyan’s logging crews digging ditches, grubbing out stumps, and leveling hills into grand hay and grain fields. Then his dream became an active idea. If logging could somehow be prohibited, abolished, totally exterminated—what then? The loggers would all have to turn farm hands, for farming would be the only remaining industry. And then he, John Shears, the one and only master farmer, would become supreme over all of them; he would have Paul Bunyan’s place, and the great logger would have to take a lesser rôle! Soon, waking or sleeping, the idea was always in his mind. It was the root of many plans, and at last it threw out a monstrous growth. John Shears planned nothing else than to do away with Babe, the blue ox, who skidded all of Paul Bunyan’s logs tothe river landings, who was the mainspring, the central motive force, of all his logging operations. Logging without Babe could no more be imagined than rain without clouds. This plan was the source of the prodigious poison parsnip plot.
Parsnips were Babe’s favorite delicacy, and John Shears was supposed to ship the parsnip crop to the logging camp each fall. But in the year in which the monstrous plot was hatched he did not dig the parsnips at all. He allowed them to go to seed instead, and now the parsnip patch was rank with a poisonous second growth. John Shears intended to dig them in another month and ship them to the camp. The blue ox would eat them and die, and then he, the boss farmer, should attain the power and triumph of his dreams.
Little Meery, the farm slavey, alone was kept in ignorance of John Shears’ schemes, not because he was feared or distrusted, but because he seemed so lowly, abject and unimportant. He had scarcely more consequence in the farm life than one of the snow hens. He slept on a hard bunk under the kitchen sink. He was not allowed to associate with the scissor-bills. The only attention he ever received from them was when they made him the object of blows and ridicule. One time he had been Thomas O’Meery, the Irish Orphan, an aspiring young logger. The rich food served in Paul Bunyan’s cookhouse had been his undoing. He became obese, rotund, unable to swing an ax. He got such heft and circumference that he was a nuisance. Whenever he fell down he wouldhave to roll around until he could find a logger who would lift him to his feet. He was a danger also. One time he rolled down a hill and bounced head-on into a column of marching loggers. He flattened every one, and Johnny Inkslinger, the timekeeper and camp doctor, was busy all night setting their broken ribs. After this mishap, Paul Bunyan turned him over to John Shears. The boss farmer gave him the meanest job on the farm; he put him to washing the dishes and slopping the pigs. Little Meery finally became resigned to his grievous affliction and lowly lot, and a spirit of sublime meekness sustained him even when he was most cruelly treated.
This corpulent child of misfortune had a rare and charming soul. He alone, of all the toilers on the great farm, felt the pastoral loveliness of his surroundings. His day of toil done, he would part his hair, gather a bunch of clover blooms, take Porkums, his little lame pet pig under his arm, waddle over the footbridge that crossed Honey Creek, and in the grounds of the old home camp enjoy his one small pleasure in life. Sitting on an old maple log, he would pretend that he was a lean, muscular head faller in Paul Bunyan’s camp and one of the great logger’s favorites. He would see himself as a bunkhouse hero, walking in the shadows of the blue ox, living a grand, free life. What delight Little Meery had from such imaginings! What pity that they had to fade! Little Meery always tried to be bravely cheerful when the dream was done. He would force back his tears, return the comforting squeals ofPorkums with a trembling smile, then move gently among the jaybirds, which always gathered trustingly around his feet, and return to his cruel slavey’s life with only thoughts of kindness and charity for John Shears and the scissor-bills. If Paul Bunyan could only have truly known that heart of gold!
One evening in the old home camp Little Meery’s imaginings became more active than usual. He pretended that he was winning a felling championship, while Paul Bunyan applauded him.... He made great chips fly like buckshot, the loggers were a cheering host, he swung the ax violently at every stroke.... Too late he felt himself slipping from the maple log, and he rolled helplessly to the ground. As usual, he could not get back on his feet. He rolled to the footbridge, but he could not pass between the railings. He lay there until dawn, and no help came. The morning passed, and still he lay helpless. He was not found until John Shears came to the farmhouse for dinner and discovered the breakfast dishes unwashed.
“Did it on puppus, I bet!” roared the boss farmer. “I’d let ye lay there an’ rot ef ’twarn’t fer the dishes. I got a mind to whale ye anyhow, hi gravy!”
“Please, oh, please don’t beat me, Mr. Shears,” pleaded Little Meery. “I tried to roll home, honest I did.”
The boss farmer brought an ellum club into view.
“Oh,bygosh! Mr.Shears——”
“Swearin’, hey?”
“I meant to say ‘my’—honest!”
“Didn’t nuther. Ye used a ‘by’ word, an’ ye know plagued well ye meant to be profane!”
“Oh! oh! oh’” screamed poor Little Meery, as the blows poured upon him. John Shears beat him until sundown, taking five minutes out of each hour for rest.... He raised the ellum club for a last terrific blow, and Little Meery bravely tried to stifle his sobs, as he waited to receive it. The cruel blow was never delivered. Two words stopped it.
“Here ... John!”
The words seemed to be calmly spoken, yet the tones that made them filled the vast plain of the home camp and reverberated in thunderous echoes among all the hills. The trees shook, the surface of Smiling River broke into violent waves, the slopes of old Rock Candy were disturbed by the smoke and roar of an avalanche. John Shears quietly dropped his ellum club; Little Meery opened his eyes and saw near him a boot with a toe cap made of an elephant hide. Then he looked up and beheld the kindly bearded countenance of the good and mighty Paul Bunyan looming above him. Then John Shears hastily helped him to his feet and he limped between the boss farmer’s ankles and out on the footbridge. There he stopped to look worshipfully on his hero, his lord, his king, Paul Bunyan, who shook hands solemnly with John Shears.
“I didn’t expect ye to ketch me a frolickin’ with one o’ my men,” said John Shears attempting a grin. “But I do like to frolic once in a while, jest like your loggers do.”
“I’m glad that you have learned to play, John,” said Paul Bunyan gently. “The playful spirit of my loggers has helped them to bear untold perils, griefs and hardships. They are a fine bunch of savages, worthy of emulation. I intend for them to enjoy the bounties and peace of home life for a season. We return to log off the rest of the Smiling River country.”
“Well, now, I’m mighty glad you’re to be with us again, Mr. Bunyan,” said John Shears effusively.
“Thank you, John. And I wish to commend you for your faithful service. I hope to reward you fittingly. And I overlook your failure to ship Babe his parsnips last fall. Your one failure, for which I shall not reprove you. But you must prepare him acres of them at once. Understand? Very well. Yay, Babe!”
Johnny Inkslinger, the timekeeper, and the Big Swede, the foreman, were beside Paul Bunyan. The three moved towards the maple grove, and the blue ox, who had been straddling the river, stepped on across it, dragging the cookhouse, the bunkhouses, and the other camp buildings behind him. He was thin, and the shape of his great ribs showed through his shaggy blue hide. As he moved through the twilight shadows he looked like a wrinkled bluff when it is seen dimly in a fog. For half an hour the bunkhouses flashed by so swiftly that their lighted windows made an unbroken streak of light. The loggers in them were singing about the jam on Garry’s Rock and the death of young Munro. As Little Meery listened to the roaring choruses he felt that he would willingly givehis life for a single day as a real logger. If he could only be there in one of the bunkhouses, a tough and respected member of a logging crew, a lean, supple, vigorous axman, a fine and admired figure! Vain, vain desire! Poor Little Meery. He abandoned the dream with a sigh. Then he was startled by a dry, rasping chuckle from John Shears. Little Meery was astonished, for he had never heard the boss farmer laugh.
“Parsnips, hey?” he cackled. “Ol’ Paul wants his ox critter to have his parsnips right now, does he? Dad gum’, ef that ain’t funny! Ho! ho!”
The boss farmer leaped over Honey Creek and strode rapidly towards the farmhouse. Every hundred yards he would pause and chuckle convulsively. “Parsnips, hey? Ye dern’ tootin’ I’ll feet him parsnips! It’s Mr. Bunyan’s pers’nal orders, says I. Heh! heh! Dad burn’, ef that ain’t funny!”
While Paul Bunyan, Johnny Inkslinger and the Big Swede cruised the remaining timber in the Smiling River country, the loggers renewed their affections for the delights of the old home camp. In the mornings they roamed the cool slopes of old Rock Candy, they gorged themselves with ripe fruit from the raspberry trees and strawberry bushes, and, barefooted, they climbed the maple trees and gamboled over the clover fields. In the afternoons Smiling River was splashed with foam for miles as they swarmed into their old swimming holes. Swimming over, the loggers would line up on the banks and shake their right legs to get the water out of their left ears and their left legs toget the water out of their right ears. Then they would angle for the bright-hued butterfish that fluttered among the water flowers. And what exhilarating meals they enjoyed! Now they had all the fresh stuff that the farm could provide. Cream Puff Fatty, the baker, made them strawberry shortcake and raspberry pie twice a day, and he covered these juicy confections with snowy piles of vanilla-flavored whipped cream. The cobs from golden, fat-kerneled roasting ears were soon heaped mountain-high in the kitchen yard. The cream gravy for the rosy new potatoes and bouncing green peas was made from real cream, sweet and thick. The loggers became lighthearted boys again, and as they enjoyed themselves they were happily unconscious of the bitter enviousness of the scissor-bills, who were digging parsnips for twenty hours a day on the other side of Honey Creek.
Babe, the blue ox, too, was enjoying life as never before. The stream from the lemonade springs had been diverted to a trough that ran through his manger; and he was surrounded with fresh, green clover, for John Shears, with sinister purpose, had mown all the clover fields on the day after Paul Bunyan’s arrival and had stacked it in and around Babe’s stable. He had hoped that the blue ox would bloat on the green feed, and perish before his master could return from his cruising expedition. But the early harvest had only served to throw the two bees into a rebellious rage; they had been imprisoned in their hive, and there, night and day, they had buzzed wrathfully over their half-filled honey barrels. Babe digested thegreen clover easily, and ate it with delight, his great blue eyes shining with affection and gratitude for the boss farmer.
“Pity ’tain’t alfalfy, ye blame’ hog,” snarled John Shears in disgust.
But it wasn’t, so John Shears made the scissor-bills work twenty hours a day in the parsnip patch, and he aided them with his own efforts, for he realized that once Paul Bunyan and Johnny Inkslinger had returned a fatal poisoning of the blue ox would be difficult to accomplish. He would not have the courage to attempt it then. Now was the time to strike. Heaven helping him, he should not fail!
During this week Little Meery had been kept within the bounds of the farmyard by the strict orders of John Shears. His heart was heavy indeed as he toiled away in the kitchen. Never had the scouring of pots and pans seemed to be such wretched labor; never had the odors and steam of dishwater seemed so detestable. When he went out to slop the pigs at eventide he heard the jaybirds’ songs no more; he had ears only for the shouts, laughter and harmonies that sounded in the old home camp. Next week the grand life of logging would begin; all summer he, poor unfortunate, would suffer the misery of vain longings. Poor Little Meery; he looked in vain for a silver lining to his cloud.
Saturday came, and only one more holiday remained for the loggers to enjoy. As Little Meery listened to their exuberant noise, he was unable to drive away his despondency with songs or cheerful thoughts. Hour by hour his spirits got lower; his optimism left him,and his mind was dark with dismal shades. When he went to bed under the kitchen sink he did not fall into a sound sleep at once, as he usually did; his misery and dejection kept him awake. For two hours he lay there, soaking his pillow with tears, then the droning murmurs from the settin’-room were hushed, and, after a pause, John Shears began a speech. He fully revealed his frightful scheme to the scissor-bills, and he exhorted them to be true to his cause, which was their cause also. When Little Meery understood that the boss farmer intended to poison the blue ox and thus do away with the logging industry forever, he gave such a start of horror that his head banged against the bottom of the sink. The speech was halted at the sound.
“It’s only Little Meery,” said a scissor-bill contemptuously.
Little Meery did not venture to stir again as John Shears went on speaking.
“So it’s all fixed to pizen the ox critter to-night,” said John Shears in conclusion. “Then they’ll be no more wicked loggin’. Loggin’ must be wicked because it makes wicked men. Farmin’ must be good because it makes good men. When ol’ Paul Bunyan an’ his loggers has to go farmin’ they’ll nacherlly turn into good men. Then they’ll have to foller us, hi grabby, because we was farmers an’ good men before they was. I hate to pizen a pore dumb critter, but this here’s by way of makin’ him a sackerfice—a sackerfice for the glory of life eternal! Glory! glory! glory!”
The scissor-bills all shouted “Glory! glory! glory!” after him, and then Little Meery heard them all move out of the settin’-room. For a few minutes he did not dare to stir, then he could no longer tolerate the anxiety of waiting. He slid carefully from his bunk, he took off his nightgown and slipped on his ragged slavey’s clothes, and then, pausing cautiously at every heavy step, he approached the kitchen door. He opened it and peered outside. There was a fair light from a half-moon, and he could see the scissor-bills standing in rows and clusters along the barnyard fence. John Shears was already across Honey Creek. He opened the door of Babe’s stable, and then ran back to the farmyard. Soon Babe’s head appeared in the stable doorway, his great gentle eyes looked inquiringly about, then they shone hungrily as they glimpsed a white heap of the vegetables he loved. Other piles were scattered at intervals of seven hundred yards. In a short time Babe was in the parsnip patch, and he began to devour the first mountainous pile of the deadly vegetables. John Shears and the scissor-bills shouted halleluiahs of joy and triumph.
Horror, despair, a terrible sense of helplessness, held Little Meery motionless in the doorway. Hours seemed to pass as he frantically tried to think of some means to thwart the plot of John Shears and to ward off the tragic event that was swiftly casting its shadow over the old home camp. But what couldhedo? He was only Little Meery, scorned, despised, held in such contempt that he had been ignored entirely in the plans.Then a sound that had roared in his ears ever since the clover was cut for the blue ox startled his mind with a desperate idea. The sound was the raging hum of two great bees, Bum and Bill, and Little Meery now resolved to release them from the hive, whatever the danger to himself. He knew that they would make a savage attack on the blue ox and perhaps drive him from the perilous parsnip patch. So he eased himself out of the kitchen and trod as softly as his obesity permitted towards the beehive. He reached it without being discovered, then he heaved up desperately on the latch. Up it went—six inches, twelve, eighteen, thirty-six, sixty—it was over the top of the block! As Little Meery pantingly threw the door open, the bees began to roar, then they shot out of the hive with a deafening buzz, their wings humming so violently that the wind from them stripped the shirt off his back. The bees zigzagged doubtfully for a moment, then they spied the blue ox in the parsnip patch. They cracked their wings together and lit out for him in a beeline. John Shears saw them and bawled for them to return, but, though they were obedient bees in their gentle moods, his yells now made them buzz on in a greater rage than ever. They circled the blue ox three times, then they sat on him and began a furious stinging of him. Babe bellowed. The scissor-bills were thrown through the barnyard fence when the wind from that bellow struck them, but John Shears charged through the vegetable gardens after the bees. And reached the anguished ox just ashe had lifted his hind legs for a tremendous kick. Babe’s hoof caught the boss farmer squarely between his eyebrows and his ankles, and he was hurled so high into the air that he sailed over the cloud-kissed crest of old Rock Candy. Babe flailed away mightily with his tail, he pawed up clouds of dirt, he stood on his horns, but the bees remained seated. At last the blue ox galloped out of the parsnip patch and ran for the sanctuary of his stable, where the bees dared not follow him.
Babe’s bellow had rolled Little Meery among the scissor-bills, but he landed on his feet. He lumbered away from them in the direction of the footbridge, and when the scissor-bills had disentangled themselves from the splinters of the fence, they set out after him. They caught him in the center of the bridge, but just as they were beginning to beat him, the loggers, who had all been shaken from their bunks by Babe’s anguished bellow, came with a rush from the other side. Then began the famous Battle of the Footbridge, in which the opposing forces vainly attempted to reach each other over the obese form of Little Meery, who received hundreds of blows a minute. All through the night the battle raged, while Babe mooed woefully in his stable and Bum and Bill buzzed gleeful satisfaction in their hive.
Not until sunrise, when Paul Bunyan reached the old home camp, was the terrible struggle ended. He ordered the loggers and the scissor-bills into the plain before the maple grove and demanded an explanation.The combatants were too weary from their terrific struggle to reply, but at last Little Meery found strength to speak and told his awful story.
“Brave, brave heart,” Paul Bunyan commended him. “And how can I reward you?”
“I want to be a head faller, Mr. Bunyan.”
“But a head faller must fit into a head faller’s uniform, and you my fine lad—well, you are Little Meery.”
Then Little Meery staggered triumphantly from among the weary host. Not a stitch remained on him, he was bruised from head to heels, but he showed himself with pride. For he was not now the seven hundred and eighty pound Little Meery of yesterday, but a raw-boned two hundred and fifty pound logger, lean, solid and strong. During the long battle, pound by pound, over a quarter of a ton of fat had been pushed, prodded, punched, pounded, rolled, jerked, squeezed and stamped from his body. His obesity was gone! Miracle of miracles! Paul Bunyan could hardly believe his eyes.
“A head faller you shall be,” he said.
John Shears was three weeks returning from the spot whither Babe had kicked him. Meek, humble, chastened, repentant, he came to Paul Bunyan and declared himself willing to submit to the dire punishment which he supposed awaited him. He expected to be made to eat gravel for a month, at the very least. The good and mighty Paul Bunyan, however, merely ordered John Shears to get back to the farm. But he put a ban on parsnips. As for Little Meery, when heheard that John Shears had returned, he twisted his hat around—his hair was never parted now,—he took a grand chew of fire cut, hitched up his tin pants and growled. “Let’s walk on him! Let’s put the calks to him! Let’s cave his head in!” Little Meery had become a logger indeed, and he lived gloriously ever after.
Bearded man walking with stick and backpack