THE SOURDOUGH DRIVE
Politicalcampaigns remind old loggers of the violent debate that once raged between Paul Bunyan, the originator of the lumber industry, and his timekeeper, Johnny Inkslinger. This debate was strictly about business, however, for there was no politics in those days. It was poor policy, argued the timekeeper, to increase the varieties and quantities of edibles grown on Paul Bunyan’s great farm simply to make more stuffing for the loggers. He recommended that the camp rations be cut down and that ships be built, in which surplus farm produce could be shipped to European markets. Johnny Inkslinger was the original efficiency expert and he had hordes of figures at hand to support his arguments. Paul Bunyan listened with his usual calm and dignity, brushing his beard with a fresh pine tree and nodding gravely, until the timekeeper began to insist that the loggers could do their work well enough on pea soup and sourdough biscuits; then the great man erupted.
“Good glory, Johnny!” he exclaimed. “Have you forgotten the Sourdough Drive?”
“I have not, Mr. Bunyan,” Inkslinger retorted spiritedly. “But I have figures which show you should have handled it differently.”
“The hell you have!” roared Paul Bunyan, in raretones of anger. “Damn figures and figuring men!”
“And damn a man who damns figures!” thundered Johnny Inkslinger, himself getting angry.
Whereupon Paul Bunyan damned him again in return, and they kept up a furious argument until the trees began to fall among the bunkhouses. The sourdough drive was a subject that tormented Paul Bunyan’s feelings whenever he thought of it; it was always a sore spot with him. But when he heard the trees tumbling down in the valley he remembered his dignity and he silenced his timekeeper with a majestic gesture. Then he gave instructions for a Sunday feast so huge and diversified that Hot Biscuit Slim, the chief cook, went into a solemn trance of joy upon receiving the order. The timekeeper could not hide his mortification, and Paul Bunyan clapped him on the shoulder, saying cheerily, “There, there, my lad. You live in a world of figures. I could not expect you to know the soul of the born woodsman. But treasure this always: a logging crew works on its stomach.”
After Paul Bunyan had invented logging and brought hosts of little loggers over to Real America to fell trees and drive logs down the rivers, his most baffling problem sprang from the fact that little loggers could not live on raw moose meat as he did. They required cooked food; consequently Paul Bunyan was compelled to build a cookhouse and import cooks. His first cookhouse was a crude affair without any notable mechanical equipment. And his first cooks were men without talent or experience. But Paul Bunyan’s loggers were hardy men whose appetiteshad never been pampered, and no one complained of the camp fare until Pea Soup Shorty took command of the cookhouse.
Pea Soup Shorty was a plump, lazy, complacent rascal, and he made no attempt to feed the loggers anything but hard-tack and pea soup. He even made lunches for them by freezing pea soup around a rope and sending the loggers’ lunches out to them in sticks like big candles. Even then the loggers did not complain greatly. Not until the winter in the Bullfrog Lake country were they heard to cry out against their food. That winter Shagline Bill’s freight sleds broke the ice on the lake, and the season’s supply of split peas was lost in the water. Pea Soup Shorty did not try to originate any new food for the loggers; he simply boiled the lake water and served it to them for pea soup. Then the bunkhouse cranks began to growl; and finally all the loggers revolted against Pea Soup Shorty; and they declared against pea soup also. Paul Bunyan had to look for another kitchen chief. Old Sourdough Sam was his selection.
The Bunyan histories tell that Sourdough Sam made everything but coffee out of sourdough. This substance is really fermented dough, having the rising qualities of yeast. It is said to be an explosive. Modern camp cooks are always at great pains to warn the new kitchen help away from the sourdough bowl, telling them of the sad accident of Sourdough Sam, who had his left arm and right leg blown off in an explosion of the dangerous concoction.
The old cook brought this misfortune on himself.Sourdough was his weakness as well as his strength. Had he been content to keep it only in the kitchen, where it belonged, and to develop it simply as a food, he, and not his son, Hot Biscuit Slim, might be remembered as the father of camp cookery, even as the mighty Paul Bunyan is venerated as the father of logging. But Sam was prey to wild ideas about the uses of his creation. He declared it could be used for shaving soap, poultices, eye wash, boot grease, hair tonic, shin plasters, ear muffs, chest protectors, corn pads, arch supporters, vest lining, pillow stuffing, lamp fuel, kindling, saw polish and physic. One time he came into the bunkhouse with a chair cushion made out of sourdough. As bad luck would have it, Jonah Wiles, the worst of the bunkhouse cranks, was the first man to sit on it. He always sat hard, and when he dropped on the new chair cushion, he splashed sourdough as high as his ears. Jonah Wiles was fearfully proud of his mackinaw pants, for they were the only pair in camp that had red, green, purple and orange checks. Now the bursted cushion was splashed over all their gaudy colors. Sam apologized humbly and begged the privilege of washing them. His rage showing only in the glitter of his beady blue eyes, Jonah Wiles stripped off the smeared pants and handed them over to the cook. Sourdough Sam recklessly washed them in another of his creations, sourdough suds. Not a thread of color was left in the prized pants; they were a brilliant white when they were returned. The old cook brought them back reluctantly and he was tremendously relievedwhen Jonah Wiles did not tear into him with oaths and blows. But Jonah Wiles was different from other loggers in that he always concealed even his strongest feelings. So he put on the pants without saying a word, though he was blazing with wrath inside. His rage against the cook was aggravated when his mates began to call him “the legless logger,” because of his invisibility from the bottom of his coat to the tops of his boots when he tramped to work. The brilliant white pants did not show at all against a background of snow.
This unfortunate incident led to the important happenings of the Sourdough Drive, which was one of the turning points in the history of logging. For Jonah Wiles now cherished a vicious hostility against Sourdough Sam; with patient cunning he awaited the time when he might be avenged for the outrage that had made him known in the camp as “the legless logger.”
Jonah Wiles was not a great man among the loggers; he was only a swamper, and Mark Beaucoup, who was a mighty man with both ax and pike pole, was much more to be feared as a bunkhouse crank. But where Mark Beaucoup was a roaring grouch, Jonah Wiles was a sly, quiet one; he had a devilish insinuating gift of making men see and believe uncomfortable things.
“Too bad yer so hoarse to-night,” he would say to a bunkhouse bard who had just finished a song. “I’m thinkin’ we’re needin’ more blankets. Ol’ Paul’ll let us all freeze to death.”
He would lead the bard to think hedidhave a hoarseness, the bunkhouse gayety would vanish and a seed of resentment would be sown against the master logger. Before his pants were ruined Jonah Wiles had never found a grievance which would serve to keep his instinct of revolt always inflamed. But now his misfortune was in his mind constantly. Without openly attacking the culinary methods and creations of Sourdough Sam, he slyly made a terrible shape of them for his bunkhouse mates.
“Poor ol’ Sam,” he would say, drawing his lean, gray face into an expression of pity. “Poor ol’ Sam. He cooks the best he knows how, maybe. But I’m afeard that sourdough uh his’n ’ll bring us all to an ontimely end, fin’ly.”
Let a logger complain of corns, and Jonah Wiles would remark that he had never heard of corns in the woods before sourdough was invented. He insinuated that everything from ingrown nails and bunions to toothache and falling hair was due to the loggers’ sourdough meals. Ere long old Sam was met with silence and bitter looks when he visited the bunkhouses to show a new use of sourdough. And the loggers’ appetites fell away; one month after the accident to Jonah Wiles’ pants, Johnny Inkslinger joyfully reported to Paul Bunyan that the consumption of flour and soda had been cut in half. The great logger frowned; he had already learned much about the need his men had for good food rightly cooked, though it was no necessity for him.
“But I can’t consider this business, now,” he saidruefully. “We’ve got to get this country logged off before the water drops in Redbottom Lake. When the spring drive is finished we’ll settle the feeding problem once and for all time.”
Saying this, he thrust a bundle of sharpened axes and two score new crosscut saws into his pocket, and, followed by his timekeeper, he strode for the woods to lay out the work for the next day. Jonah Wiles was then in the kitchen with Sourdough Sam. Paul Bunyan and his timekeeper always walked softly, but the wind from their swinging feet rattled the doors and windows of the cookhouse.
“There they go,” muttered Jonah Wiles. “Now listen, Sam. They’ll be in the woods for an hour anyway. Now’s yer chance to get in good with everybody again. I want yeh to keep yer high place, ol’ feller. I’ve always loved yeh like a brother, an’ yer trouble with the boys is grievin’ me to a shadder.”
“I shore appreciate your sympathy when all is givin’ me the cold shoulder,” said the cook disconsolately. “But ’tain’t no use. Nobody seems willin’ to give sourdough a real chance. Folks could use it fer ever’thing if they wanted to, an’ now these fool loggers even hate to eat it.”
Jonah Wiles replied with his usual shrewd arguments. Every evening when he thought he had made all the mischievous suggestions to the loggers that it was wise to utter, he would come to the kitchen and, pretending great sympathy and friendliness, he would urge Sourdough Sam into enterprises that could only end disastrously. He was now urging old Sam todump sourdough into the timekeeper’s ink barrels during his absence with Paul Bunyan. The cook had long been sure that small quantities of sourdough would treble the ink supply. But, disheartened and discouraged, he had not ventured to broach the idea to Johnny Inkslinger.
“Make it a surprise party,” suggested Jonah Wiles. “Get busy, Sam. It’s yer chance to win a real name for yerself.”
At last Sourdough Sam yielded to his tempter.
The flunkies had left the kitchen long before. The stoves and cook tables were dark shapes in the twilight shadows. Only the white sourdough tanks stood out in the gloom. Jonah Wiles lifted the top from one of them, and a hissing roar rose from its depths, where the fermented dough worked and bubbled like quicklime. Jonah Wiles beckoned to Sourdough Sam. The cook’s eyes shone; he breathed heavily.
“It can’t help but work,” he whispered.
“Now yer my ol’ friend—good ol’ Sourdough Sam!” exclaimed Jonah Wiles heartily. “Now yer talkin’. You’ll be king of the camp when Johnny Inkslinger finds his ink barrels all full and wonders how it happened. Be the hero yeh really are, Sam!”
“By hickory, I will!” declared the cook.
In a moment he was leaving the kitchen, a foaming five gallon bucket of sourdough in each hand. Jonah Wiles slipped through the shadows until he reached a big tree. There he lingered and watched. He knew certainly that this idea would bring evil on the old cook. The sourdough would ruin the ink as it hadruined everything else. But he had never dreamed of such a grand disaster as befell. Johnny Inkslinger had two dozen ink barrels. A hose line ran from each one, and when he did his most furious figuring it was necessary to attach all of them to his fountain pen in order to get a sufficient flow of ink. The cook dumped five gallons of sourdough into the first barrel and five into the second; then he rushed back to the cookhouse for more. At his sixth trip the first barrels he had treated were boiling and steaming like miniature volcanoes.
“They’ll settle after bit,” said Sourdough Sam optimistically.
Vain hope. No sooner were the words uttered than a barrel of ink exploded with a dull roar. The other treated barrels followed with a blast that sounded like a salvo of artillery fire. The camp was shaken. The loggers rushed from the bunkhouses and saw a foaming black torrent rolling out of the camp office. Sourdough Sam was whirled forth on the flood. The bravest of the loggers plunged into the boiling black stream and dragged him to safety. He was unconscious, and his left arm and right leg had been lost in the explosion. He was gently carried into a bunkhouse. The head flunky mounted his saddle horse and galloped after Paul Bunyan.
Jonah Wiles moved inconspicuously among the excited loggers. A hot exultation was in his heart; he had never hoped for such a completely triumphant revenge. New powers seemed to surge up in him,too; he felt that he might bring about even greater disasters than this one. But he cautiously repressed these freshly burning hopes and carried the air of a man made dumb by grief. Tobacco crumbs rubbed in his eyes made the tears trickle down his lean cheeks. As the loggers formed into groups and began to speak of the sourdough explosion in doleful tones, they noted the silent, mournful appearance of Jonah Wiles, and, among such expressions as “I was allus afeard sompin like it ud happen”—“Pore ol’ Sam, got to be a regular sourdough fanatic”—“Powerful strange, ain’t it, the way things work out in this life?”—were heard many words of sympathy for Sourdough’s best friend. “Ol’ Jonah’s takin’ it perty hard.” “Yeh, you wouldn’t think such an ol’ crab had that much feelin’ in him.”
Jonah Wiles heard them and chuckled evilly. They were making his part easy for him. When Paul Bunyan and his timekeeper thundered into camp he was at the fore of the men who pressed around their feet.
Johnny Inkslinger had the unfortunate cook brought into the office, where he had room to work over him. For half an hour surgical instruments, bandages and bottles flashed through his hands as he doctored the cook. Paul Bunyan watched him hopefully; Johnny Inkslinger was not only the greatest figurer but the greatest doctor of his time also.
At last he arose. “He’ll pull through, Mr. Bunyan.”
Paul Bunyan thanked him and then fell into a profoundcontemplation of the feeding problem. Johnny Inkslinger wiped the blots of ink from the walls and the puddles from the floor.
“Only two barrels of ink left,” he groaned. “How’ll I get through the winter, Mr. Bunyan?”
The great logger smiled grimly. “I only wish all my problems were so simple,” he said. “Just leave off dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and you’ll save ink for the necessary writing and figuring. When the spring ink supply comes in you can go over your books again.”
“Such a mind!” breathed the timekeeper worshipfully.
But Paul Bunyan felt that even his mind was unequal to the perplexing problem before him. How was he to feed his loggers now? Would they be content with pea soup? Not for long, certainly. Even sourdough hardly satisfied them now. And this dangerous stuff, lively as gunpowder—who would dare to mix, bake, boil, stew and roast it? No sourdough, no work; and this meant another season in the upper Red River country, for he had to be ready for the drive before Redbottom Lake sank to its summer level. Quick action was necessary. Paul Bunyan sent inquiries among the kitchen help for a man who was familiar with the methods of Sourdough Sam. The head flunky reported that no one was so intimate with the old cook as Jonah Wiles, a swamper.
The worst bunkhouse crank came into the presence of Paul Bunyan with confidence that Sourdough Sam, the soul of loyalty, had not mentioned him in connectionwith the explosion. He presented a sorrowful, tear-streaked countenance.
“Be consoled,” Paul Bunyan said gently. “Your comrade was performing what he considered to be an act of duty. He shall be remembered with great honor. And I am offering you, his best friend, the position he occupied.”
“I’m only a pore swamper, Mr. Bunyan,” said Jonah Wiles, in nasal tones of humility “an’ I’d never be able to make it in the high job of a cook.”
Paul Bunyan stroked his beard with a pine tree, as was his habit in moments of earnest thought. And at the same time Jonah Wiles was glowing with the fire of dangerous inspiration; he had become firmly convinced that he was a great originator of damaging ideas. He remembered that Sourdough Sam had a son; the old cook had often spoken of him with parental pride and fondness. With the boy in camp his revenge could go yet farther. Jonah Wiles pounded on Paul Bunyan’s toe to attract his attention. The great logger again bent down to him.
“Sourdough Sam has a son which he claims is a greater cook than his dad already,” said the bunkhouse crank. “I expect you could send an’ get him easy, Mr. Bunyan.”
“Where is he, lad?”
“He’s down in the Corn Pone country. That’s where he’s learnin’ to be a better cook than Sam,an’——”
Jonah Wiles was bowled over by Paul Bunyan’s jubilant roar. Johnny Inkslinger was ordered to setout for the Corn Pone country at once and to return with the young cook, making all speed. The great logger then called his men together and gave them a rousing speech on the need for fast logging, promising them that he would have the old cookhouse going good again in a short time. The loggers cheered him and went contentedly to bed, where all but Jonah Wiles slept with good consciences. But to him the bad conscience was the good one; he rejoiced in evil thoughts. Not a pang of pity did he feel for Sourdough Sam; he had no regrets; he dreamed only of getting his clutches on the son of the man who had ruined his bright pants.
While Johnny Inkslinger was speeding after the new cook Paul Bunyan was struggling with the worst difficulty he had ever encountered. The kitchen was put in charge of the Galloping Kid, the head flunky, for the time being. He was a grand horseman, a mighty figure, as he rode his white horse among the tables at meal time, directing the running flunkies, but he knew little more about cooking than Paul Bunyan himself.
His sourdough creations were all failures; the loggers broke their teeth on them, and what they did swallow was indigestible. All gayety vanished from the bunkhouses; even the bards, with the noble exception of the incomparable, unquenchable Shanty Boy, got silent and morose. Each day less timber was felled. In time the blue ox stood idle most of the day, waiting for loads of logs to be hauled to the landings. A successful conclusion of the logging seemedimpossible, but Paul Bunyan would not admit it. A late spring thaw, a great physical revival when the new cook got into action—he stimulated the men with these hopes and kept up some semblance of work in the woods.
Jonah Wiles was now enjoying the happiest time of his life. Everyone was in a state of wretchedness that delighted him. He heard threats of revolt; disastrous events were surely advancing their shadows on the camp of Paul Bunyan; he gloated over the evil he would wreck on the son of his enemy. But he kept his feelings well hidden. His sly suggestions were the source of many of the bitterest complaints the loggers made against their life, but he never complained now himself. His small blue eyes had a watery shine of sympathy for everyone. He spent an hour each night with Sourdough Sam, pretending to console him, but actually enjoying his sufferings.
When the new cook arrived in camp Sourdough Sam was able to sit up and introduce his son to Paul Bunyan—“Hot Biscuit Slim, sir, who’s goin’ to be one uh the greatest cooks uh history.”
The young man leaned nonchalantly against Paul Bunyan’s toe and looked up calmly at the mighty figure above him.
“I’ll shore be glad to work for you, Mr. Bunyan,” he said. “But you’ll have to fix things accordin’ to my ideas.”
“Son, the camp is yours,” rumbled Paul Bunyan. “Half of my loggers are now too weak to lift an ax.”
Whereupon Hot Biscuit Slim shook his father’sgood hand, smiled enigmatically when the old man said, “I’m expectin’ you to succeed where I failed with sourdough, boy,” and left to inspect the cookhouse. Paul Bunyan and Johnny Inkslinger attended him. When the inspection was finished he had many recommendations to make. Hedemanded——
A new cookhouse, ten times the size of the present one.
Steam-power, force-feed batter mixers, and a hot cake griddle large enough for a battalion of second cooks to make a line around it.
A battery of great ovens for the baking of pies, cakes, puddings and cookies.
Bins for potatoes and other vegetables.
Fruit and vinegar cellars.
Baking powder and sugar barrels.
Sauerkraut tanks and a frankfurter shed.
An air-tight onion room.
A store of ham, bacon and eggs for the loggers’ breakfasts....
“Hold on a moment!” exclaimed Paul Bunyan in bewilderment. “Please tell me first:whatare hot cakes, pies, cookies, cakes, puddings, ham, bacon, eggs, potatoes, baking powder, sauerkraut, frankfurters and the rest of it? Can we get them from somewhere, or must I invent them?”
Hot Biscuit Slim patiently explained them to the great logger.
“Holy mackinaw!” said Paul Bunyan, greatly relieved, “I never imagined such things could be. I’m delighted that they’ve already been invented.”
Hot Biscuit Slim told him that they could all be grown or manufactured on the great farm. Then he went on to recommend that the flunkies be equipped with roller skates, thus tripling their efficiency. He made many other suggestions, and Paul Bunyan agreed to all of them.
“Now to work,” said Hot Biscuit Slim. “I’ll have a new sourdough dish for the loggers’ supper. Sourdough is a contraption that’s seen it’s day, but I’ll make the best of it while I got to use it. Send me your blacksmith.”
A unique smell met the loggers when they crowded eagerly into the cookhouse at suppertime, a delightful odor that overpowered the weakest among them. And when the flunkies trotted out, carrying huge platters heaped high with brown, globular mysteries, each one having a curious hole in the center, the famished loggers all bounced about on their benches in uncontrollable excitement, and well they might! For they were being served with the first doughnuts! Doughnut connoisseurs of to-day would have regarded them as crude; they were made from sourdough, they were hard as hickory and unsweetened. But Paul Bunyan’s loggers shouted over them; they discovered to their great leader the exuberance and expansion of feeling, the exaltation of spirit, the strengthening of moral qualities, which may develop from grand feeding. As he listened to the extraordinary uproar in the cookhouse and considered it he formed one of his great reflections: Meals make the man.
Jonah Wiles was the one dismal figure among thefeasters. The doughnuts were bitter in his mouth because they were so pleasing to him. He devoured half a dozen of them and then forced himself to stop, for he was beginning to feel good-humored. His gaze turned shiftily towards the kitchen, where Hot Biscuit Slim was frying doughnuts with astonishing rapidity. The assistant cooks were rolling out the dough; Big Ole, the blacksmith, bare-armed and streaming with sweat, tossed the doughnuts on his anvil and punched the holes in them with swift strokes. Jonah Wiles glowered malignantly on the scene. With one meal the son of his enemy had brought happiness to the camp and achieved glory.
“He’ll learn Jonah Wiles has a few tricks yet,” the worst bunkhouse crank muttered savagely.
After supper he waited for a lull in the bunkhouse merriment. When it came he emitted a terrific groan.
“I’m afeard them new biscuits with the holes in ’em ain’t goin’ to set well on the stummick. I’mafeard——”
“Take yer bellyache outside!” yelled the loggers.
They shoved him through the door and began to roar out their favorite song, “Jack Haggerty.”
“I’ve still got some tricks,” said Jonah Wiles.
He entered the kitchen and greeted Hot Biscuit Slim with a twisted grin that was supposed to express sympathy and understanding.
“I’m yer pap’s best friend,” he said unctuously, “an’ I shore am glad to see yeh makin’ sech a fine beginnin’ with sourdough.”
“Yeh?” said Hot Biscuit Slim.
“Yes siree! An’ I allus like to help folks get along, too. I’ve jist thought uh somethin’ new to try with sourdough. Yeh see, the loggers been havin’ trouble gettin’ inner soles fer their boots. Now if yer pap was doin’ it, why he’d jist slip into all the bunkhouses to-night and put sourdough in every boot, fer.... Here now, don’t yeh go to hit me! I’m a ailin’ ol’ man, an’ crippled, too. What’s the matter uh yeh, anyway?”
Hot Biscuit’s face was afire with rage.
“So you’re the pizen ol’ devil what got my ol’ man into all that trouble, what nearly got him kilt, what ruint his life!”
He grasped a cold doughnut, swung it far behind him, then hurled it with terrific force at Jonah Wiles’ head. It struck him squarely between the eyes, and he dropped without a groan.
“There!” panted Hot Biscuit Slim. “You moanin’ ol’ hound—you hissin’ ol’ reptile—you squawlin’ ol’ tomcat!...”
When Jonah Wiles recovered consciousness two months later he discovered the camp in holiday attire. When he learned the occasion of the celebration he was bewildered. He saw the loggers forming in a great crowd on the shore of Redbottom Lake. The water line was low; the spring thaw had evidently come early, for the lake was black with logs. The logging had not been finished before the lake sank below its outlet. Yet the camp was celebrating. Jonah Wileswondered. Had the new biscuits made the loggers so idiotically happy that no misfortune could quench their spirits?
Jonah Wiles saw that a new cookhouse had been built; the old one was now standing above a rollway on the lake shore. From crevices in its swelling walls, from the eaves and from the chimneys some thick white stuff was oozing and bubbling. “Sourdough!” exclaimed Jonah Wiles, yet more amazed.
At this moment Paul Bunyan lifted Sourdough Sam aloft in his hand that all the loggers might see him. The old cook waved a new crutch at his friends. He was dressed in an amazing fine style; he was even wearing a necktie. He seemed to be the hero of the celebration.
Paul Bunyan now made a speech. He told the loggers of all the marvelous edibles that Hot Biscuit Slim had revealed to him, and he explained in detail his latest and greatest invention, the Big Feed. When the loggers were done cheering Paul Bunyan paid a tribute to Sourdough Sam; the old cook’s creation had served a great purpose in the logging industry, he said. Its day was done now, but there remained a last great work for it to perform, a dramatic work that would keep the memory of its creator alive forever. It was fitting that Sourdough Sam should see this before retiring to his old home. Now Paul Bunyan turned to the big blue ox, who was hitched to blocks supporting the old cookhouse.
“Yay, Babe!” he commanded.
The blue ox heaved, the old cookhouse tottered, thenit crashed down the rollway. A heaving mass of sourdough rumbled from its cracking sides and surged like a boiling tidal wave over the lake. The waters began to hiss and foam; the logs were all hidden from sight; the lake looked like a heavy white cloud had dropped into its basin. The loggers all stared prayerfully; hopeful, yet hardly daring to hope. Only Sourdough Sam had confidence in the rising powers of his sourdough. In Paul Bunyan’s hand, he shouted joyously and waved his new crutch. The great logger himself was not absolutely sure of success at first, but as the tumult of the lake waters increased, he too showed joy and carefully patted Sourdough Sam’s back with his little finger. The leader-hero was pleased to share the glory of this enterprise with such a noble and faithful little man. Now the waters rose so rapidly that the loggers rushed back in a panic. In half an hour the sourdough had caused the lake to rise so high that the season’s logs were all thundering down Red River valley. It was a grand day for everyone; but it was the grandest that Sourdough Sam had ever known.
Jonah Wiles was sickened by his enemy’s triumph. He contemplated the magnificence of the new cookhouse, and he realized that there was now small chance of promoting misery among Paul Bunyan’s loggers. The camp could be nothing but a hostile place for him in the new dispensation. A dejected, baffled man, he sneaked away in his white pants before the loggers returned, and shambled over the hills, traveling towards Kansas.