Sure as the great logger had been that the powerful buffalo milk hot cakes could only do good for his loggers, sure as he was they could not give his men too much red blood or make them too hellishly He, Paul Bunyan had yet failed to reckon on the dire effects that the virile food might have on weaker men. He had given no thought to the scissor-bills who herded and milked the buffalos. Throughout the fall these men had shown nothing but their usual tameness and amiability; during the Hard Winter they had shivered silently by their camp fires; but now they began to show that the powerful food was having a terrific effect on them. Many of the buffalos had died during the cold spell, and the scissor-bills had made pants from the shaggy hides. Some of the high-behinds had frozen also, and the scissor-bills had taken their skins and made tall, flapping hats of them. Colds had afflicted them during the winter, and for convenience they had tied their handkerchiefs around their necks. They took a fancy to this fashion and let the handkerchiefs remain after their colds were gone. Their next outbreak of virility was to unravel one of Babe’s halter ropes and arrange a long little rope with a noose-end from each thread of it. They practiced throwing nooses over the posts of the buffalo corral fence until they became quite expert in casting them. The scissor-bills then caught wild horses with their ropes and broke them for riding. They got to be a crazy, noisy gang after this, and Paul Bunyan began to notice them as they rode through the sage trees, yipping shrilly. And then one morning they came to the hero-leader and requested that they be called “scissor-bills” no longer, but “buffalo boys” instead. Paul Bunyan admired their shaggy pants, their necker-chiefs and their tall hats, and he thoughtlessly consented to their wishes. He did not feel that the scissor-bills had it in them to become real He Men, but he was not a man to discourage worthy ambitions. But Paul Bunyan soon had reason to remember one of his old sayings, that the road from the palace of generosity leads through a forest of perils. His one kindly gesture towards the lowly scissor-bills made them a powerful faction in the He Man country, and a fierce rivalry between them and the loggers soon developed. For they insisted on being called “buffalo boys,” and Paul Bunyan’s best men saw an intolerable dignity in the title. The buffalo boys painted large B. B’s. on their hats, they painted the letters on the buffalos and on their horses also. At calving time they devised some irons in the shape of double B’s., and they branded the buffalo calves with them. The buffalo boys grew even bolder; they began to ride among the bunkhouses in the evenings, yipping and yelling at the men who were earnestly preparing for the greatest drive of history.