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 the
beautiful 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 figuring for 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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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