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 to dump 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 had ruined 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.