Paul Bunyan

Paul Bunyan was the one historian of the useful and the beautiful; other writers of history tell only of terrible and dramatic events. Therefore the chronicles of Paul Bunyan, the mighty logger, the inventor of the lumber industry, the leader-hero of the best band of bullies, the finest bunch of savages, that ever tramped the continent, the master orator of a land that has since grown forests of orators--his chronicles alone tell of the Winter of the Blue Snow.

The blue snow fell first in the North. It fell scantily in its earlier hours, its sapphire flakes floating down on the waves of a mild winter wind, and glittering in an ashen gold light, a sober pale radiance which shimmered through silver mists. There was poetry in the spectacle of these hours. And then the hard gray ground of a peopleless land was hidden under a blanket of dark blue. And the nameless frozen lakes and rivers, the silent valleys and the windy hills of the country were all spread over with a sky-dyed snow. When the last light of this day went out, the boughs of the great pines were creaking under heavy wet masses of snow like torn bales of blue cotton. There was a rush in the snowfall now, as a fiercer wind whipped it on; its heavy flakes were driven down in thick, whirling clusters, in streaming veils, leaping lines and dashing columns; and there were cloudlike swarms of the blue flakes, which settled slowly, floating easily in the hard wind. This wind got so strong that it shivered the timber, and the piles of blue snow which had gathered on the pine boughs were shaken down. Most of this snow fell into blue mounds around the trees, but some of it fell on the fauna of the forest, adding to their troublement.

At the time of the Winter of the Blue Snow, the forest creatures of this land lived a free and easy life. Man was not there to embarrass them with accusations of trespass and to slay them for their ignorance of the crime. Their main problem was the overcrowding of the forests. The vast moose herds, who populated the woods so densely that traffic through their favorite timber was dangerous, made the matter of getting food a simple one for the carnivorous animals. There were many moose to spare, and the elders of the herds, like most prolific parents, never became frantically resentful over the loss of an offspring. The moose themselves, of course, lived easily on the crisp, juicy moose grass which grew so plenteously in these regions before the blue snow. So the carnivorous creatures of the forests lived a fast and furious life; and it is certain that if they were capable of praise, they had good praises for the moose meat which they got with such little difficulty. The coal-black bruins of the North were an especially happy crowd. Theirs was a gay, frolicsome life in the summer time, when the big bruins danced and galloped through sunny valleys and the small ones had rolling races on shady hillsides. In the fall, all fat and drowsy from moose meat, the bruins would go to sleep in their warm caves and dream pleasantly all winter.

They were all dreaming now; and the blue snow would no doubt have fallen and melted away without their knowledge had it not been for the moose herds which crowded the forest aisles. Moose at that time did not have it in them to enjoy wonder, and they had not learned to combat fear, for they were never afraid. Still, they had some imagination, and the moose trembled when the first blue snowflakes fell among them. They kept up an appearance of unconcern at first, eating moose moss as usual; but they sniffed gingerly at the blue streaks in it, and they stole furtive glances at each other as they bravely ate. This strange snowfall was certainly breeding fear of it in the hearts of all the moose, but each one seemed determined to be the last one to show it. However, as the day-end got near, and the wind grew more boisterous, shaking snow masses from the trees, some of the moose had fits of trembling and eye-rolling which they could not conceal. When a heap of snow dropped on the back of some timid moose, he would twist his head sharply and stare with bulging eyes at the mysteriously fearsome color, then he would prance wildly until the unwelcome snow was bucked from his shivering back. When the early shadows of evening came among the trees, the moose all had a heavy darkness of fear in their hearts. Little was needed to put them in a panic.

It was a great bull moose, a herd king, who forgot the example he owed to his weaker kindred and unloosed a thunderous bellow of terror which started the moose flight, the first memorable incident of the Winter of the Blue Snow. An overladen bough cracked above him; it fell and straddled him from quivering tail to flailing horns, burying him under its wet blue load. He reared out roaring, and his own herd echoed the cry; then a storm of moose bellows crashed through the forest. This tumult died, but there followed the earth-shaking thunder of a stampede.

The bruins, awakened from their pleasant dreams, came out from their caves and blinked at the hosts of terrified moose which were galloping past. The earth-shaking uproar of the flight at last thoroughly aroused the bruins, and they began to sniff the air uneasily. Then they noticed the blue snow; and now in front of every cave crowds of bruins were staring down at the snow; and each bruin was swaying heavily, lifting his left front foot as he swayed to the right, and lifting his right front foot as he swayed to the left. The bruins had no courage either, and, once they had got sleep out of their heads, nearly all of them took out after the moose herds. The wind roared louder with every passing minute this night. And the flakes of the blue snow were as dense as the particles of a fog. At dawn a blue blizzard was raging. But the fauna of the forest plunged tirelessly on, seeking a refuge of white snow.

And Niagara, made faithless by the Blue Terror, galloped behind them--Niagara, the great moose hound, bread-winner for the student of history, Paul Bunyon (his real name), and his companion also.

Paul Bunyon lived at Tonnere Bay. He dwelt in a cave that was as large as ten Mammoth Caves and which had a roof loftier than any tower or spire. But this cave was none too vast for Paul Bunyon, the one man of this region, but one man as great as a city of ordinary men. His tarpaulins and blankets covered one-fourth of the cave floor; his hunting clothes, traps and seines filled another quarter; and the rest of the space was occupied by a fireplace and his papers and books.

For Paul Bunyon was a student now. There had been a time when he had gone forth in the hunting and fishing season to gather the huge supplies of provender which he required, but now his days and nights were all spent with his books. Paul Bunyon’s favorite food was raw moose meat, and after he found Niagara in the Tall Wolf country he no longer needed to hunt. Each night Niagara trotted out in the darkness and satisfied his own hunger, then he carried mouthfuls of moose to the cave until he had a day’s supply of meat for his master. Niagara was ever careful not to frighten the moose herds; he hunted stealthily and with quiet. The moose at night were only conscious of a dark cloud looming over them, then numbers of the herds would disappear without painful sound. The moose, if they had thought about it, would have been only thankful to Niagara for lessening the congestion of the forests.

So Paul Bunyon fared well on the moose meat which Niagara brought him, and he lived contentedly as a student in his cave at Tonnere Bay. Each day he studied, and far into the night he figured. Taking a trimmed pine tree for a pencil, he would char its end in the fire and use the cave floor for a slate. He was not long in learning all the history worth knowing, and he became as good a figurer as any man could be.

Vague ambitions began to stir in his soul after this and he often deserted his studies to dream about them. He knew he would not spend his days forever in the cave at Tonnere Bay. Somewhere in the future a great Work was waiting to be done by him. Now it was only a dream; but he was sure that it would be a reality; and he came to think more and more about it. The books were opened less and less; the pine tree pencil was seldom brought from its corner. Paul Bunyon now used another pine tree which still had its boughs; it was a young one, and he brushed his curly black beard with it as he dreamed. But he was still a contented man at the time of the Winter of the Blue Snow, for his dreams had not yet blazed up in a desire for any certain attainment.

On the first day of the blue snow, Paul Bunyon was in a particularly contented mood. He sat all that day before his fire; so charmed with drowsy thoughts was he that he did not once look out. It had been dark a long time before he rolled into his blankets. He awoke at the dawn of a day that had scarcely more light than the night. He was cold, and he got up to throw an armful of trees on the fire. Then he saw the blue drifts which had piled up before the cave, and he saw the fog of the blue blizzard. He heard the roar of a terrific wind, too, and he knew that the storm was perilous as well as strange. But Paul Bunyon thought gladly of the blue snow, for it was a beautiful event, and the historians he liked most would write wonderful books about it.

He kicked the drifts away from the cave entrance, but the usual pile of slain moose was not under them. Paul Bunyon was a little worried, as he thought that Niagara might have lost himself in the blue blizzard. The possibility that the unnatural color of the storm might send the fauna of the forest, and Niagara as well, into panicky flight did not occur to him. He was sure that Niagara would return with a grand supply of moose meat when the blue blizzard had passed.

But the moose herds were now far to the North, fleeing blindly from the blue snow. The bruins galloped after them. Before the day was over, Niagara had overtaken the bruins and was gaining on the moose. At nightfall his lunging strides had carried him far ahead of all the fauna of the forest. He galloped yet faster as he reached the blacker darkness of the Arctic winter. Now the darkness was so heavy that even his powerful eyes could not see in it.... Niagara at last ran head-on into the North Pole; the terrific speed at which he was traveling threw his body whirling high in the air; when Niagara fell he crashed through ninety feet of ice, and the polar fields cracked explosively as his struggles convulsed the waters under them.... Then only mournful blasts of wind sounded in the night of the Farthest North.

The moose were wearied out before they reached the white Arctic, and hordes of them fell and perished in the blizzard; many others died from fright, and only a tiny remnant of the great herds survived. Some of the bruins reached the polar fields, and they have lived there since. Their hair had turned white from fright, and their descendants still wear that mark of fear. Others were not frightened so much, and their hair only turned gray. They did not run out of the timber, and their descendants, the silver-tip grizzlies, still live in the Northern woods. The baby bruins were only scared out of their growth, and their black descendants now grow no larger than the cubs of Paul Bunyon’s time.