That was where Big Joe
dug his bean-hole and when the steam worked out of the bean kettle and
up through the ground, everyone thought the old hill had turned volcano.
Every time Joe drops a biscuit they talk of earthquakes.
It was always thought that the quality of the food at Paul's Camps had a
lot to do with the strength and endurance of the men. No doubt it did,
but they were a husky lot to start with. As the feller said about fish
for a brain food, "It won't do you no good unless there is a germ there
to start with."
There must have been something to the food theory for the chipmunks that
ate the prune pits got so big they killed all the wolves and years later
the settlers shot them for tigers.
A visitor at one of Paul's camps was astonished to see a crew of men
unloading four-horse logging sleds at the cook-shanty. They appeared to
be rolling logs into a trap door from which poured clouds of steam.
"That's a heck of a place to land logs," he remarked.
"Them ain't logs," grinned a bull-cook, "them's sausages for the
teamsters' breakfast."
At Paul's camp up where the little Gimlet empties into the Big Auger,
newcomers used to kick because they were never served beans.
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