Babe drank the river dry and sucked all the water upstream. The
logs came up river faster than they went down.
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Big Ole was the Blacksmith at Paul's headquarters camp on the Big Onion.
Ole had a cranky disposition but he was a skilled workman. No job in
iron or steel was too big or too difficult for him. One of the cooks
used to make doughnuts and have Ole punch the holes. He made the griddle
on which Big Joe cast his pancakes and the dinner horn that blew down
ten acres of pine. Ole was the only man who could shoe Babe or Benny.
Every time he made a set of shoes for Babe they had to open up another
Minnesota iron mine. Ole once carried a pair of these shoes a mile and
sunk knee deep into solid rock at every step. Babe cast a shoe while
making a hard pull one day, and it was hurled for a mile and tore down
forty acres of pine and injured eight Swedes that were swamping out
skidways. Ole was also a mechanic and built the Downcutter, a rig like a
mowing machine that cut down a swath of trees 500 feet wide.
-
In the early days, whenever Paul Bunyan was broke between logging
seasons, he traveled around like other lumberjacks doing any kind of
pioneering work he could find.
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