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. The bosses
and the men could never be interested in beans. E. E. Terrill tells us
the reason:

Once when the cook quit they had to detail a substitute to the job
temporarily. There was one man who was no good anywhere. He had failed
at every job. Chris Crosshaul, the foreman, acting on the theory that
every man is good somewhere, figured that this guy must be a cook, for
it was the only job he had not tried. So he was put to work and the
first thing he tackled was beans. He filled up a big kettle with beans
and added some water. When the heat took hold the beans swelled up till
they lifted off the roof and bulged out the walls. There was no way to
get into the place to cook anything else, so the whole crew turned in to
eat up the half cooked beans. By keeping at it steady they cleaned them