Stewart — Watt—Legends of Paul Bung an. 
645 
crew, who got his short leg from working all winter on one 
side of the pyramid, and who thus earned the nickname of 
“Rockin’ Horse.” From this single forty Bunyan’s crew 
cleared one hundred million feet of pine, and in the spring 
they started it down the river. Then began the difficulty, 
for it was not until they had passed their old camp several 
times that they realized that the river was round and had 
no outlet whatever. According to another version this 
logging occurred on a lake with no outlet. 
Runyan’s crew was so large that he was obliged to divide 
the men into three gangs; of these one was always going to 
work, one was always at work, and the third was always 
coming home from work. The cooking arrangements for 
so many men were naturally on an immense scale. Seven 
men with seven wheel-barrows were kept busy wheeling 
the prune-stones away from camp. The cook-stove was so 
extensive that three forties had to be cleared bare each week 
to keep up a fire, and an entire cord of wood was needed to 
start a blaze. One day as soon as the cook had put a loaf of 
bread into the oven he started to walk around the stove in 
order to remove the loaf from the other side, but long before 
he reached his destination the bread had burned to a crisp. 
Such loaves were, of course, gigantic,—so big, in fact, that 
after the crew had eaten the insides out of them, the hollow 
crusts were used for bunk-houses, or, according to a less 
imaginative account, for bunks. One legend reports that 
the loaves were not baked in a stove at all but in a ravine 
or dried river-bed with heat provided by blazing slashings 
along the sides. 
Such a stove as Bunyan’s demanded, of course, a pancake 
griddle of monstrous size. As a matter of fact, Bunyan’s 
cook, Joe Mufferon, used the entire top of the stove for a 
griddle and greased it every morning by strapping hams to 
the feet of his assistant cooks and obliging them to skate 
about on it for an hour or so. Of this famous tale there are. 
several versions. According to one the cook mixed his batter 
in a sort of concrete-mixer on the roof of the cook-shanty 
and spread it upon the stove by means of a connecting hose. 
A version from Oregon shows the influence of local condi¬ 
tions upon the Bunyan tales; from this version we learn that 
two hundred Japanese cooks with bacon-rinds or bear-steak 
strapped to their feet skated upon the stove before the cook 
