With a whoop, the Seven Axmen set about the task as if it were a great game. Being so large and strong, they had no fear of the animals, and as one blow from their great axes was usually enough to smash even the biggest hollow tree into splinters, they worked very fast. It was only a day or so before there was not a hollow tree to be found standing in all the Deacon‘s timberland, and with their hiding places all gone, the Agropelters also fled far away.

Paul was very much pleased that the woods were now safe for ordinary men, and he praised the Seven Axmen highly for their work. He set them to putting up bunkhouses and stables and the cook shanty for the new camp, and he ordered the Little Chore Boy to carry the word far and near that now, since the dangerous animals were all driven out of the woods, he would be giving high pay that winter to all good loggers who cared to join his crew.

Men soon began drifting into camp from every direction, and Paul hired all the best ones. A man had to be extra good to get a job with Paul Bunyan, but even so it wasn‘t so very long before he had gathered together as sturdy a bunch of woodsmen as has ever been seen.

It was along about this time that he made a trip back to town, where he saw the Deacon again and arranged all the little matters that were so far unsettled regarding the work, and when he started on his return trip to camp he was accompanied by Ole, the smith. Ole, or the Big Swede, as he was quite often called, was a slow-witted but amiable chap whose mind could never hold more than one idea at a time. He was gigantic in size — though not as big as Paul — and was a past-master in all that had to do with his trade of metal-working. From the first, he regarded Paul with a liking that was almost worship, and next to Paul in his affections came Babe, the Great Blue Ox. Indeed, so remarkable was his admiration for the magnificent animal that Paul at once turned over to him the duty of caring for Babe, which task he gladly accepted and continued to perform through many years. When finally his work as smith began to demand all of his time, he reluctantly turned Babe over to the gentle ministrations of Brimstone Bill, but that did not happen until a long while later.