"Other Big Friend all right."
"Are the jacks awake?" asked Hippy.
"Git up now."
"Tell them to come here."
When the half-dressed lumberjacks came over to his cot, Hippy eyed them sternly.
"You're a fine bunch of ladies' men, aren't you? Dance the light fantastic while your bosses are trying to save the dam."
The jacks grinned sheepishly.
"What are you loafing around here for? Why don't you get out and start work on a new dam? You needn't think a little thing like a busted dam is going to stop Wingate & Gray. Go on now! You know what to do. We two are the only ones who've got a right to be lazy this morning. Wait a moment! Come back here!" commanded Hippy as his men started to go away.
"I take back what I said. You aren't ladies' men at all. You are a bunch of confounded rough-necks. Shake paws!" Hippy put out a hand, but was sorry for it afterwards, for the bear-like grips of the lumberjacks left it a "pulp," as Hippy Wingate expressed it.
Work on a new dam was begun that very day. Tom and Hippy, though lame and sore, and, at odd moments, a little dizzy, were at the dam all day long directing the work of clearing away the wreck while part of their force cut fresh spiles in the woods. The lumberjacks, wet to the skin, worked with tremendous force and to good purpose, for the organization that Tom Gray had developed and systematized, was as near a perfectly working machine as it was humanly possible to make it.