urled itself
against the gate-lever at which Hippy and Tom were tugging.

Both saw the giant rise from the boiling flood.

"Too late! Save your--" Tom did not finish. Hippy and Tom at that
instant were catapulted into the air, hurled by the gate-lever, and fell
into the river below the dam with a splash.

Without an instant's hesitation, Willy Horse, followed by Spike, leaped
to the rescue, knowing well that only a few seconds lay between them and
the cataract of logs that was about to tumble over into the Little Big
Branch below the dam.

The rest of the jacks hesitated only for an instant, then they too
leaped into the river and made their way towards Tom and Hippy, both of
whom were unconscious. Willy Horse grabbed up Hippy with apparent ease,
and raised him to his own back just as he would shoulder a dead deer.

"Git Big Boss!" he shouted, and began struggling shoreward with his
burden.

In the meantime Spike had sprung to Tom Gray, but despite his great
strength he did not succeed in shouldering Tom.

"Give a hand here!" he bellowed.

The lumberjacks reached him at this juncture and, together, Spike and
his companions brought the unconscious man towards the shore.

Then the spiling gave way under the strain that for several minutes had
been put upon it, and the dam went out with a crash and a roar,
accompanied by a series of terrifying explosions.

It would have been an awesome sight to the Overland Riders had not their
attention, at that moment, been centered on the lumberjacks. The jacks
reached the shore only a few seconds before the structure gave way and
the logs, hurtled into the air, fell splashing into the flood below the
dam. Hippy and Tom were borne up the bank and laid on the ground.

"Are--are they dead?" gasped Emma.

"No," answered Miss Briggs, who had placed a finger on the pulse of
each.

"Please carry them to the bunk-house," directed Grace in a strained
voice, after Willy Horse had run quick fingers over the heads of the two
victims.

"Big Friends bump heads! Much all right soon, mebby," he grunted,
walking along beside Hippy as the jacks started with him and Tom towards
the house.

It was but a short time after their arrival there, however, when both
regained consciousness. Neither Tom nor Hippy knew whether they had been
hit by the log that struck the gate-lever, or whether they had been made
unconscious by their fall into the water. Both came to in a severe chill
and were pu