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[DECEMBER 1906 6 fe Sid 
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THE CHRISTMAS DANCE AT 
JIMMY FRIDAY’S 
BY SID HOWARD 
ILLUSTRATED BY LYNN BOGUE HUNT 
sAHEN Dan McAvay, 
4 the lead  teamster, 
stumped into camp, 
the: red flare of a 
frosty sunset lingered 
on the snow at the 
base of. ihe - tree 
trunks. He stamped 
with great 200-pound 
stamps on the bunk- 
house stoop, slammed 
the door, and seizing 
the chore boy’s broom leaning against 
the wood-box scratched vigorously at 
the clots of ice clinging to the fuzz of 
his “top socks.” The long room was 
empty, and having crossed to the cor- 
ner bunk he raised the blankets and 
abstracted three pairs of heavy woolen 
socks. These he carried to his own 
bunk near the cookery door, and lifting 
the bed-clothes buried them under the 

hay which formed his mattress. When 
the men came straggling in a few min- 
utes later, Dan, his feet “undressed” 
and his “stags’’ on, was splashing water 
on his face from a tin basin on the 
bench by the water barrels, and splut- 
tering like a boy in swimming. 
The camp was a large one. Ninety- 
five men slept in the double tier of 
bunks in the sleeping-camp and ate at 
the long tables in the cookery ad- 
joining. Irish and Scotch Canadians 
formed the bulk of the crew, big- 
shouldered, rough-voiced men of vast 
appetites and many oaths. 
In this formidable array of fierce, 
be-whiskered faces, the smooth cheeks 
and clean-lined chin of Jimmy Friday 
looked strikingly meek and boyish. His 
figure, too, seemed slight in compari- 
son to the burliness and raw-boned 
strength in the crowding figures of the 
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