When Shaggycoat returned from his second summer's ramble, he brought home with him a large good natured beaver whom we will call Brownie.
This newcomer to the valley was a third larger than Shaggycoat, and lighter colored. The long hairs in his glossy coat were light brown, while his under fur was a drab. His tail was also larger and longer than that of his host.
Brownie turned out to be what is called a bank beaver. In France all the beavers are bank beavers; in America they were all house beavers originally, but they have been so crowded and hunted from their native haunts by trappers and frontiersmen, that many of them have become bank beavers; probably because this mode of life is less conspicuous, and leaves them better protected from the attacks of man, but they are a more easy prey to their natural enemies, and to starvation in the winter.
Naturalists have quarreled and disputed as scientists will, as to whether the bank beaver in America is a separate specie, or merely the house beaver, who has adopted the methods and manners of the bank beaver.
I am inclined to the latter view, as birds, animals, and even plants will modify their mode of life to suit changing conditions.
At first Shaggycoat liked Brownie very much. He was so good natured and playful that he made a pleasant companion, on the return trip home, but, when work upon the dam began, and he was invited to put his strong muscles in play, he demurred. There was no need of building a dam he thought. Why not be content with a hole in the bank, and then there would be no need of cutting these great trees, and tugging and hauling on logs and stones. Small trees furnished just as good bark as large ones, and were much easier to cut. But Shaggycoat did not like this lazy manner of living, besides he did not think it safe. When day after day Brownie refused to help on the dam, he flew into a rage with so lazy a fellow, and gave Brownie such a severe trouncing that he never dared show himself about the lake afterward, so he went a mile or so down stream, and set up housekeeping for himself. But there was not much house about it, for his home was merely a deserted otter's den, although he considered it quite adequate.
One naturalist asserts that the bank beaver in America is a forlorn, sorrowful fellow, who has been disappointed in love, and has to go through life without a mate; while another avers that he is a drone who will not labor, and so is driven from the colony.
Brownie certainly was a drone, and perhaps he had left his little mud love token along the watercourse that autumn, and it had remained unopened, but certainly his was a lonely life.
He took up his abode about a mile below the dam, and although they sometimes saw him watching them from a distance, he never dared again trespass on the premises of these more ambitious beavers.
His burrow was located where the river was deep so that he might be well protected from the waterside. He could not lay up a large supply of wood for food as the house beaver did, but he managed to secure considerable under roots and stones along the shore. Some of this the current carried down stream, and his stock ran short before spring.
Perhaps he thought of his snugly housed cousins on cold winter days and nights, as he nestled alone in his comfortless burrow. In the beaver houses, the warmth of several bodies, and the breath from many nostrils, kept the temperature quite comfortable, but lonely Brownie had to be his own bedfellow, and what warmth there was came from his own body, and warming one's self with one's own heat is rather a forlorn task.
Also when his supply of bark ran low, and he had to gnaw upon tree roots to keep the breath of life in his body, he remembered the house beaver's generous supply of wood.
If the winter was not too severe, the stream might be open for a while at the rapids near by, when he could replenish his store, but, floundering about in the deep snow in midwinter, leaving telltale tracks at every step, and an unmistakable beaver scent, was hazardous business. There were many creatures in the wilderness who were fiercer and stronger than the harmless beaver, and they all loved beaver meat.
As we have already seen, the bear would prowl about in beaver land, just before denning up, for a last smack of blood. The wildcat and the lynx were about as fond of beaver as of fish and they could watch for both at the same time, which made it doubly interesting. The sneaking wolverine also considered the beaver his particular titbit.
For all of these reasons Brownie would go hungry for several meals before he would venture outside to replenish his store of bark.
One evening late in November, he was leaving his burrow to go ashore and do some wood cutting when just at the entrance a premonition of danger came upon him. That peculiar sense of danger that many animals have told him that something was wrong. I have known several cases where dogs had premonitions of coming disaster in the family, and it was probably this instinctive power that told Brownie that something was waiting for him at the mouth of his burrow, so he just poked the tip of his nose out, to see what it was that made him so uncomfortable.
Quick as a flash a mighty paw armed with a raking set of claws, struck him a stunning blow in the nose. He had just sense enough left to wriggle back a few feet into the burrow, and keep quiet.
Although his nose was bleeding profusely and he had been severely stunned, in a few seconds he recovered, for without doctors, or medicine, the wild creatures have a way of recovering rapidly from any hurt.
From the strong bear scent that penetrated his burrow, Brownie knew that his enemy was a bear, even before Bruin reached his strong arm in and tried to poke him out. But he had no mind to be poked, so he wriggled out of reach and was glad that he had escaped so easily. The bear hung about the spot for a day or two, often watching cat-like at the hole. Sometimes he would go back into the woods, hoping to entrap the beaver into coming out, but Brownie had no desire to become further acquainted with the ugly fellow and so stayed in, although this two days' imprisonment hindered his wood cutting.
The next watcher at his front door was the mean, sneaking wolverine, who kept him a prisoner for two or three days more. This enemy was even more to be dreaded than the bear, for he would have dug the beaver out if the mouth of his burrow had not been so far under water. He did start to dig him out from the bank above, running a shaft down to strike the beaver den. He would have found the burrow without a doubt, but a hard freeze put a stop to his digging so he left the bank beaver and went up to the dam to try his luck with the house beavers.
All these things made Brownie's supply of wood much smaller than it should have been. But the trouble was not there. He should have been more provident, and worked earlier in the autumn when he had a chance.
Finally the ice door was shut down over lake and stream, and there was no more going out for the beaver family.
Now Brownie was unwise again, for he did not guard his store carefully, but ate greedily without a thought of how long the winter before him might be.
By the time the great January thaw came he had entirely exhausted his supply of bark and had gnawed all the tree roots that he could reach under the ice.
He would have famished in a few days more had not the great thaw opened an airhole in the ice, through which he escaped into the adjacent woods. He knew that this was hazardous, but hunger impelled him and hunger is a mighty argument. For about a week all went well and he was congratulating himself upon his good fortune, and had about concluded that he had been too cautious, when the unexpected happened. This night he went forth as usual to cut sapling for his supper but did not return.
Just what happened I shall not tell, but we will follow his tracks in the snow and see if we can guess.
For three or four rods we can see where he floundered along to a clump of bushes, and here there are four ragged stumps and near by three small poplars lying in the snow. Then here are the marks of brush being dragged along on the snow to the burrow. Then there is a second beaver track leading back to the fallen poplars, and here is another track coming from down-stream and following beside the beaver track. This track shows four large paw prints in a bunch and the creature did not trot but hopped like a rabbit.
Now he has stopped, for the paw prints are spread out as though he stood watching and listening. See where the fur on his belly brushed the snow as he crept forward. Now he is crouching low, the belly mark on the snow is plainer. What a break in the track is this. Three great jumps, each measuring ten feet, and here are other tracks of the same kind coming from two directions.
See how the snow is tramped and blurred. Ah, there is where the hunter and hunted met, and the pale winter moon and the gleaming stars know what happened.
There are still a few small drops of blood, and eager tongues have licked up many more, for the snow is blotted and streaked with these tongue marks. Here and there are brown hairs that tell their pathetic story to the woodsman who can see it all in the tracks as well as though it had happened before his own eyes.
The unfortunate wood-cutter had fallen a victim to one of those ferocious lynx bands, that range the woods in extreme winters when hunger drives them to hunt in company. It had been cleverly done as things are, in the woods. One of the company had come up the stream and cut off the beaver's chance of escape to his burrow. He had then followed on the fresh track to the poplars where the band had closed in on their unfortunate prey.
Only the uncanny night knows how pitiful was the cry from the terrified and agonized beaver as these three furies hurled themselves upon him and in fewer seconds than it takes to tell it, tore him to shreds.
When the tardy spring at last came to Beaver City, it was with a rush.
On the first day of March the snow was three feet deep in the woods along the foothills, and two feet upon the smooth surface of the beavers' lake. By the tenth of the month, one might search long to find even a small snow-bank along the north side of the woods, or behind some protecting boulder.
The wind, the rain, and the sun had all combined to bring about this marvelous change.
For three days "it had rained suds," as the country people say, and then a merry south wind had blown across the fog-covered snow-banks.
All the little streams hastening down the mountainside became raging torrents, and the larger stream emptying into Beaver Lake, fairly went mad.
In a single night it rose several feet, breaking up the ice, and tossing it about as a child might his toys.
In some places the great gleaming cakes were shouldered out upon the shore, and piled up in massive blockhouses. In other places they jammed, making a very good ice dam across the stream. Then the water would set back until it felt strong enough to cope with the ice, when it would sweep the dam away and go thundering down-stream tossing the ice about and sweeping all before it.
It was such a jam as this that dammed the water just above Beaver Lake, holding it until the stream foamed and raged like an infuriated monster. Then with a roar like thunder it burst through. Thousands of tons of ice accumulated and piled up mountains high. The ice in the lake was broken up like glass, and the mighty weight of all these contending forces, pressed continually upon the beaver's strong dam.
For a while the sturdy old pines which were the backbone of the structure held, but finally, creaking, groaning and snapping, they were wrenched from their places, and with a great rush the beaver dam went out. Then hundreds of grating, grinding, thundering cakes of ice followed after the rushing waters.
When the ice jam struck the upper end of the island where the lodges were, Shaggycoat knew that it was no place for him and his family, so led a precipitate flight for terra firma. They were fortunate enough to find an open place between the cakes of ice at the lower end of the island, and all escaped into the alder bushes along the shore.
But they did not feel safe out in the open, with no house to flee to, so as soon as the ice went out and the water fell, they went back to the burrows.
When the spring freshet had passed, even the entrances to these strongholds were left high and dry, and the broad area that had been their lake looked very much as it had the first time Shaggycoat saw it.
It would never do to leave the female beavers and the youngsters in this unprotected way while the males were off for their summer ramble, so they constructed a brush and stone dam that should flow a small area, and make the lodges again tenable. This was done by weighting down the brush with heavy stones, letting the butts of the bushes point down-stream. This structure was finally covered with sods and mud, making a good temporary dam.
When Shaggycoat returned from his third summer of rambling in distant lakes and streams he brought back three sturdy pairs of beaver, whom he had invited to share his pleasant valley.
There was a definite plan in the wise head of our beaver, for the furtherance of which he needed more help than his small colony now afforded.
When the water had stood six feet deep in the bed of the stream, where the old pines had been, it had flowed the lowlands from foothill to foothill, and had stretched away up-stream until it was lost in the distance. The picture of this silvern lake, sparkling and shimmering in the bright spring sunlight, had captivated Shaggycoat, who had seen it all from a knoll on shore. The old dam and the old lake, covering about half this territory, would never do for him again. There must be a dam built that would flow all this country, and he would be the builder.
When the water had fallen, he had gone over the meadows, noting by the watermark upon trees and bushes just how his lake would extend, and how deep the water would be in certain places. The flood had surveyed the meadows for him, and all he had to do was to look about.
He had noticed when the water stood six feet deep in the channel, that the width of the stream where the dam would be placed was about one hundred and fifty feet, so this would be the length of his dam.
Although it was still early in the fall, no time was lost. The task before them was seemingly almost impossible for such small creatures.
Ten eager wood-cutters were sent up-stream about a mile to a poplar grove, where they began felling trees of from six to twelve inches in diameter. These were cut into logs about three feet in length, and tumbled into the stream. When it became choked or the sticks lodged along the shore, two or three beavers were detailed to act as river-men, so they pushed and pulled, swimming about among the logs until the channel was free again. Several two-year-olds worked industriously, gathering flood wood that had lodged upon the meadows, after the spring freshet. This was also pushed into the water and started down-stream.
On the site of the new dam, Shaggycoat and Brighteyes, with one other old beaver, were working away with might and main, straightening out the remains of the old dam, and getting the foundations of the new structure ready.
Soon the poplar logs came floating down to the waiting builders. Here they were seized by strong paws, and carried upon sturdy backs to their place, in the cobwork dam.
For the first two feet, the dam would be built three tiers wide. This would make the thickness at the base about ten feet. The cracks between the logs were plastered up with sods and mud or if it seemed to call for more weight stones were occasionally used.
Soon the logs and drift-wood began to come down faster than the three at the dam could handle it for it must be laid nicely, and often one stick was placed in several positions before it suited. It would never do to have any of this building material go down-stream so two or three of the cutting gang were shifted to the dam, and the work went on.
Whenever the logs in the stream grew scarce, some of the workers at the dam went back to cutting logs. When the logs in the current jammed, river-men were quickly hurried to loosen them. There was one accident that marred the pleasure of dam-building and made the day memorable in the colony. This did not stop the work, for these things happen in the woods and the waters, where they get used to the unexpected.
One of Shaggycoat's first litter, who was now a sturdy beaver of three summers, was felling a poplar larger than most of the trees which they were using.
He was a famous wood-cutter, and wanted to distinguish himself by cutting a large tree. He had worked away all night, and when the others stopped at daylight his tree was not yet down so he stayed to finish it, but, as the morning hours went by and he did not return to the lodge, Shaggycoat went in search of him.
He found him lying at the stump of the fallen tree with his skull crushed. He had evidently tried to take one more bite at the tottering tree, when a prudent beaver would have stopped, and his head had been crushed between the stump and the falling trunk.
This is an accident that sometimes occurs, although as a whole these little wood-cutters are very cautious.
There was nothing to do in this case but leave the unfortunate victim where he had fallen, but the tree was never used.
When the dam was two feet high, it was narrowed to two tiers of logs. Then they could get on faster, but the higher it went, the longer it had to be carried out at the ends. As the water set back it was much easier to float the logs down.
The three tiers of logs at the bottom of the dam were occasionally tied together by putting on a log ten feet long that would lie across all three tiers. The cutting and placing of such a stick would take the combined strength of four or five beavers.
When this long stick was ready, extra help was summoned and it was rolled into the stream.
About the same tactics were used in placing it in the dam, but, when it was once placed, it tied the three tiers of logs firmly together.
When the water rose too high above the dam, a small opening would be made just large enough to keep it a little below the working line.
Thus, night after night they worked, felling trees, floating down logs, and placing them, bringing mud and sods, and slowly moulding the whole into a strong symmetrical structure.
Men would have required skilful engineers with levels and other instruments and much figuring before the work had been begun, but not so the beaver. The spring freshet had done the surveying to Shaggycoat's entire satisfaction, and the small difficulties were overcome as fast as they arose by their remarkable building genius.
I do not suppose the beaver knew the old maxim that "water seeks its level," but they always acted as though they did, and were continually profiting by the fact.
Before the first of December, the dam was completed, at least for that year. This kind of a dam could be enlarged at any time, as the needs of Beaver City grew.
Then the lodges had to be attended to. The new level of water had flooded the lower story of the old lodge on the island, so the top was ripped off, and a new floor laid and another story was added.
While the old lodges were being repaired, four new houses went up, so that the colony now numbered seven lodges, while the lake stretched back through the lowlands for more than a mile.
Along the newly formed shores, alder bushes now stood deep in the water. When it had frozen over, and fresh bark could not longer be gotten, these bushes would be remembered.
At last the great freeze came; the glass door was shut down over the lake, and Jack Frost installed as doorkeeper until spring-time.
But what cared the beaver? Their lodges were now frozen like adamant, and the new dam was equal to the task put upon it. There were cords of poplar logs stored along the dam under the water, and thrust into the mud about the lodges, so they could eat and sleep while the winter months went by. They had done their work well, and this was their reward.
Joe Dubois, or Beaver Joe, as he was known to the Factor and his fellow woodsmen, was the most successful trapper who had ever baited steel jaws for the Hudson Bay Company in all its long history of two hundred and twenty-five years. Not in all the howling wilderness from the Great Lakes to the mouth of the Mackenzie, and from Labrador to the Selkirks, was there another who brought in such packs of skins.
Joe's fellow trappers said that mink and muskrat would play tag on the pans of his traps just for fun, and that the beaver loved Joe's body scent on the trap, better than its own castor, an oily substance taken from the beaver and nearly always used in baiting the trap.
Joe was a half-breed, his father being a Frenchman and his mother an Indian girl. It was his father who had given him the nickname of Beaver Joe, but his mother called him by a long Indian name, which I can neither spell nor pronounce, but it signified man of many traps.
This famous woodsman always went further into the wilderness than any other trapper, and his rounds of traps were spread over a larger area. He had to travel fifty miles through a trackless wilderness to make the circle of his traps. How true his Indian's instinct must have been to scatter several hundred traps over an area of fifty miles, and then go to them month after month unerringly. How easy one could have gone astray in the shifting gray glooms of the snow-laden forest, which changed from week to week as the snow was piled higher and higher and the full fury of winter settled on the land.
But Joe was never lost, and owing to his Indian inheritance, and his knowledge of the woods in wind and rain, snow and sleet, he rarely lost a trap.
He always located his cabin at a central point where he could return to it every two or three days.
His was not the ordinary shack but a well built cabin with a hole about six by eight under it called the cellar.
Why Joe wanted a good cabin, instead of a rude shack, and why he took pains to make it comfortable, you will see later.
On the fourth summer of his rambles, Shaggycoat went much further from home than usual. This nomadic habit grew upon him, and each year he visited new lakes and streams. But this year he left all his old landmarks far behind and penetrated a new country.
Occasionally he saw signs that made him think this country was inhabited by the strange creature who had visited his lake two years before, in the great red duck. Something told him that it was a fearful country but curiosity and a desire to visit new places impelled him on and on.
Once he heard a loud pounding in the forest near the stream, and going cautiously forward, saw one of the strange creatures standing by a large tree, pounding upon it with mighty strokes. He was about to turn and flee from the place in haste, when he noticed a tremor in the top of the tree. He had seen this shudder in a tree many times before and knew well what it meant, so waited to watch and listen.
Then the strange creature struck upon the tree a few times more and it wavered, as though uncertain where to lay its tall form. Then with a rush and a roar, and a thunderous sound that rolled away through the forest, it fell and was no more a tree, but only a stick of timber.
When the sable mantle of night had been spread over the land and the creature who stood on his hind legs and pounded at the tree so vigorously had gone away, Shaggycoat went ashore and examined his work critically.
Tree-felling was in his line and this interested him very much.
Perhaps the queer creature was a beaver after all, for he was cutting trees just as they did about his own lake, but when he had examined the stump, he felt quite sure it was not the work of a beaver. The cleft was very smooth, and there were no teeth marks. The trunk had been cut in two, and here the cut was also smooth. The chips were much larger than those left by a beaver.
During the next few days Shaggycoat saw signs of much tree-cutting and they were all evidently cut by the creature who pounded on the trunk with his bright stick. The following week he came upon something that interested and astonished him even more than this, and that was a real dam, more symmetrical than his own, and holding in its strong arms a beautiful lake. He was sure that the dam was not made by beavers, for many of the logs used in its construction were too large for a beaver to manage. Besides there was a queer doorway in the middle of the dam for the water to run through. The lake was rather low and considerable water was escaping through the door.
Our industrious dam-builder thought this waste of water a great pity, and although the dam did not belong to him, he set to work and in half a day had stopped the sluiceway very effectively.
This industry greatly astonished the real owners of the dam, who discovered it a week later. They were a party of log-men, who had built the dam to help them in getting their logs through a long stretch of shallow water.
The following day Shaggycoat came upon a great number of logs in the stream.
They stretched miles and miles, and he thought these must be remarkable creatures, who could cut so many logs. He also thought it was getting to be a perilous country, and no place for a beaver who wished to live a long life, so he started homeward.
The leaves had just turned red upon the soft maple along the little water courses and that was a sign that he always heeded.
The second day of his return journey, while wading through a shallow in the stream, he put his remaining good forepaw in one of Joe Dubois's traps. It was only a mink trap, and would not have held, had he been given time to wrench himself free, but he had barely sprung the trap when the alder bushes on the bank parted and the celebrated trapper, club in hand, stood upon the shore within ten feet of the terrified beaver.
"Oh, by gar!" exclaimed Joe at the sight of him. "You is just one pig, fine skin by gar. I got you.
"Now you run away, I shoot. You keep still, I kill you with my club. That not tear you fine coat."
So Joe got hold of the end of the chain and began carefully working the beaver in toward him, holding the club ready.
When he had drawn poor Shaggycoat within striking distance he raised the club slowly.
The beaver saw the flash of the sunlight on the stick and the sinister look in Joe's eye, and something told him that his hour had come. He had seen a beaver killed once by a falling limb, and he knew quite well how stiff and motionless he would be when the club had descended. All in a second the picture of his woodland lake and Beaver City flashed before him and there was Brighteyes, and the beaver kids all waiting expectantly for him; all the colony waiting for his home-coming that they might begin repairs upon the dam.
The sun had never shone so brightly in all his life as it did at that moment, and the murmur of a brook had never sounded so sweet in his ears. But some great lady in the far away city was waiting impatiently for her cloak, and the factor at the post was holding out two bright shillings, so Joe brought the club down with a mighty stroke.
But the love of life was strong in Shaggycoat, as it is in nearly all animate things, so, quick as a flash, he twitched his head to one side, and the club fell in the stream with a great splash, filling the trapper's eyes with water.
"By gar," ejaculated Joe, blowing the water from his mouth, and laying down the club to wipe his eyes. "You is one mighty slick beaver, that you is, but it wasn't smart of you to get into my trap. Dat time you was one pig fool." Then a sudden inspiration came to Joe.
"By gar," he exclaimed, "I good mind to pring you home to my leetle gal. How she laugh when she see you. You pehave, I do it. You bother me, I prain you."
Then Joe scratched his head and thought. How could it be done? Finally a plan came to him, for he went to the alder bushes and cut a crotched stick, and another stick which was straight. With the crotched stick, he pinned Shaggycoat's neck to the ground, while with a piece of buckskin thong taken from his pocket he made a tight fitting collar for the beaver's neck. Then with another piece of thong he bound his hind legs tightly together. When this had been done, he passed a stout stick through the collar and the other end of it, between the beaver's hind legs. He then loosed the trap, and, grasping the stick half-way between the collar and the thong on the hind legs, started off with the unhappy beaver, carrying him, so that all the landscape looked upside down.
At first, Shaggycoat struggled violently but whenever he struggled Joe tapped him on the nose with his club and he soon saw that his best course was to keep still and let his captor carry him wherever he would.
The stick through the collar choked him so that he could hardly breathe, and the thong on his hind legs cut into the muscles, but even these discomforts were better than the club from which he had so narrowly escaped, so he behaved very well for a wild thing and watched Joe's every motion, always with a view of making a break for freedom at the first opportunity. But there seemed little chance of escape as long as the stick held him stretched out at his full length so that he could not get at his fetters.
So the woods went by with the trees all upside down, sticking their tops into the sky.
The blood surged into Shaggycoat's head, and his eyes grew dim. The great sleep was coming to him, that into which his grandfather had fallen, from which there was no awakening.
When Shaggycoat regained his sight and full consciousness, for the stick and the tight collar on his neck had choked him almost into the long sleep, he was lying on the floor of what seemed to be a very large lodge, only this lodge was square and his own in the beaver colony was circular. It was many times larger on the inside than even the great house in which Shaggycoat's own numerous family lived.
There must be some underground passages, he thought, just as there were in the beaver house, surely such powerful creatures as these would take that precaution. He would watch his chance, and before they knew it plunge down the tunnel to freedom.
Once in the water, this terrifying creature would not get hold of him again.
There were two of the strangers in the great lodge; the one with the cruel eyes, and a look that made Shaggycoat's long dark hair stand erect on his neck, and the other, smaller, and gentler.
When the smaller one talked, it was in a low, sweet voice that soothed Shaggycoat's wild terror of being held a prisoner.
Her voice reminded him of a little rill gurgling through pebbly grottoes, and he was glad when she spoke. When Shaggycoat first struggled to consciousness, she had been bending over him and somehow he was not afraid to have her look at him, for there was no murder in her eyes, as there was in Joe's.
"I pring him to you, leetle gal," said Joe, "one long way, by gar. He heavy, like one pig stone. He your beaver, you got no dog. He good pet when you tame him. Injun often keep tame beaver in lodge. He pretty, Wahawa, don't you think, leetle gal?"
"Yes, very handsome, Joe, and I thank you. He will make a good pet if I can tame him, but he is rather too old."
Wahawa, or Running-water, as her people called her, was Joe's Indian wife. She had been at the mission school for two years, and as she was very bright, spoke quite good English for the wilderness.
"See, how he trembles, Joe," she said. "He shakes like the aspen, when the fingers of the breezes are playing with it. Do you think I can tame him?"
"O yes, you tame anything," laughed Joe. "You tame me and I wild as hawk."
"See how he starts every time we move or speak," said the dusky daughter of the forest. "I am afraid we scare his wits out, before he knows us."
Shaggycoat squeezed into the darkest corner of the shack, where he stood trembling with fright. There were many sights and smells in the room that filled him with fear. First there was the strong repellent man-scent. This he always associated with traps and the "thunder stick" that killed the wild creatures so easily. One of these fearful things now rested on some hooks against the wall and the hooks looked very much like a deer's horns. There were a great many of those cruel things that lay in the water waiting for the paws of beaver or otter, hanging upon the wall, suspended by the rattling snake-like thing that Shaggycoat knew the sound of, as it clattered over the stones. Some of these things were also lying on the floor, and, as Joe kicked them into a corner, they made the noise that the beaver knew so well.
"Don't, Joe, you scare him," said the Indian girl, seeing how the beaver started at the sound.
"Py thunder, we not run this shack just for one beaver," retorted Joe. "He get used to noise. If he don't, I take his coat off, then he no mind noise."
At first the captive beaver was so terrified that he noticed almost nothing of his surroundings, but his eyes roamed wildly about for some underground passage through which he might escape, and, seeing none, he got as far into one corner as he could.
Presently he noticed what at first looked like another beaver lying on the floor asleep near him. But there was something strange and unnatural about the beaver that filled Shaggycoat with fear.
He seemed to be all flattened out just as though a tree or large stone had fallen upon him. But even any kind of a beaver's company was preferable to these creatures into whose power he had fallen, so Shaggycoat poked the sleeping beaver, to waken him.
His nose was not warm and moist, as it should have been, but dry and hard. Shaggycoat poked again, and the sleeping beaver moved, not by his own power, but the slight touch he had given had moved him. Again the bewildered Shaggycoat nosed his companion and the sleeper rolled over.
At the sight that met his eyes, every hair upon Shaggycoat's back and neck stood up, for the sleeping beaver was not a live beaver at all, but merely a beaver skin that had come off in some unaccountable manner. He had often seen the winter coat of the water-snake lying on the bank of the stream, but never that of a beaver. What strange unknown thing was this that had happened to his dead kinsman!
Presently Joe opened a trap-door in the floor to descend to his improvised cellar, and quick as a flash the captive beaver shot down ahead of him. But, alas, no fresh cool lake opened its inviting arms to receive him as he had expected. Instead of this he landed with a bump on the bottom of a cold, dark hole, which seemed even more like a prison than the room above.
It was something though to be away from their eyes, especially Joe's, and it was quiet down here and perhaps he could think what to do, so Shaggycoat wriggled into a far corner and kept very quiet while Joe rummaged about for flour and bacon. When he ascended the ladder to the room above, the beaver felt less terrified, although he knew that his plight was still desperate.
He had not been long alone when he began to dig himself a burrow in one corner of the cellar. Perhaps it would lead down to the lake, for surely these creatures would not be so foolish as to build their lodge on the land. Even if he could not strike water, the burrow would make a place of refuge where he could get away from the noise and the man-scent that fairly made his nostrils tingle.
So industriously he labored that when Wahawa came down the following morning to see if the beaver was spoiling their provisions, she could see nothing of him at first. Finally, after flashing the torchlight into all the corners, she discovered a pile of dirt, and holding the torch down to the entrance of the hole, found the beaver staring wild-eyed and pitifully up at her from the bottom of his new hiding-place.
"O thou, Puigagis, king of the beavers," she cried in a low rippling voice that again reminded the prisoner of the purling of a tiny stream, "come up to Wahawa, whose name is Running-water. She will not hurt you. She will feed you and caress you." The beaver was always the Indian's friend, teaching him industry and the need of a store of food for the cold winter months.
"Come up to Wahawa, O king of the beavers, and she will be your friend. The great trapper has gone to the lake and the streams to visit his many traps and cannot harm you; besides you belong to Running-water. Come up and she will be your friend."
But the poor captive only cowered at the bottom of his burrow and would not come up, so the Indian girl finally went away disappointed, but like the rest of her race she was patient, and knew that it takes days and weeks, or even months to gain the confidence of the wild creatures. Nevertheless she had accomplished more than she knew, for Shaggycoat was not afraid of her voice. There seemed something about its tones akin to the wind and the waters; a touch of nature, like the song of a bird or the murmur of distant rivers. There was something in the voice that told him this creature was kind.
Later on in the day when she brought him a maple sapling that she had cut with a hatchet, he felt that his confidence in the kindness of this stranger was not misplaced and although he was too frightened and homesick to eat, yet it did him good to see the tempting bark so near and to know that the Indian girl understood his wants.
When darkness again spread its sombre mantle over the land, Shaggycoat, hearing Joe's voice in the room above and the rattle of chains, as he kicked some traps into one corner, scurried into his burrow.
There were two events in Shaggycoat's life during the old days when he had been a beaver kid, playing with his brothers and sisters on the shores of their forest lake, in the old beaver city that he always remembered in time of peril. Both were startling and tragic and they had burned into his brain so deeply that he had never forgotten them, and he remembered them now in his lonely burrow.
One evening, just at twilight, he had been searching in the bushes along the shore for wild hops, a favorite dainty with young beavers, when he heard a noise in the woods close at hand. A strange noise always meant, "keep still and watch and listen." Although Shaggycoat was only five or six months old, the wild instinct of animal cunning was strong enough in him to prompt this wariness.
Presently the bushes parted and a tall, imperious creature came striding down to the lake. As he was coming directly for the spot where the young beaver was concealed, Shaggycoat made haste to scramble into the water, where he hid under the lily pads.
At the sound of his splashing, the tall creature stopped and snorted and stamped. He, too, was suspicious of strange noises, but, finally concluding that it was either a big bullfrog or a musquash, he strode down and began drinking in the lake. He stood very close to Shaggycoat, who should have kept quiet and let the stranger drink in peace, but curiosity, which is strong in many wild creatures, prompted the young beaver to peep out from under his lily pad screen at the tall stranger.
Shaggycoat did not think that the buck looked harmful so he slowly edged out from under the pads to get a better look at him. Then quick as a flash one of those slender hoofs rose and fell, and the young beaver went kicking to the bottom, leaving a bright streak of blood behind him. One of the older beavers found him half an hour later, lying on his back in the lily pads, stunned and bleeding. His head did not resume its normal size for several days, but the event taught him a lesson that he never forgot and after that day curiosity was always tempered with prudence.
The second event that Shaggycoat could never forget happened like the first just at dusk. This time neither he nor his brother with whom he was playing was at fault, but the thing happened, as things do in the woods and the waters, and when the ripple had passed, the lake was as placid and smiling as ever.
They were playing in the shallows. The game might have been water-tag, or perhaps it was just rough and tumble, but, in either event, they were having a jolly time. The sun had just set in a blaze of glory at the upper end of the lake and long shadows were stealing across the water. Then upon the stillness there broke a peculiar sound, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o; the first few notes long and loud, and the last short and soft like an echo. It was the hunting cry of the great horned owl, going forth on his twilight quest for food. There were two impatient owlets in the top of a tall tree, back in the woods who were waiting for their supper of mice and chipmunks or small birds. But Shaggycoat and his brother had never even heard of the great horned owl so they continued their romp in the lily pads.
Who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, came the cry again, this time close at hand, but the young beavers continued their play and the great horned owl his hunt.
Suddenly Shaggycoat noticed something large above them that darkened the sky and which kept flapping like the bushes along the lake when the wind blew. There were two fiery, yellow balls and a strong hook between them, and two other sets of hooks that looked sharp as the brambles on the thorn-bush. This much Shaggycoat saw, for the great flapping thing was just above them and much nearer than he wished. Then a set of hooks reached down and gripped his brother in the back of the neck and bore him away. Higher and higher the strange thing went, carrying the owlets' supper in the strong set of hooks, and Shaggycoat knew by the piteous cry floating back that something dreadful had happened, but he was too young to understand just what.
Then a strange terror of the woods and the shore came over him and he fled to the lodge and did not leave it again for days.
Where his brother went, and who the stranger was, Shaggycoat never knew, but the owlets in the top of the tall tree in the deep woods tasted beaver meat and found it good.
"Joe," said Wahawa to the trapper one evening, as they sat by the fire, munching corn bread and bacon, "I believe you have caught the sacred beaver of my people, the good Puigagis, King of all the Beavers."
Joe laughed. "Py gar, what foolishness you tink in your hade now. You is one foolish leetle gal, he your sacred beaver, you say?"
But Wahawa did not laugh. She looked very serious as she replied, "It is nothing to laugh at, Joe. If this is really the sacred beaver, no good will come of it. Did you notice he had lost one forepaw? My people always let a maimed beaver go when they trap him because of something that happened many moons ago. Listen, Joe, and I will tell."
The man of many traps looked interested for he, too, was touched with superstition, and fearful of anything that might affect his good luck as a trapper.
"As many moons ago as the old pine back of the shack has needles on its boughs," began Wahawa, "the Great Spirit became angry with my people. The squaws said it was because the warriors went on the war-path instead of killing and preparing meat for the winter months, and the braves said it was because the squaws were lazy and did not raise corn. But for one reason or another the Manito was angry so he covered the face of the sun with his right hand, and it was like a sick man's smile, and he covered the moon and the stars by night with his blanket and they were no longer bright, but like a camp-fire that has gone out.
"The corn did not grow in the summer-time, and the snow and the wind were furious in the winter.
"Such cold as this was never known in the land before and never since. The ice froze so deeply on lake and river that it could not be broken and no fish could be taken. The deer all yarded in the deep forest and did not stir abroad so the hunters could not find them, and many perished before spring. Still deeper and deeper fell the snow and colder and colder grew the breath of the wind, and the kiss of the frost was like death.
"The warm skins of bear and beaver were no longer warm and the camp-fire had lost its heat.
"Finally, the warriors were obliged to kill their ponies, and the wolves, running in great packs, came down to help with the feast. At night they would stand about the camp, just on the border of the firelight, watching and waiting. They seemed to know that powder and ball were low in the pouch of the warrior, and that he no longer had strength to draw the bow. They knew that the camp-fires would soon go out, and the warriors and the squaws fall asleep at their post. So the great gray wolfs watched and waited for they knew that the hour of feasting was near at hand.
"Then my grandmother, who was the daughter of the chief, and whose withered lips told me the story, had a dream.
"She dreamed that Puigagis, the King of the Beavers, came into her lodge and spoke to her in the tongue of her people.
"'O Singing Bird, daughter of the great chief,' he said, and his voice was sweet to hear. 'The great spirit was angry because his warriors did not hunt, and the women were lazy, but he has seen the suffering of thy people, and the great wolf, Famine, looking in at your lodges. This melted his anger and he has sent me to save your people. Tell your father, the chief, to send his warriors in the morning to a valley, one day's march to the northward, and they shall find a colony of beavers as large as an Indian village. Many lodges they shall see, and all will contain beaver meat, and warm furs to protect them and their women against the wind and frost. I, Puigagis, the King of all the Beavers, will go before them to show the way. My own life and all the lives of my kind I will give to save the lives of the redmen and their daughters.'
"Then the wind lifted Puigagis, King of the Beavers, in its strong arms and bore him away over the tree-tops.
"The daughter of the chief awoke and saw that the camp-fire was very low, and that the wind was shaking the tepee as though to tear it down. When she put new faggots on the fire and it blazed up, she saw there were beaver tracks on the snow and her dream had been true. She awoke her father, the chief, who called his warriors and they examined the tracks in the snow and saw that they were the tracks of a beaver; a beaver of great size, who had lost one forepaw in a trap.
"The chief then bade his warriors make ready for in the morning they would go to the lake of which the King of the Beavers had spoken.
"In the morning the sun was brighter than it had been for weeks, and they started out with more hope than they had felt for many moons. They went due north as Puigagis, the King of the Beavers, had directed, and, whenever they were uncertain of the way, they would examine the snow and always at just the right moment would find the tracks of the three-footed beaver.
"Although he went on the wings of the wind, he touched the snow every mile or two that they might not go astray and miss the Beaver Lake.
"Late in the afternoon, when they were weary and very cold with the long march, they came to a beautiful valley, and there before them, covered with snow, stretched the broad bosom of the lake.
"Here and there showing their domes above the ice were beaver lodges, many more than the oldest hunters had ever seen. On the top of the largest lodge of all sat Puigagis, King of all the Beavers, and the warriors saw that his right forepaw had been taken off by a trap. A moment he sat there as though in welcome, then disappeared as if the lodge had opened and swallowed him.
"Then the warriors built great fires upon the ice, made a hole in the beaver dam with their hatchets and strong stakes which they cut in the woods, and destroyed the entire colony, with the exception of the great lodge of Puigagis, King of all the Beavers. This they would not touch, lest evil befall them; nor will they take the skin of a maimed beaver to this day.
"They loaded their packs with meat and skins until they bent beneath them. The wind and weather befriended them on their homeward journey. The beaver meat and the new skins kept life in the Indian village until the great Spirit lifted his hand from the face of the sun, till flowers and birds returned and the children of the woods were again glad.
"But the three-footed beaver they will not trap or harm to this day and it is an ill omen to hold one captive."
"Dat ees vun fine story," commented Joe, as the narrator finished. "Maybe he true, maybe he not. I do not know me. But he ver good," and Joe blew rings of blue smoke and watched them meditatively.
"Did you ever hear how the beaver got his flat tail?" asked Wahawa.
"By gar, no, I tink he always have he. Tell one more pretty story, leetle gal."
"Well, this was the way," replied the Indian girl.
"Many, many moons ago, so long ago that it is only known by pictures that my people cut in stone, there was a King Beaver, wiser and larger than all his fellows. In those days, the beaver had a round bushy tail like the raccoon, but he saw one day when he was building a house that it would be very handy to have a flat tail. He pondered long on how to get it. Finally a plan came to him and he called the four strongest beavers in the land and told them to bring a large flat stone.
"When they had brought the stone, the King Beaver placed his tail upon another flat stone and made the four strong beavers drop the stone they had brought upon his tail. It hurt him very much but he shut his teeth tight and thought how nice it would be to have a flat tail. When they lifted the stone off his tail, it was not as flat as he wished, so they tried again, but still it did not suit him, but he thought they had flattened it enough for that day.
"Every day for a week he had the four strong beavers drop the stone on his tail until at last it was flat enough. After that he used it so much in handling mud that the hair soon wore off, and it looked just as the beaver tail does now. The descendants of this beaver all had flat tails, and they were so much stronger and better workmen that they survived all the other kinds and the round-tailed beavers soon became extinct.
"There is another Indian legend about how the beaver learned to build houses. Once an Indian caught a beaver in a pitfall and took him home to his wigwam where he kept him all winter. The beaver saw how warm and nice the Indian house was and the following fall when he escaped he built himself a mud house as near like the Indian's as he could, and he was the first beaver to live in a lodge."
"Ver good stories," commented Joe. "Ver good. Maybe they true, maybe they not, but I tink He make um beaver tail flat, because He know the beaver want a flat tail. And for He," Joe pointed with his thumb to the roof of the shack, "He give de eagle hees strong wing because he live in the cloud, an' de fish fins, because he want to swim. He made de deer with springs in his laigs because he got no teeth to bite his enemy, nor claws. He made de fox cunning becase he not strong, so he run mighty fast like de wind. De wildcat an' de bar, He also give claws an' strong arms, so they all lib an' not starb.
"De flower it smile, an' de tree talk an' de wind an' de water they better company than much folks. Dar no lie in de woods. Dar all tings good. He make all tings ver good, by gar. Me like um wind an' water. They all make me glad."
One day when Shaggycoat had been in captivity about a week, Wahawa came down to his burrow and coaxed and dragged him out. He was not so much afraid of her as he had been and he loved the sound of her voice, for it was like the water slipping between stones. But when she had brought him forth, Wahawa did something that both astonished and frightened the beaver, for, quick as a flash, she threw a camp blanket over his head, and before he had time to bite, she had gathered up the four corners and Shaggycoat was a prisoner in an improvised bag.
Although he bit and clawed at the blanket, it was so soft and yielding that he could make no impression on it, so he finally lay still and let the Indian girl do with him what she would. She talked to him all the time in that low rippling voice which somewhat allayed his fear.
She slowly ascended the ladder leading to the room above with the heavy load upon her back and then rested him for a moment on the floor.
What new peril awaited him, Shaggycoat did not know. Maybe his coat was to be taken off now, and he would be just like the poor beaver he had seen the first night of his captivity. But Wahawa soon lifted him to her strong back again and bore him away, he knew not where. When she had carried him about a quarter of a mile over rough country, she laid down her burden, and, to the great astonishment of the beaver, dropped the four corners of the blanket and the beautiful world that Shaggycoat had known before his captivity, the world with a sky and fresh green trees and bushes with grass and sweet smelling air, was before him. But better than all that a swift stream was flowing almost at his very feet. The music of its rippling made him wild with joy.
Here was freedom almost within reach. But his captor was standing by and the buckskin collar was still about his neck and he imagined it held him in some mysterious manner. He looked up at the Indian girl with large pleading eyes, and she understood his misgivings, so she drew the hunting knife from her belt and severed the buckskin collar. It had cut into his neck for so long that the beaver did not realize it was gone until he saw it lying on the ground, then his heart gave a great bound. Was freedom to be his after all? His nostrils dilated as he looked furtively about. There was his captive standing by him and her eyes were full of kindness. There was the water calling to him, calling as it had never called before, but he did not quite know what it all meant. Then the Indian girl spoke and he understood.
"Go, Puigagis, King of the Beavers," she said. "Go and be happy after thy kind. We have held thee captive too long. Go at once, lest evil befall us."
With a sudden jump, a scramble and a great splash, Shaggycoat clove the water of the deep pool at their feet. The ripples widened and widened and a few bubbles rose to the surface as the dark form sank from sight and Puigagis disappeared as suddenly from the life of the Indian girl as though the earth had opened and swallowed him.
Once she thought she saw a dark form gliding stealthily along under the shadow of the further bank, but was not sure. Although she watched and listened for a long time, she saw or heard nothing of him. Puigagis, King of the Beavers, had gone to his kind. The lakes and the streams had reclaimed their wilderness child, and the Indian girl was glad.
Eight years have now passed since Shaggycoat brought his mate into the beautiful wilderness valley, and they had proceeded to make it habitable, according to the ideas of a beaver.
Wonderful changes have taken place in the alder meadow since then, and one would not know it to be the same spot. It is no more an alder meadow, but a beautiful forest lake stretching away into the distance until it is lost between the foothills, nearly two miles above the dam. On either side, the sparkling waters flow back to the amphitheatre of hills that enfold it and the lake is altogether like a wonderful sparkling jewel set in the emerald surrounding of the foothills.
Each summer, during his wanderings, Shaggycoat has met other wanderers like himself, and many of them have returned with him to his mountain lake. Even the first autumn, when he returned with his amputated paw, a pair of sleek beavers came with him, so there were two beaver lodges in the pond during the second winter instead of one. The dam was also strengthened and broadened during that second autumn until the pond was twice its original size.
The third spring Shaggycoat's own first family of beavers left the lodge to roam during the summer months, and to return in the autumn with mates. This is the arrangement in a well ordered beaver lodge. The children stay with their parents until they are three years of age, so a lodge usually contains the babies, the yearlings and two-year-olds, who allow themselves shelter under the family lodge until their third birthday, when they are shoved out to make room for the babies who have just come. So there is a general nose breaking at this time, and the elders are sent into the world while all the rest are promoted. But I do not imagine that they have to be shoved very hard, for their love of freedom and wild life, and also the mating instinct, is calling to them that third year, and they always obey the call of nature.
It must not be imagined that the little dam originally built on the spot, flows all this broad expanse of country, for, as we have already seen, year by year it has been added to, until now the gorge is blocked by a log and stone structure that would do credit to man, with all his building and engineering skill. It seems to me that the beaver, with his building instinct, and his ingenuity in making his world over to suit his manner of life, more nearly resembles man than any other wild creature.
Each beaver colony is a veritable city, and each lodge contains a large and well ordered family.
The house is always scrupulously clean, and each member of the family has his own bed which he occupies. The front gate is surrounded by a moat, like the castles of old, and the drawbridge is always up.
The beaver is a veritable Venitian, and his city is a real Venice, with its waterway and its islands of solid earth upon which stand the houses of its many citizens. The new dam which is most important to Beaver City, for it holds the water above the entrances of the score or more of houses, is a fine structure about two hundred feet in length, and nine feet in diameter at its base. Into the structure many thousand logs have been rolled, some of them coming from two or three miles up the lake, for timber is not so plentiful near to the dam as it was.
The engineering genius of this huge undertaking was Shaggycoat, who sat upon his broad flat tail and directed his many workmen. Near by, seated upon the top of one of the lodges, a sentinel was always posted while they worked. He warned them of danger, and they gave their whole attention to the work. At the first suspicious sound he would bring his broad tail down upon the water with a resounding slap that could be heard all along the dam, and all through Beaver City, for water is very mobile, and conducts motion or sound easily. At this well-known signal, the workers who, a moment before, might have been lifting and tugging logs or laying on mortar, would disappear as though the lake had opened and swallowed them. This was really just what happened, but the waters did not open; they were always waiting and ready to receive their little water folks.
For a few moments the lake would be as quiet as though there were not a beaver in the whole shimmering expanse, then a brown muzzle, dripping water, would be cautiously thrust up from some shady corner of the dam, and a careful reconnaissance made. When the beaver had made sure that it was a false alarm, he would call the rest and work would go on as before.
Most of the conical shaped houses, of which there are now about twenty, are on islands or on the bank near the dam. They look as much like a small Indian village, as they do like the abodes of wild animals.
For a long time, the overflow water from the lake troubled the beavers by wearing away their dam, but, finally, they dug a little channel in the sand around one end of the dam, and now the water runs off nicely in this artificial duct, and the dam is left unimpaired by the flow. If you could stand upon this dam, partly overgrown by willows, and see the symmetrical structure and the little lodges of Beaver City above, and the sparkling water running nicely away in the sluiceway, you would marvel at the ingenuity and patience of these ingenious rodents. But the wisest and oldest head in the colony is that of Shaggycoat, or old Shag, as I shall now call him, for he was the pioneer of the city, and his was the first lodge on the large island.
Little by little he has seen his lake widen and broaden, and one by one new lodges have been reared, until now, as he sits upon his broad tail and views Beaver City from the vantage ground of the dam, he must be well satisfied with his planning, for it is all his world and he loves it as each wild creature does the element it inhabits. To his ears the sound of running water is sweetest music, and the roar of the freshet, which fills man with dismay has no terrors for him; he knows it is only his beloved water world, wild and turbulent, with the joy of melting snow, and the bliss of spring rains.
He also knows that soon the buds will start and the birds sing, and he will be off for his summer ramble. He has never outgrown the habit of wandering during the summer months, but autumn will surely see him back directing repairs upon the dam and seeing that the winter supply of unpeeled logs is stored. It takes a great many logs to supply Beaver City with food now so that when the winter supply is piled up in the water in front of the dam, it would probably make several cords. If you could have seen the everchanging beauty of that forest lake through spring, summer, autumn and winter, you would not have been surprised that the beavers were well satisfied with their surroundings, or that the water seemed always to be calling to them in low sweet tones.
When the spring freshet filled their lake to overflowing, the ice piled up against the dam, and the mad waters rushed through the crevasse roaring and hissing like an infuriated monster. Though the waters were angry and tossed the great cakes of ice about disdainfully, yet the foam upon its fretful surface looked soft as wool and the little water folks knew that the anger would pass, even as the fury of the spring wind.
Finally the water would go down, and the lake would become clear and calm. Then it was a wonderful opal like the spring sky from which it took its color. When the warm spring winds kissed its sparkling surface, it dimpled and sparkled, and little wavelets lapped the pebbly beach with a low soft sound.
Then June came with its lily pads, and the pickerel grass in the shallows along the edge, and the waters near shore were green like emerald. July brought the lilies, whose mysterious sweetness ravished the nostrils, and whose creamy white faces nestled among the green pads in sweet content.
The summer passed like a wonderful dream with soft skies, balmy winds, and warm delightful waters in which to swim, but the male beavers over three years of age were always away during the summer, and the lake was left to the females and the youngsters.
Soon autumn came and the maples back in the foothills were made gorgeous by the first frost. The merry fall winds soon rattled down showers of scarlet, crimson, yellow and golden leaves till the waters along the edge of the lake were as bright as the branches above. Even then the trees were all reflected in the lake, so it had its own beauty as well as that of the world above it.
When the first frost came, the male beavers returned to repair the dam, and build new lodges or repair the old ones. These were active nights when the sky was so thick with stars that there was hardly room for more, and the Milky Way was bright and luminous.
When the clear glass window was shut down over the lake and the beavers in their snug city were made prisoners for the winter, December had come.
Then the whole lake sparkled like a jewel, and by night it vied with the stars for mysterious beauty; but soon the lake would be covered with snow, and then it would be a wonderful marble floor, smooth as a board stretching away as far as the eye could reach.
There snugly locked under the ice, where not even the gluttonous wolverine can dig them out, with plenty of food for the coming winter, let us leave the inhabitants of Beaver City, happy in the assurance that spring will come again when their lake will be warm and bright, nestling like a wonderful jewel on the breast of mother earth.
BLACK BRUIN. The Biography of a Bear.KING OF THE FLYING SLEDGE. The Biography of a Reindeer.KING OF THE THUNDERING HERD. The Biography of an American Bison.PIEBALD, KING OF BRONCOS. The Biography of a Wild Horse.SHAGGYCOAT. The Biography of a Beaver.SHOVELHORNS. The Biography of a Moose.TENANTS OF THE TREES.TRAILS TO WOODS AND WATERS.THE WAY OF THE WILD.A WILDERNESS DOG. The Biography of a Gray Wolf.
WANTED A MOTHER. A Story for Children.