THE COURTSHIP OF SHAGGYCOAT
My young readers may wonder why I have called the beaver, whose fortunes
we are following, Shaggycoat, so I will tell them.
The fur of the beaver and the otter is very thick and soft, but, in its
natural state, it is quite different from what it is when worn by women
in cloaks and coats, for the fine short fur is sprinkled with long hairs
that give the coat a shaggy, uneven appearance. In the case of our own
beaver, Shaggycoat, these long hairs were very pronounced, so you see
the name fitted him nicely.
When the fur of any of these little animals is prepared for market, the
long hairs are all pulled out with a small pair of tweezers. This is
called plucking the skin.
As the summer days went by and August ripened into September, the
loneliness that had oppressed Shaggycoat during the summer grew tenfold
and he became more restless than ever. There seemed to be something for
which he was looking and longing. It was not right that he should wander
up and down lakes and streams and have no living creatures to stop to
speak with him. His world was too large; the lakes and streams were too
endless. He wanted to share them with somebody or something. He had
found many a wondrous water nook, which he would like to show some one;
but still up and down he wandered, and no one did he find to share his
great world. Yet it seemed sometimes as though he had come near to
somebody or something, for which he was looking, but it always vanished
at the next turn of the stream or at the waterfall.
Thus in this endless searching that came to naught, like searching for
the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the autumn days passed.
The maples and the oaks shook out their crimson and golden streamers,
and a touch of surpassing glory was on all the world. Sometimes the
merry wind would shower down maple leaves until the edge of the stream
was as bright as the boughs above.
It seemed that their fire touched Shaggycoat as he swam among them,
making him burn and glow like the autumn forest.
Then a new plan came into his wise head. If what he was looking for
could not be found by searching, perhaps it might be coaxed to come to
him. He would try and see. So he gathered some grass and mud and made a
very queer patty, which looked much like a child's mud pie. This he
smoothed off with as much care as a baker would a cream cake.
This patty had been made by a beaver. He was sure that whoever found it
would know that, for it had a strong musky smell, so he left his
love-letter under a bush near a watercourse, and went away to wait
developments.
A day he waited, but his letter remained unopened, and, of course,
unread. Two days, and no better result, but the third day he found to
his great joy that the letter had been opened. There was an unmistakable
beaver musk about it, and new paw and nose prints upon it.
This was his answer. It said as plainly as words could have said, "I
have read your letter and know what it means. I am waiting in some pool,
or under a shelving bank near-by. Come."
Then Shaggycoat raced up and down the stream churning the water like a
tug boat, until he found fresh beaver tracks in the mud. These he
followed rapidly along the bank until he came to where it overhung the
water and there he found his mate waiting for him with glad eyes.
Shaggycoat went up to her and rubbed his nose against hers. It was not
like his grandfather's nose, cold and repellent, but warm and caressing.
He backed away a pace or two to look at her and there was new joy in his
heart.
She was not quite as large as he, and her coat was just a shade lighter
drab, but she was very sleek and Shaggycoat was well satisfied.
I know not what they said there under the shelving bank, during their
first tryst, but I do not agree with those niggardly naturalists who
would strip the brute kingdom of feeling and intelligence and the power
to express joy and pain, and appropriate all these feelings to
themselves.
It may be that Shaggycoat told his newly found mate how bright her eyes
were and how long he had searched for her or perhaps she confessed that
she had seen him many times just around the bend in the stream, but had
not thought that he was looking for her. We are none of us certain of
any of these things, but we are sure of one thing. It was a very happy
meeting.
Then Shaggycoat led the way through lake and river to many wonderful
water grottoes; to deep pools where the bottom of the lake was as dark
and forbidding as midnight, or to shallows, where the bottom of the
stream was gay with bright pebbles, and where the sunlight danced upon
the uneven water until it made a wondrous many colored mirror.
He showed her his waterfall, and a part of a small dam that he had
constructed just for fun across a little brook. The waterfall was not
really his any more than it was any one else's, but he called it his.
These and many other water wonders he showed his young mate, and her
eyes grew brighter as the wonders of their world grew. She wondered how
he had traveled so far, and seen so many things. But all the time
Shaggycoat was leading the way toward a dear little brook that he knew
of away back in the wilderness, in one of the fastnesses of nature. He
had a definite plan in his head concerning this stream. He had made it
weeks before and arranged many of its details. But one day as they
journeyed, a sad accident befell Brighteyes, and for a time it bade fair
to end all their hopes.
They were swimming leisurely up stream and had stopped at the mouth of a
little rill where the water was very fresh, when Brighteyes discovered a
stick of sweet smelling birch hanging just above the water's edge. It
fairly made her mouth water.
But Shaggycoat was suspicious. He had seen wood fixed like this before.
He had tasted it and something had caught him by the paw, and only after
several hours of wrenching had he been able to free himself. Even then
he had left one claw and a part of the toe in the trap.
So he pushed Brighteyes from the trap and tried to hurry away with her.
But, with true feminine wilfulness and curiosity, she persisted, and a
moment later the trap was sprung and she was held fast by the toes of
one of her forefeet.
She tugged and twisted, pulled and turned in every direction, but it
would not let go. Then Shaggycoat got hold of the chain with his teeth
and pulled too, but with no better success.
Brighteyes struggled until her paw was nearly wrenched from the
shoulder, but the persistent thing that held her by three toes still
clung like a vise.
At last when both beavers were filled with despair, and a wild terror of
being held so firmly had seized them, a bright idea came to Shaggycoat.
He gnawed off the stake that held the chain upon the trap and his mate
was free to go, with the trap still clinging to her paw, and the chain
rattling along upon the stones. Then they tried all sorts of experiments
to get the trap off, the two most ingenious ways being drowning it, and
burying it in the mud, and then seeking to steal away quietly without
disturbing it. But the trap was not to be taken unawares in this way,
and always followed. Finally it caught between two stones where the
brook was shallow, and came off itself. You may imagine they were glad
to see the last of it, and Brighteyes never forgot the lesson.
It was several days before her shoulder got fairly over the wrenching,
but it may have saved her glossy coat in after years.
Finally, after traveling leisurely for about a week, they came to the
mountain stream that Shaggycoat had in mind. It wound through a broad
alder covered meadow, with steep foothills a mile or so back on either
side. The meadow was about two miles long and at the lower end, where
the stream ran into a narrow valley, there were two large pines, one on
either bank.
Up in the foothills were innumerable birch and maple saplings and here
and there in the meadow were knolls of higher land, covered with small
pines and spruces.
Perhaps Shaggycoat had seen this wild meadow covered with water in the
spring during a freshet, or maybe he had only imagined it, but there was
a picture in his active mind of a strong beaver dam at the foot of the
narrows and a broad lake that should be enclosed by the foothills; upon
the islands were to be many beaver lodges, the first of which should be
occupied by Brighteyes and himself.