TOTO AND THE BURGLARS
Now, the tramps who had built the shack of bark in the woods knew
nothing about beavers and their ways. The tramps did not know that when
a beaver whacks his tail on the ground it means danger from a falling
tree, or from something else.
But the tramps in the shack, toward which was falling the tree Toto and
Sniffy had gnawed down――these tramps heard the queer whacking sounds,
and they knew they had never heard them before. So some of them, who
were not as lazy as the others, ran out to see what it meant.
One tramp looked up and saw the tall tree swaying down toward the bark
shelter. The tramp did not know that two little beaver boys had, all
alone, gnawed down the big tree. But the tramp could see it falling.
“Come on! Get out! Everybody out of the shack!” cried the tramp who saw
the falling tree. “Everybody out! The whole woods are falling down on
us!”
Of course that wasn’t exactly so. It was only one tree that was
falling, and the same one which Toto and Sniffy had gnawed down. But
the tramp who called out was so excited he hardly knew what he was
saying.
And as soon as the other tramps, some of whom were sleeping in the
bark shack, heard the calls, they came running out, some rubbing their
eyes, for they were hardly awake. They had been asleep in the daytime,
too――the daytime when all the beavers were busy.
“Come on! Come on! Get out! Everybody out!” yelled the tramp who had
first caught sight of the falling tree.
As soon as the others knew what the danger was, out they rushed also,
and then they all stood outside the shack and to one side and watched
the tree crash down.
Right on top of the bark cabin crashed the tree. There was a
splintering of wood, a breaking of branches, a big noise, and then it
was all over.
For a few minutes the tramps said nothing. They all stood looking at
the fallen tree that had crushed their home in the woods.
“Well!” exclaimed several of the men.
“It’s a good thing we got out in time,” growled one tramp.
“I should say so!” exclaimed another. “Lucky you saw it coming,” he
added to the tramp who had called the warning.
“Did some one chop the tree down?” asked a third tramp.
“No, I guess the wind blew it,” said a fourth.
“There isn’t enough wind to blow a tree down,” decided the first tramp,
who had red hair.
Of course we know it wasn’t the wind that blew the tree down. It was
Toto and Sniffy who gnawed it and made it fall. But the tramps were too
lazy to go and see what had caused the tree to topple over. They just
stood there and looked at their crushed house.
“It will be a lot of work to build that up again,” said one tramp.
“She’s smashed flat.”
“Build it up again! I’m not going to help build it up!” said another.
“It’s too hard. I’m tired of this place, anyhow. Let’s move off to
another woods. Maybe we can find a place near a chicken yard, and we
can have all the chickens we want. Let’s move away, now that our house
is smashed.”
“Yes, let’s do that!” cried some of the other tramps.
And those ragged men were so lazy that they did not want to go to the
trouble of building a home for themselves! Perhaps they thought they
could go off into the woods and find another already built. Anyhow,
they stood around a little while longer. One or two of them picked up
ragged coats and hats that were in the ruins of the hut, and some took
old cans in which they heated soup. That was all they had to move.
“Well, come on! Let’s hike along!” said the red-haired tramp.
With hardly a look back at what had been a home for some of them for a
long time, the tramps walked away through the woods. Toto and Sniffy,
hiding in the bushes, watched the ragged men go.
“Look what we did!” said Sniffy to his brother.
“Yes, we cut down a tree, but we didn’t mean to make it fall on the
house where the tramps lived,” said Toto.
“Anyhow, they’re going away, and that’s a good thing for us,” went on
Sniffy. “Now we won’t have to make the dam so strong, nor move away
ourselves.”
“That’s so,” agreed Toto. “I didn’t think about that. Why, Sniffy, we
really drove the tramps away, didn’t we?”
“Yes,” answered his brother, “we did.”
“Don, the dog, will be glad to know this,” went on Toto. “I guess
he’ll wish he had helped drive the tramps away himself. Come on! let’s
go back and tell Dad and Mr. Cuppy about cutting down the tree and
smashing the tramps’ cabin.”
Mr. Beaver, Cuppy, and all the others in the colony were much surprised
when Toto and Sniffy told what had happened. Almost all the grown
animals, and certainly every one of the boys and girls, went out to
see the fallen tree and the smashed cabin.
“Well, you did a lot to help us,” said Cuppy to the two brothers; “but
we can’t use that tree in the dam.”
“Why not?” asked Toto.
“Because it fell the wrong way. It would be too much work to dig a
canal to it and float it to the dam. It will be easier to cut down
another tree. But I don’t know that we shall need any more as long as
the tramps have moved away. We need not make our dam any bigger now.”
“Are all the tramps gone?” asked Toto’s mother.
“Yes, every one,” answered Cuppy. He was a wise old beaver, and he knew
none of the ragged men were left near what had once been their shack of
bark.
So that was another adventure Toto had――driving away the tramps. And if
I had told you, at first, that two little beavers, not much bigger than
small puppy dogs, could make a number of big, lazy men move, you would
hardly have believed me. But it only goes to show in what a strange way
things happen in the woods.
[Illustration: Everybody in the beaver colony had work to do.]
Now that it was not needful to make the dam bigger, the beavers turned
to other work. Some of the canals they had dug had become filled up at
a time when there was too much rain and the banks had caved in. Some
of the beavers began to clear out these canals. Others mended holes in
the dam, and still others cut down, and brought to the pond, tender
branches of trees on which grew soft bark for the small beaver children
to eat.
Everybody in the beaver colony had work to do. There was not a lazy one
among them, and Toto and Sniffy worked as hard as any. They had time to
play, too, and I’ll tell you about that in another chapter or two. Just
now I want to speak about another wonderful adventure that happened to
Toto.
The little beaver boy was growing larger now. He was quite strong for
his size, and he was growing wiser every day. Often he went off in the
woods alone to hunt for tender bark, or perhaps for some berries he
liked to eat.
One day Toto was walking along near a canal he had helped to dig. He
was thinking of Don, and wishing he might meet the nice dog again, and
tell him about the tramps being driven away. And Toto was also thinking
of the little girl with the red mittens, whose skate had come off on
the ice.
Then, as Toto stepped from the woods into a little clearing, or place
where no trees grew, he saw something big――bigger than a thousand
beaver houses made into one.
“I wonder what that is?” thought Toto. “It looks something like the
shack the tramps had in the woods, but it is much nicer. I wonder if it
is a house?”
And then as Toto, hidden behind a bush, watched, he saw a little girl
and an old lady come out of the house (for such it was) and walk away
through the woods on a path.
“Why! Why!” exclaimed Toto to himself. “That’s the same little girl I
saw on the ice! Only she’s different now. She hasn’t any red things on
her paws.”
Of course, Toto thought the little girl’s hands were her paws. And the
“red things” were her mittens. But, as it was summer now, she did not
wear mittens. It really was the little girl who had been skating that
Toto now saw come out of the house in the woods. The little girl had
come to get her grandmother and take her for a visit to the little
girl’s house.
Toto stayed hiding under the bush until the little girl and her
grandmother were out of sight. Then, just as he was about to travel on,
he heard some voices coming from behind a big stump. And, somehow or
other, Toto seemed to know those voices. Carefully he looked up over
the top of the bush.
“Now’s our chance!” said one of the voices, though of course Toto did
not know what the words meant. “Now’s our chance! The old lady and the
little girl have gone out! Now we can break into the house and take
whatever we want!”
“Yes, we might as well be burglars while we’re at it,” said another
voice. “We can’t get any work, so we’ll take things that other people
work for!”
And then, to the surprise of Toto, he saw, bobbing up from behind the
stump, some of the very same ragged tramps that had gone away when
the tree smashed their shack. They were now near the home of Millie’s
grandmother.
“I heard there was some jewelry in that house,” said the red-haired
tramp. “We can take it and sell it and then we can buy good things to
eat.”
“That’s right,” said a black-haired one. “We’ll break in and get the
jewelry. Nobody is at home to stop us.”
And then and there, as Toto watched, the bad tramps went toward the
house to take the little girl’s grandmother’s jewelry.
“Oh, if Don were only here now!”