Impelled by the wild alarm of the Willow’s terrible cries and the sight
of Pierrot dashing madly toward him from the dead body of Wakayoo, Baree
did not stop running until it seemed as though his lungs could not draw
another breath. When he stopped, he was well out of the cañon and headed
for the beaver-pond. For almost a week Baree had not been near the pond.
He had not forgotten Beaver-tooth and Umisk and the other little
beavers, but Wakayoo and his daily catch of fresh fish had been too big
a temptation for him. Now Wakayoo was gone. He sensed the fact that the
big black bear would never fish again in the quiet pools and shimmering
eddies, and that where for many days there had been peace and plenty,
there was now great danger; and just as in another country he would have
fled for safety to the old windfall, he now fled desperately for the
beaver-pond.
Exactly wherein lay Baree’s fears it would be difficult to say—but
surely it was not because of Nepeese. The Willow had chased him hard.
She had flung herself upon him. He had felt the clutch of her hands and
the smother of her soft hair, and yet of her he was not afraid! If he
stopped now and then in his flight and looked back, it was to see if
Nepeese was following. He would not have run hard from her—alone. Her
eyes and voice and hands had set something stirring in him; he was
filled with a greater yearning and a greater loneliness now—and that
night he dreamed troubled dreams.
He found himself a bed under a spruce root not far from the beaver-pond,
and all through the night his sleep was filled with that restless
dreaming—dreams of his mother, of Kazan, the old windfall, of Umisk—and
of Nepeese. Once, when he awoke, he thought the spruce root was Gray
Wolf; and when he found that she was not there, Pierrot and the Willow
could have told what his crying meant if they had heard it. Again and
again he had visions of the thrilling happenings of that day. He saw the
flight of Wakayoo over the little meadow—he saw him die again. He saw
the glow of the Willow’s eyes close to his own, heard her voice—so sweet
and low that it was like strange music to him—and again he heard her
terrible screams.
Baree was glad when the dawn came. He did not seek for food, but went
down to the pond. There was little hope and anticipation in his manner
now. He remembered that, as plainly as animal ways could talk, Umisk and
his playmates had told him they wanted nothing to do with him. And yet
the fact that they were there took away some of his loneliness. It was
more than loneliness. The wolf in him was submerged. The dog was master.
And in these passing moments, when the blood of the wild was almost
dormant in him, he was depressed by the instinctive and growing feeling
that he was not of that wild, but a fugitive in it, menaced on all sides
by strange dangers.
Deep in the northern forests the beaver does not work and play in
darkness only, but uses day even more than night, and many of
Beaver-tooth’s people were awake when Baree began disconsolately to
investigate the shores of the pond. The little beavers were still with
their mothers in the big houses that looked like great domes of sticks
and mud out in the middle of the lake. There were three of these houses,
one of them at least twenty feet in diameter. Baree had some difficulty
in following his side of the pond. When he got back among the willows
and alders and birch, dozens of little canals crossed and criss-crossed
in his path. Some of these canals were a foot wide, and others three or
four feet, and all were filled with water. No country in the world ever
had a better system of traffic than this domain of the beavers, down
which they brought their working materials and food into the main
reservoir—the pond.
In one of the larger canals Baree surprised a big beaver towing a
four-foot cutting of birch as thick through as a man’s leg—half a dozen
breakfasts and dinners and suppers in that one cargo. The four or five
inner barks of the birch are what might be called the bread and butter
and potatoes of the beaver menu, while the more highly prized barks of
the willow and young alder take the place of meat and pie.
Baree smelled curiously of the birch cutting after the old beaver had
abandoned it in flight, and then went on. He did not try to hide himself
now, and at least half a dozen beavers had a good look at him before he
came to the point where the pond narrowed down to the width of the
stream, almost half a mile from the dam. Then he wandered back. All that
morning he hovered about the pond, showing himself openly.
In their big mud-and-stick strongholds the beavers held a council of
war. They were distinctly puzzled. There were four enemies which they
dreaded above all others: the otter, who destroyed their dams in the
winter-time and brought death to them from cold and by lowering the
water so they could not get to their food-supplies; the lynx, who preyed
on them all, young and old alike; and the fox and wolf, who would lie in
ambush for hours in order to pounce on the very young, like Umisk and
his playmates. If Baree had been any one of these four, wily
Beaver-tooth and his people would have known what to do. But Baree was
surely not an otter, and if he was a fox or a wolf or a lynx, his
actions were very strange, to say the least. Half a dozen times he had
had the opportunity to pounce on his prey, if he had been seeking prey.
But at no time had he shown the desire to harm them.
It may be that the beavers discussed the matter fully among themselves.
It is possible that Umisk and his playmates told their parents of their
adventure, and of how Baree made no move to harm them when he could
quite easily have caught them. It is also more than likely that the
older beavers who had fled from Baree that morning gave an account of
their adventures, again emphasizing the fact that the stranger, while
frightening them, had shown no disposition to attack them. All this is
quite possible, for if beavers can make a large part of a continent’s
history, and can perform engineering feats that nothing less than
dynamite can destroy, it is only reasonable to suppose that they have
some way of making one another understand.
However this may be, courageous old Beaver-tooth took it upon himself to
end the suspense.
It was early in the afternoon that for the third or fourth time Baree
walked out on the dam. This dam was fully two hundred feet in length,
but at no point did the water run over it, the overflow finding its way
through narrow sluices. A week or two ago Baree could have crossed to
the opposite side of the pond on this dam, but now—at the far
end—Beaver-tooth and his engineers were adding a new section of dam, and
in order to accomplish their work more easily, they had flooded fully
fifty yards of the low ground on which they were working. The main dam
held a fascination for Baree. It was strong with the smell of beaver.
The top of it was high and dry, and there were dozens of smoothly worn
little hollows in which the beavers had taken their sun-baths. In one of
these hollows Baree stretched himself out, with his eyes on the pond.
Not a ripple stirred its velvety smoothness. Not a sound broke the
drowsy stillness of the afternoon. The beavers might have been dead or
asleep, for all the stir they made. And yet they knew that Baree was on
the dam. Where he lay, the sun fell in a warm flood, and it was so
comfortable that after a time he had difficulty in keeping his eyes open
to watch the pond. Then he fell asleep.
Just how Beaver-tooth sensed this fact is a mystery. Five minutes later
he came up quietly, without a splash or a sound, within fifty yards of
Baree. For a few moments he scarcely moved in the water. Then he swam
very slowly parallel with the dam across the pond. At the other side he
drew himself ashore, and for another minute sat as motionless as a
stone, with his eyes on that part of the dam where Baree was lying. Not
another beaver was moving, and it was very soon apparent that
Beaver-tooth had but one object in mind—getting a closer observation of
Baree. When he entered the water again, he swam along close to the dam.
Ten feet beyond Baree he began to climb out. He did this with great
slowness and caution. At last he reached the top of the dam.
A few yards away Baree was almost hidden in his hollow, only the top of
his shiny black body appearing to Beaver-tooth’s scrutiny. To get a
better look, the old beaver spread his flat tail out beyond him and rose
to a sitting posture on his hind-quarters, his two front paws held
squirrel-like over his breast. In this pose he was fully three feet
tall. He probably weighed forty pounds, and in some ways he resembled
one of those fat, good-natured, silly-looking dogs that go largely to
stomach. But his brain was working with amazing celerity. Suddenly he
gave the hard mud of the dam a single slap with his tail—and Baree sat
up. Instantly he saw Beaver-tooth, and stared. Beaver-tooth stared. For
a full half-minute neither moved the thousandth part of an inch. Then
Baree stood up and wagged his tail.
That was enough. Dropping to his forefeet. Beaver-tooth waddled
leisurely to the edge of the dam and dived over. He was neither cautious
nor in very great haste now. He made a great commotion in the water and
swam boldly back and forth under Baree. When he had done this several
times, he cut straight up the pond to the largest of the three houses
and disappeared. Five minutes after Beaver-tooth’s exploit word was
passing quickly among the colony. The stranger—Baree—was not a lynx. He
was not a fox. He was not a wolf. Moreover, he was very young—and
harmless. Work could be resumed. Play could be resumed. There was no
danger. Such was Beaver-tooth’s verdict.
If some one had shouted these facts in beaver-language through a
megaphone, the response could not have been quicker. All at once it
seemed to Baree, who was still standing on the edge of the dam, that the
pond was alive with beavers. He had never seen so many at one time
before. They were popping up everywhere, and some of them swam up within
a dozen feet of him and looked him over in a leisurely and curious way.
For perhaps five minutes the beavers seemed to have no particular object
in view. Then Beaver-tooth himself struck straight for the shore and
climbed out. Others followed him. Half a dozen workers disappeared in
the canals. As many more waddled out among the alders and willows.
Eagerly Baree watched for Umisk and his chums. At last he saw them,
swimming forth from one of the smaller houses. They climbed out on their
playground—the smooth bar above the shore of mud. Baree wagged his tail
so hard that his whole body shook, and hurried along the dam.
When he came out on the level strip of shore, Umisk was there alone,
nibbling his supper from a long, freshly cut willow. The other little
beavers had gone into a thick clump of young alders.
This time Umisk did not run. He looked up from his stick. Baree squatted
himself, wiggling in a most friendly and ingratiating manner. For a few
seconds Umisk regarded him.
Then, very coolly, he resumed his supper.