Very early one morning Paddy the Beaver heard Sammy Jay making a
terrible fuss over in the aspen trees on the edge of the pond
Paddy had made in the Green Forest. Paddy couldn't see because he
was inside his house, and it has no window, but he could hear. He
wrinkled up his brows thoughtfully.
"Seems to me that Sammy is very much excited this morning," said
he, a way he has because he is so much alone. "When he screams
like that, Sammy is usually trying to do two things at once--make
trouble for somebody and keep somebody else out of trouble; and
when you come to think of it, that's rather a funny way of doing.
It shows that he isn't all bad, and at the same time he is a long
way from being all good. Now, I should say from the sounds that
Sammy has discovered Reddy Fox trying to steal up on someone over
where my aspen trees are growing. Reddy is afraid of me, but I
suspect that he knows that Peter Rabbit has been hanging around
here a lot lately, watching me work, and he thinks perhaps he can
watch Peter. I shall have to whisper in one of Peter's long ears
and tell him to watch out."
After a while he heard Sammy Jay's voice growing fainter and
fainter in the Green Forest. Finally he couldn't hear it at all.
"Whoever was here has gone away, and Sammy has followed just to
torment them," thought Paddy. He was very busy making a bed. He
is very particular about his bed, is Paddy the Beaver. He makes
it of fine splinters of wood which he splits off with those
wonderful great cutting teeth of his. This makes the driest kind
of a bed. It requires a great deal of patience and work, but
patience is one of the first things a little Beaver learns, and
honest work well done is one of the greatest pleasures in the
world, as Paddy long ago found out for himself. So he kept at
work on his bed for some time after all was still outside.
At last Paddy decided that he would go over to his aspen trees
and look them over to decide which ones he would cut the next
night. He slid down one of his long halls, out the doorway at the
bottom on the pond, and then swam up to the surface, where he
floated for a few minutes with just his head out of water. And
all the time his eyes and nose and ears were busy looking,
smelling, and listening for any sign of danger. Everything was
still. Sure that he was quite safe, Paddy swam across to the
place where the aspen trees grew, and waddled out on the shore.
Paddy looked this way and looked that way. He looked up in the
treetops, and he looked off up the hill, but most of all he
looked at the ground. Yes, Sir, Paddy just studied the ground.
You see, he hadn't forgotten the fuss Sammy Jay had been making
there, and he was trying to find out what it was all about. At
first he didn't see anything unusual, but by and by he happened
to notice a little wet place, and right in the middle of it was
something that made Paddy's eyes open wide. It was a footprint!
Someone had carelessly stepped in the mud.
"Ha!" exclaimed Paddy, and the hair on his back lifted ever so
little, and for a minute he had a prickly feeling all over. The
footprint was very much like that of Reddy Fox, only it was
larger.
"Ha!" said Paddy again. "That certainly is the foot print of Old
Man Coyote! I see I have got to watch out more sharply than I had
thought for. All right, Mr. Coyote; now that I know you are
about, you'll have to be smarter than I think you are to catch
me. You certainly will be back here tonight looking for me, so I
think I'll do my cutting right now in the daytime."