CHAPTER 9
Impelled by the wild alarm of the Willow's terrible cries and the sightof Pierrot dashing madly toward him from the dead body of Wakayoo,Baree did not stop running until it seemed as though his lungs couldnot draw another breath. When he stopped, he was well out of the canyonand headed for the beaver pond. For almost a week Baree had not beennear the pond. He had not forgotten Beaver Tooth and Umisk and theother little beavers, but Wakayoo and his daily catch of fresh fish hadbeen too big a temptation for him. Now Wakayoo was gone. He sensed thefact that the big black bear would never fish again in the quiet poolsand shimmering eddies, and that where for many days there had beenpeace and plenty, there was now great danger. And just as in anothercountry he would have fled for safety to the old windfall, he now fleddesperately for the beaver pond.
Exactly wherein lay Baree's fears it would be difficult to say--butsurely 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 andthe smother of her soft hair, and yet of her he was not afraid! If hestopped now and then in his flight and looked back, it was to see ifNepeese was following. He would not have run hard from her--alone. Hereyes and voice and hands had set something stirring in him; he wasfilled with a greater yearning and a greater loneliness now. And thatnight he dreamed troubled dreams.
He found himself a bed under a spruce root not far from the beaverpond, and all through the night his sleep was filled with that restlessdreaming--dreams of his mother, of Kazan, the old windfall, ofUmlsk--and of Nepeese. Once, when he awoke, he thought the spruce rootwas Gray Wolf; and when he found that she was not there, Pierrot andthe 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 dieagain. He saw the glow of the Willow's eyes close to his own, heard hervoice--so sweet and low that it seemed like strange music to him--andagain he heard her terrible screams.
Baree was glad when the dawn came. He did not seek for food, but wentdown to the pond. There was little hope and anticipation in his mannernow. He remembered that, as plainly as animal ways could talk, Umiskand his playmates had told him they wanted nothing to do with him. Andyet the fact that they were there took away some of his loneliness. Itwas more than loneliness. The wolf in him was submerged. The dog wasmaster. And in these passing moments, when the blood of the wild wasalmost dormant in him, he was depressed by the instinctive and growingfeeling that he was not of that wild, but a fugitive in it, menaced onall sides by strange dangers.
Deep in the northern forests the beaver does not work and play indarkness only, but uses day even more than night, and many of BeaverTooth's people were awake when Baree began disconsolately toinvestigate the shores of the pond. The little beavers were still withtheir mothers in the big houses that looked like great domes of sticksand mud out in the middle of the lake. There were three of thesehouses, one of them at least twenty feet in diameter. Baree had somedifficulty in following his side of the pond. When he got back amongthe willows and alders and birch, dozens of little canals crossed andcrisscrossed in his path. Some of these canals were a foot wide, andothers three or four feet, and all were filled with water. No countryin the world ever had a better system of traffic than this domain ofthe beavers, down which they brought their working materials and foodinto the main reservoir--the pond.
In one of the larger canals Baree surprised a big beaver towing afour-foot cutting of birch as thick through as a man's leg--half adozen breakfasts and dinners and suppers in that one cargo. The four orfive inner barks of the birch are what might be called the bread andbutter and potatoes of the beaver menu, while the more highly prizedbarks of the willow and young alder take the place of meat and pie.Baree smelled curiously of the birch cutting after the old beaver hadabandoned it in flight, and then went on. He did not try to concealhimself now, and at least half a dozen beavers had a good look at himbefore he came to the point where the pond narrowed down to the widthof 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 ofwar. They were distinctly puzzled. There were four enemies which theydreaded above all others: the otter, who destroyed their dams in thewintertime and brought death to them from cold and by lowering thewater so they could not get to their food supplies; the lynx, whopreyed on them all, young and old alike; and the fox and wolf, whowould 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 Bareewas surely not an otter, and if he was a fox or a wolf or a lynx, hisactions were very strange, to say the least. Half a dozen times he hadhad the opportunity to pounce on his prey, if he had been seeking prey.But at no time had he shown the least 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 theiradventure, and of how Baree had made no move to harm them when he couldquite easily have caught them. It is also more than likely that theolder beavers who had fled from Baree that morning gave an account oftheir adventures, again emphasizing the fact that the stranger, whilefrightening them, had shown no disposition to attack them. All this isquite possible, for if beavers can make a large part of a continent'shistory, and can perform engineering feats that nothing less thandynamite can destroy, it is only reasonable to suppose that they havesome way of making one another understand.
However this may be, courageous old Beaver Tooth took it upon himselfto end the suspense.
It was early in the afternoon that for the third or fourth time Bareewalked 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 waythrough narrow sluices. A week or two ago Baree could have crossed tothe opposite side of the pond on this dam, but now--at the farend--Beaver Tooth and his engineers were adding a new section of dam,and in order to accomplish their work more easily, they had floodedfully fifty yards of the low ground on which they were working.
The main dam held a strange fascination for Baree. It was strong withthe smell of beaver. The top of it was high and dry, and there weredozens of smoothly worn little hollows in which the beavers had takentheir 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 beaversmight have been dead or asleep, for all the stir they made. And yetthey knew that Baree was on the dam. Where he lay, the sun fell in awarm flood, and it was so comfortable that after a time he haddifficulty in keeping his eyes open to watch the pond. Then he fellasleep.
Just how Beaver Tooth sensed this fact is a mystery. Five minutes laterhe came up quietly, without a splash or a sound, within fifty yards ofBaree. For a few moments he scarcely moved in the water. Then he swamvery slowly parallel with the dam across the pond. At the other side hedrew himself ashore, and for another minute sat as motionless as astone, with his eyes on that part of the dam where Baree was lying. Notanother beaver was moving, and it was very soon apparent that BeaverTooth had but one object in mind--getting a closer observation ofBaree. 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 greatslowness 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 ofhis shiny black body appearing to Beaver Tooth's scrutiny. To get abetter look, the old beaver spread his flat tail out beyond him androse to a sitting posture on his hindquarters, his two front paws heldsquirrel-like over his breast. In this pose he was fully three feettall. He probably weighed forty pounds, and in some ways he resembledone of those fat, good-natured, silly-looking dogs that go largely tostomach. But his brai
n was working with amazing celerity. Suddenly hegave the hard mud of the dam a single slap with his tail--and Baree satup. Instantly he saw Beaver Tooth, and stared. Beaver Tooth stared. Fora full half-minute neither moved the thousandth part of an inch. ThenBaree stood up and wagged his tail.
That was enough. Dropping to his forefeet. Beaver Tooth waddledleisurely to the edge of the dam and dived over. He was neithercautious nor in very great haste now. He made a great commotion in thewater and swam boldly back and forth under Baree. When he had done thisseveral times, he cut straight up the pond to the largest of the threehouses and disappeared. Five minutes after Beaver Tooth's exploit wordwas passing quickly among the colony. The stranger--Baree--was not alynx. He was not a fox. He was not a wolf. Moreover, he was veryyoung--and harmless. Work could be resumed. Play could be resumed.There was no danger. Such was Beaver Tooth's verdict.
If someone had shouted these facts in beaver language through amegaphone, the response could not have been quicker. All at once itseemed to Baree, who was still standing on the edge of the dam, thatthe pond was alive with beavers. He had never seen so many at one timebefore. They were popping up everywhere, and some of them swam upwithin a dozen feet of him and looked him over in a leisurely andcurious way. For perhaps five minutes the beavers seemed to have noparticular object in view. Then Beaver Tooth himself struck straightfor the shore and climbed out. Others followed him. Half a dozenworkers disappeared in the canals. As many more waddled out among thealders and willows. Eagerly Baree watched for Umisk and his chums. Atlast he saw them, swimming forth from one of the smaller houses. Theyclimbed out on their playground--the smooth bar above the shore of mud.Baree wagged his tail so hard that his whole body shook, and hurriedalong 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 littlebeavers had gone into a thick clump of young alders.
This time Umisk did not run. He looked up from his stick. Bareesquatted himself, wiggling in a most friendly and ingratiating manner.For a few seconds Umisk regarded him.
Then, very coolly, he resumed his supper.