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Title: Chip, the Dam Builder
Author: Kjelgaard, James Arthur (1910-1959)
Illustrator: Ray, Ralph, Jr. (1920-1952)
Date of first publication: 1950
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Holiday House
   [ninth printing]
Date first posted: 29 March 2012
Date last updated: 29 March 2012
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #930

This ebook was produced by
David T. Jones, Ross Cooling, Greg Weeks
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net






  _Big Red_
  _Irish Red_
  _Stormy_
  _Wild Trek_
  _Snow Dog_
  _Haunt Fox_
  _Lion Hound_

  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

  _Desert Dog_
  _Outlaw Red_
  _Rebel Siege_
  _Fire-Hunter_
  _Forest Patrol_
  _Kalak of the Ice_
  _Buckskin Brigade_
  _Boomerang Hunter_
  _Trailing Trouble_
  _A Nose for Trouble_
  _Wildlife Cameraman_
  _Chip, the Dam Builder_
  _Wolf Brother_
  _Hidden Trail_




  _Jim Kjelgaard_

  CHIP
  the Dam Builder

[Illustration]

  ILLUSTRATED BY RALPH RAY
  HOLIDAY HOUSE, NEW YORK




  TO RUTH HARSHAW

  _For Originating the Carnival of Books_



  NINTH PRINTING
  COPYRIGHT, 1950, BY JIM KJELGAARD. PRINTED IN U. S. A.




  CONTENTS


  I     _Disaster Strikes_          7

  II    _Dangerous Journey_        25

  III   _Glare, the Lynx_          45

  IV    _A New Home_               62

  V     _King, the Trout_          79

  VI    _The New Colony_           96

  VII   _Trim, the Doe_           117

  VIII  _Winter Harvest_          134

  IX    _Down in the Valley_      150

  X     _Under the Ice_           164

  XI    _Ripple, the Otter_       182

  XII   _Jed Hole's Problem_      198

  XIII  _End of a Killer_         210

  XIV   _The Humans Come_         220




  _Chapter I_

  DISASTER STRIKES


It was still black night when Chip, the wise old leader of the beaver
colony, became uneasy. He did not know why. There was nothing to support
his feeling of danger. The beaver knew only that something was not as it
should be.

Old Chip swam to the end of the pond which he ruled. It was a big pond,
backed by a mud-stick-stone dam that extended almost five hundred feet
from end to end. Dimly Chip remembered the time when it had been less
than half as big, and there had been only two lodges. Now there were
six, inhabited by thirty-one beaver that ranged from five-pound kits to
the seventy-pound Chip. And there was still enough aspen growth on the
hills around the pond to support the big beaver colony.

Chip dived, swam beneath the surface for a long way, and when he finally
broke water he did so with scarcely a telltale ripple. A faint spear of
daylight was just beginning to pierce the heavy shroud of darkness
overhanging the valley. Chip remained where he had come to the surface,
treading water just hard enough to maintain his position.

His eyes and nostrils were above the water, and his broad, flat tail
floated, but his back was submerged. His purpose was to see without
being seen while he studied the wilderness signs.

Chip lacked any mechanical way of telling time, but he did not need one.
He had his own ways. Every morning, at daybreak, the pair of flickers in
the big stub at one side of the pond shattered the silence with their
strident morning call. The warblers in the willow brush waited another
hour, until the sun's warmth was more comfortable. Still later, but
almost at the same time each day, a kingfisher rattled over the pond and
dropped upon any fish unwary enough to come near the surface. Now, as
Chip silently waited, he watched for something else.

For almost two weeks, ever since the warming sun had finally melted the
sheathing of ice that had kept the beavers locked in all winter long, a
buck had been drinking from the pond. He came twice a day, at dawn and
again at dusk, and he was never more than a few seconds early or late.
Chip waited because the buck might tell him something he needed to know.

The old beaver turned, rippling the water only faintly as he did so.
Then he resumed his original position. His head was a little more tense,
a bit higher, for he was becoming more anxious. It was past time for the
buck to appear. Chip swung about and swam to the other end of the pond.
He made a wide circle in the water and checked the exact location of
every pond mate.

Except for two that were inspecting the dam for leaks, the older members
of the colony were varying distances up on the banks. Since early
December there had been no break in the two feet of ice that locked the
pond in impenetrable armor. No enemy had been able to get at the beaver,
but neither had they been able to get out. Their only food had been what
they had stored the previous summer. Throughout the long winter this
stored food had grown old and tasteless, so that now every member of the
colony was eager for the new, sap-filled green food which came to life
with the spring sun.

Having located his followers, Chip hesitated. Then he swam back toward
the place where the buck should appear. He felt a strong premonition of
danger, but none had appeared. He must give no false warnings. Before he
alarmed the rest, and bade them seek the safety of the pond, he himself
must know what threatened them.

Five minutes after he had resumed his post, the buck appeared. He still
wore his gray winter coat but it was shaggy and ragged where winter hair
was shedding. Watching, Chip's nervousness increased.

The buck was an old and wise one, a creature that had survived for many
years because he never relaxed. Now his caution had increased. Always
before, when he came to drink, he did so slowly, stopping to look and
test the winds every few yards. Now he came even more slowly, and
stopped more frequently. When he reached the edge of the water, the buck
did not drink at once. Instead he stood with his head up, long ears
flicking from side to side as he strove to catch both scent and sound.

Chip made a sudden turn, sending a little wavelet rippling toward the
bank. As he did so, the buck gave a nervous leap that carried him five
feet up the bank. As cautiously as he had come, he faded back into the
forest. Chip rose in the water so that his back broke the surface, and
looked toward the places where his pond mates were scattered.

There was still no reason to warn them, though danger was surely near.
But at present there was no way either to find or to identify it. Chip
swam toward the upper end of the pond.

Before the beaver came, the creek had been relatively small, perhaps
twenty feet at its widest and with neither flood stages nor summer-low
levels because the surrounding forest controlled the water that flowed
into it. The dam had created a miniature lake in the wilderness, at its
widest along the dam itself. Toward the upper end of the pond, and below
the smaller, feeder dams, the creek narrowed until it was scarcely wider
than its original channel. It was, however, deeper, and on either bank
were scooped holes where an imperilled beaver could hide from enemies.
Chip swam slowly when he approached the upper end, and kept near the
bank so that, if he must, he could dive to immediate safety.

For a full two minutes, while the day brightened fast, Chip lingered
near one of the safety holes. When he left it he did so slowly. Nothing
happened, but still he did not relax. He neared a smaller dam, built
across the creek for the purpose of backing water into the aspens.
Before he climbed the well-trodden path that led up the face of this
feeder dam, he watched it for a full five minutes.

When he climbed, he went swiftly. As soon as he came to the top of the
feeder dam, he plunged into the water on the other side. When he was
again in the water he felt more at ease, but his sense of imminent
danger suddenly increased.

Chip was patriarch of his colony, and as such it was his duty to be sure
that all was well at all times. Early last evening, when everything was
still serene, he had visited all feeder dams, and found nothing wrong.
Now a quantity of assorted debris, beaver-chewed sticks and twigs,
floated against this creek-blocking dam. A faint trace of mud stained
the pond he was in.

There was no sign of flood stage on the creek; save for the sticks and
muddy water, there was no sign of anything. But the chewed sticks
floating against the dam meant that all was not well upstream. Chip knew
that there were other beaver dams there, for from time to time he had
journeyed upstream to see them. No beaver abandoned so many of their
sticks willingly.

They ate the bark, and when they had eaten they built the stripped
sticks into their dams or houses. Chip tried to fathom the meaning of
this influx of debris, and the significance of the roily water, but
there was nothing about that would tell him.

He made an exploratory trip around the upper pond, examining every inch
of the dam and the banks that held it in. A brown mink with a snaky head
arched its back like a cat, spat at him, and backed into a hole. The
mink remained there, purring low in its throat and threatening the
beaver.

Chip swam unconcernedly on. He was too big and old to have any fear of
mink, though sometimes they successfully attacked and killed young
beaver kits when their parents were not near enough to defend them. When
Chip came near, the mink spat a final outraged squawk and bounded up the
bank. He fled out of sight, his tail fluffed to twice its normal size
and every hair bristled. Chip paid no attention whatever.

There were feeder dams on either side of this one, and some in the flats
above, but no more across the creek. The side dams caught water that
escaped from many little springs that flowed out of the mountain,
controlled the flow, and backed water around aspens. Many of the dams
were connected by laboriously dug canals which made it easier to move
sticks and poles from one to another. Chip made no attempt to enter any
of them. The sticks and the muddy water had come from upstream.
Something had happened there.

The stream, a mountain creek full of riffles and small pools, had
cleared itself and only the pond was still roily. Chip swam a little way
up the stream, but when he came to the first riffle he turned and went
back. Daylight was well advanced and anything that cared to look could
see both the pond and anything in it. It was a dangerous time for beaver
who ventured too far from the safety of their ponds, or from water in
which they could submerge, and if Chip attempted to go over the riffles
he would have to expose himself completely.

He turned and swam toward the main pond. When he came to the feeder dam
he hesitated until he was certain that no danger lingered in the
immediate vicinity, then went over. He had seen nothing while climbing
and he saw nothing now, but as soon as he was again in the water he
submerged and swam swiftly along the pond's muddy bottom. A wise beaver
never depended entirely on his own senses. There was always a
possibility of some lurking peril. Lynx, bears, wolves, cougars, and
coyotes came to the pond to see if they could catch a beaver and all of
them were good hunters.

Chip surfaced in the center of the pond and again scouted the location
of his mates. Daylight was advanced so far that the pond and everything
about it was revealed in dim, gray shadow. It was a dangerous time for
land-faring beaver, but some were still up on the banks enjoying the
delicious new spring food. All the wiser members of the colony had come
back near the water and some were already in it. A small beaver with a
peeled stick in his mouth swam down to the dam and began to build his
stick into it.

Far up the bank, an almost black beaver was still felling a tree. Much
nearer the water, a kit chewed cautiously on an aspen twig. Chip watched
both, knowing them for what they were. Ebony, the black beaver, was a
careless fool who at the same time had been blessed with much more than
his share of blind luck. He had had more narrow escapes, and was in
trouble oftener, than any other beaver in the colony.

The kit was smart, too alert and intelligent to get very far from water
when the day was this far advanced. Young as he was, he was not nearly
as careless as his much older cousin up on the bank. Even as Chip
watched, the black beaver had another of his miraculous escapes.

There was no visible indication of any danger up on the bank, but
suddenly a lynx detached himself from a patch of frozen grass and sprang
toward Ebony. Exactly at that time, by sheer coincidence, the tree the
beaver was felling toppled directly on the lynx. In panicky haste Ebony
scuttled down the slope and leaped into the water.

Up on the slope, the pinned lynx screamed his rage as he wriggled free.
Claws spread like a house cat's, bristled, he leaped toward the pond.
But now there was nothing for him to catch.

Old Chip had acted the instant he saw the lynx. Arching his body, he
curled his flat tail and snapped it down on the water with a report like
a rifle shot. At this danger signal every inhabitant of the pond sought
safety in the water. Some submerged at once, diving into underwater
passages that led to their lodges. A few of the older and more
experienced joined Chip in the center of the pond. These were the beaver
who knew everything about their way of life and were able to meet any
situation. Sleek, Chip's mate, was one of them, and there were
Broken-Tooth and Peg. A three-legged beaver, Peg had long ago left his
left front paw in a beaver trap. But he had learned how to overcome this
handicap, and now could swim and dive with the most expert.

These four veterans watched the enraged lynx come down to the edge of
the pond and rear with his front paws on a mossy log. He blinked his big
eyes at the swimming beaver. They did not flinch. Unless it were
desperately hungry, on the point of near-starvation, a lynx would not
enter the water, and the beaver knew it.

After five minutes, waving defiance with his stub tail, the lynx walked
back into the aspen forest. Chip swam cautiously toward the bank, then
backed out into the water again. The lynx was gone and nothing else was
in sight, but the old beaver remained uneasy. In his age and wisdom he
had learned to piece together all the signs, all the things that might
pass unnoticed by a beaver with less experience. He knew that something
more than the lynx still threatened, and was all the more worried
because he could not identify it. All he could do was to remain
constantly watchful.

Broken-Tooth, Peg, and Sleek went down for a final morning inspection of
the dam. Chip returned to the upper end of the pond and swam back,
uncertain as to what course he should now take. He did not bother
inspecting the dam. The three beaver that had already looked it over
knew what they were doing. One by one the three submerged, and swam into
their respective lodges. Chip made one last nervous tour of the pond.

Then he made a long, clean dive that took him under water and into the
hollowed-out channel that led to the lodge which he shared with Sleek
and their kits of the year before. His webbed hind paws were extended
straight behind him, and his fore paws were folded along his chest. Chip
carried himself along by the sheer strength and power he had put into
his dive. Only when he was near the lodge's entrance did he use his hind
feet to push himself along, and when he came to the above-water
compartment he pulled himself up with his front paws.

Sleek stopped combing her wet fur and came forward to sniff noses with
him. Huddled in a pile, like careless puppies, the four well-fed kits
slept peacefully. Chip caressed Sleek with his tongue, then fell to
combing his own fur. He lay down in front of the roomy lodge's entrance
tunnel and slept for an hour.

He could sleep no longer than that because of the nagging unrest within
him. The kits merely raised their heads and blinked at him when he rose,
but Sleek stared questioningly. Chip listened, as though for some sign
or signal. He could see or hear nothing, but he was not reassured. The
buck had been uneasy when he came to drink. Sticks that should not have
been there had been bumping against the feeder dam, and the water had
been stained with a trace of mud. None of this was normal or usual.

Chip slipped out of the tunnel into the water. He rose beneath a ragged
stump that trailed gnarled roots in all directions. From here he could
see without being seen.

The warblers in the brush beside the dam were flitting about their usual
business, and a brightly painted oriole spilled liquid music into the
sun-drenched day. A trio of flapping crows winged lazily overhead.

There was nothing else about, but there should have been. A lithe doe
had been lingering near the pond ever since she had left the white cedar
swamp in which she had spent the winter. The doe was heavy with fawn,
and she had chosen a thicket not far from the pond as an ideal nursery.
Usually the doe loafed throughout the day where she could easily reach
rich grass that grew around the pond, but now she was nowhere in sight.
Then Chip saw the geese.

Ever since the beaver could remember, the same pair of wild geese had
nested in some tules at the far side of the pond. Now, as he watched,
the pair glided out of the sky onto the water. For a moment they bobbed
and curtsied before each other, curling their long necks. Then the
gander started a querulous complaint.

Followed by his mate, he swam nervously about. He raised in the water
and fluttered his wings, while his white-throated head turned
continuously on his long snake-like neck. The geese, creatures of
delicate perception, had also sensed that something was not as it should
be. Like Chip, they were unable to find or to identify the menace. But
they did not take flight.

Chip returned to Sleek and the sleeping kits, and briefly sniffed noses
with his mate. The unquiet, the sense of impending peril, had afflicted
her, too. Sleek kept her eyes on Chip while he looked about every square
inch of their home.

[Illustration]

It was mid-afternoon before he went out again, and when he did the geese
were still swimming nervously about the center of the pond. As soon as
Chip's head broke the surface, they started a nervous honking and
half-flew toward the other side. The geese began to swim around and
around each other, snaking their heads and hissing while they tried to
decide what to do. As though they had suddenly made up their minds, they
flapped across the pond and into the air. They spiralled upward, crying
protests because they no longer dared stay in the place which had been
their home for so long.

Chip did not go back into the lodge. With twilight, Peg and Broken-Tooth
appeared to swim beside him. Then Sleek and the kits came out of their
lodge. The beaver colony gathered, but only Ebony went up on the bank to
eat fresh aspen bark. The night deepened. Twenty minutes later Chip
received his first positive danger signal.

It was far-off but very plain, a heavy shuffling accompanied by much
crackling of brush. Something slow and clumsy was coming toward the dam.
Broken-Tooth swam tensely around Chip, awaiting the danger signal. When
it did not come, Broken-Tooth slapped the water with his own tail.
Beaver dived toward their lodges, or swam about in bewilderment. With
Sleek following, and their kits strung out behind them, Chip swam away
from the dam. Ebony stubbornly refused to come into the pond.

The approaching men, five of them, went to the dam and arranged
themselves along it. A moment's silence followed. Then dazzling light,
the combined power from five battery-powered searchlights, illumined the
pond. Frightened at last, the black beaver started down the slope toward
the water, and the snap-snap of exploding .22 rifles followed. True to
his luck, Ebony came through a hail of lead and sprang into the water.

Chip dived, but not before he heard and saw pellets striking the water
all around him and knew that two kits had stopped swimming to float
limply. Hoping Sleek would follow, Chip went deep into the water.

There was a sudden, violent shock that seemed to jar the pond. An
orange-red flash, for the briefest part of a second, dimmed even the
spotlights. Dazed, but instinctively fighting, Chip floated to the
surface.

Again he was aware of the snapping .22's. Swimming beside him, Peg's
mate stiffened convulsively. Chip did not know where Sleek was, or
anything save that he could not resist the rush of water carrying him
toward the hole dynamited in the dam. Calling on his last reserves of
strength, the old beaver dived again.

He gave all his power and attention to remaining submerged. He swept
through the hole, missing by inches the net spread over it, and was
hurled into the snarling flood downstream.




  _Chapter II_

  DANGEROUS JOURNEY


Born in the above-water apartment of a beaver lodge, a kit's first act
upon leaving his nursery bed has to be to go down the tunnel and into
the pond, since there is no other way out. Swimming, for him, is as
natural and much easier than taking the first steps is for a human baby.
He is much more at home in the water than on land, and so refined does
his experience make his knowledge of water that he learns to respond to
its smallest change.

As he grows older, even a slight ripple spreading across the pond
carries its own message as exactly as an air current carries news to a
fox, deer, bear, or other beast that depends much on its nose. He
learns to know whether water is disturbed by big trout chasing minnows,
swimming turtles, or wading birds. He becomes so sensitive to changes in
the pond that when a tiny leak starts in the dam, even on the blackest
night, he can go directly to it. He knows the transformations wrought by
rain, snow, and ice. There is nothing about water which a wise beaver
does not know.

Thus, when he was forced through the broken dam, Chip was instantly
aware that he had no chance of fighting the torrent that carried him
along. He simply rode with the tons of water that had been suddenly
released when the charge of dynamite ripped a gaping hole in the dam.

The shock of the explosion left him partly dazed, but even so his
reactions were almost automatic. Though he was unable to fight the
flood, he was not helpless in it. Using his broad tail as a rudder,
swimming strongly, he kept his nose pointed downstream. And he used his
marvellous knowledge of water to the fullest advantage.

He could not see it, but water curling on both sides told him that a
submerged boulder was in his path. Steering with his tail, Chip plunged
vigorously with his webbed hind feet and went up and over.

He released some of the air which he had gasped into his lungs a second
before he dived. Though he must ride the flood, he had no intention of
doing it blindly. And no matter what he found ahead, it could not
possibly be more deadly than the terror from which he was fleeing.

The old beaver knew men as well as he did other enemies. A half-dozen
times in his memory they had come to the pond with steel traps, and
always the pond had lost some of its inhabitants when they came. Chip
had seen his mates struggling in traps, or drowned in clever sets, and
he had always given them as wide a berth as possible. He had thus
learned about traps, and that he must avoid everything which he did not
thoroughly understand.

Poachers who dynamited dams were new to him, but Chip had lived partly
because he was instantly able to meet and adapt himself to new
situations. He understood the difference, if not between life and death,
at least between a live beaver and a dead beaver. He was aware that the
snapping rifles in the hands of the five men had killed numerous members
of his colony. He knew also that men did not have to be close to
whatever they wished to kill. Therefore it was well to stay submerged,
and out of sight.

Chip surfaced only after he was swept around a bend, more than three
hundred yards down the creek. He gulped air into his aching lungs as he
continued to ride the flood crest. He could no longer see the lights,
but he still heard the snapping rifles and hoarsely shouting men. The
poachers at the dam were killing all the beaver left in the pond. Some
fled into the lodges, only to have them ripped apart over their heads.
Nor was there any place to hide on the bare mud flats which the drained
pond had become.

After another two hundred yards, the flood began to spend its terrific
initial force. Chip remained on the surface, able to control himself now
and swim swiftly downstream. Throughout his life he had known many
worried moments, and some fear-filled ones, but there had never been a
night of terror such as this. It was unthinkable to go back, or ever
again to return to where the dam had been.

Thus the old beaver decided his own hard fate, and he knew beforehand
what that decision involved. Among wilderness dwellers, it is unwritten
law that everything is entitled to its own home. The kingfisher, for
instance, had never hunted farther than a big sycamore overhanging the
creek. If he had tried to do so he would have had to fight another
kingfisher that had staked out the adjoining territory for his own. Chip
had lived in the pond by right of being born there. Now that the pond
was no more, he had necessarily become an outcast and a wanderer. Before
he could build a new home he must find a place not yet claimed by any
other beaver.

Two miles down the creek, the flood was noticeable only because water
was lapping banks which ordinarily it would not have touched at this
season. In spite of the higher water, there were many shallow riffles,
and places where Chip could not submerge. He swam on regardless, not
knowing where he was going but not fearing what he would find nearly as
much as the poachers who had destroyed his pond. A half mile farther on,
the beaver swam to the bank and climbed out.

For a full five minutes he held perfectly still, waiting and watching.
Now he understood the full significance of the danger signals he had
read yesterday. Chewed sticks again floated past, and the water bore a
trace of mud. The night before last the poachers must have blown out
another dam farther up the creek. The signs were the same.

When nothing stirred, Chip ventured cautiously to an aspen tree and ate
some tender twigs. Regardless of what else happened, he must eat. He
felled a small tree, and stripped some of the bark from it.

Terror remained with him. He looked constantly back up the creek and at
the water, fearful of what he would see, hear or smell there, and he ate
less than half of what he normally would. For a few more minutes he
lingered uncertainly on the bank. Like all beaver, he loved the company
of his kind and now he was very lonesome for Sleek, Broken-Tooth, Peg,
and the kits. But he had no way of knowing whether any of them had
escaped. Chip returned to the water's edge.

The stream, swelled by the backed-up pond, was still flooded beyond its
usual seasonal run. But the flood was receding fast. Chip inspected it
carefully, with an expert's knowledge. Then he chose a rock as yet
untouched by water and scented it with castor. It was a heavy, sweetish,
musty smell, not at all unpleasant and so powerful that it could have
been detected even by the comparatively dull nose of a human being. Chip
had chosen his place carefully. The scent would linger for days, and
tell any beaver who followed that Chip had passed this way.

Then he slipped into the water and continued his downstream journey. He
had never been this far down before, and he did not know what lay
ahead. He did know that he could not return to the pond, and its
terrors. He must search out a new world and make a place for himself in
it. Chip stopped swimming to float silently.

A shadow moved beside the stream, and the angry snarl of a prowling
mongrel sliced the stillness. So warily that he left scarcely a ripple
to mark the place, Chip dived. With long, powerful strokes he swam
downstream, until his progress was halted abruptly by a shallow riffle.

The beaver had only a slight forewarning that the riffle lay ahead. A
half second before he came to it the water flowed faster, became
shallower, and began to be filled with rocks. With a sudden rush and a
great splashing Chip surfaced, and galloped heavily down the riffle
toward the next pool.

The big woolly dog, lingering upstream at the place where his proposed
quarry had disappeared, heard the noise and barked again. With a long
leap, he started toward the riffle. The dog was a confirmed
night-prowler and a ferocious fighter. He had never seen a beaver
before, and wanted to catch this strange beast before it escaped.

Surprisingly fast despite his squat build, Chip continued to run down
the riffle toward the next pool. But it was a long riffle, and the rangy
dog could run three times as fast as the fleeing beaver. Snarling,
raising spray in his wake, the dog prepared for the last swift rush that
would overwhelm his quarry. He closed in.

Chip was a peaceful creature, but he did not lack courage or knowledge
of fighting. He humped his back, and flexed the dozens of hard muscles
that lay just beneath his thick skin. Slashing like a wolf, the dog got
only a mouthful of hair. At the same time, Chip bent his body in a half
circle and closed his jaws.

He sank his two-inch teeth, chisels capable of taking a big chip from an
aspen or birch, through the dog's front leg. Then he threw all his
seventy pounds into a backward lunge. The dog's belligerent snarl
changed to a frightened whine, then to a yelp of pain. Chip opened his
jaws and sought a new hold, but the dog was too fast.

Still yelping, he flung himself backward so violently that he fell. His
shoulder ploughed through the riffle, but almost at once he was on his
feet. Tail plastered flat to his rump, racing on three legs, he left a
trail of frightened yells behind him as he fled. Chip waited until he
was sure the enemy would not return, then resumed his downstream
journey.

He stopped again, questing with his nostrils when an acrid taint of wood
smoke assailed them. The beaver swam silently to the center of the
creek, ready to dive at a second's notice. Dimly he saw a sagging
barbed-wire fence that paralleled the creek, and beyond that an open
field. Squat shapes in the black night, a house, barn, and out-buildings
loomed up faintly in the field. The wood smoke filtered from the house's
tin smoke pipe.

Staying in the center of the stream, Chip swam silently past and rested
easily again only when he was once more in aspen forest. But his senses
had been sharpened. He gave up all thought of staying the rest of the
night around this place, and of perhaps seeking a new dam site. He did
not want to live near any human-inhabited building.

Suddenly he was in another clearing, and again the smell of wood smoke
tainted the air. The beaver slowed, and made a little circle that
carried him back up the creek. Only he dared not go back that way for
there lay enemies. He had to continue downstream, but he did not like
this country. Too many farms broke the forest.

Twenty minutes later Chip crouched, terrified, beneath a railroad bridge
while a train thundered over it. The bridge's brick foundations
trembled, cinder specks rained into the creek. The passing train left
Chip shivering in the water.

Some beaver build their dams beside railroad tracks, and even fill
drainage ditches to enlarge their ponds. But Chip was a creature of the
wilderness, and knew only wild ways. To him a train was a monstrous,
terrifying unknown. When he resumed his downstream journey he swam
faster than ever, and when he neared a small tributary creek he at once
swerved into it.

The tributary was a spring-fed brook, a rill that began two-thirds of
the way up a mountain that flanked the creek and ran a brawling course
to the bottom. It was much colder than the main stream. Chip stopped at
the mouth of the creek to leave another castor, as an unmistakable sign
that he had passed this way. It was peculiarly his own scent, unlike any
other, and among beaver it marked him as positively as a man's
finger-prints identify him. If any member of the colony came this far,
they could have no doubt that they were following their leader.

Despite the iciness of the tributary, the beaver's downy under-coat
kept him both warm and dry. But he was tired and hungry, and would have
to find shelter before daylight. He stopped to fell another aspen, and
ate the bark from it. Some of the smaller and more tender twigs he ate
whole, swallowing them as a rabbit does. Gravely he washed his face and
combed out his fur with the single claw on his rear paws.

It was still dark, but the night had almost run its course and dawn was
due to break very soon. The morning thrush was already fluting his
six-note song and then repeating it backward. Chip planned carefully to
meet the day.

The creek was very small, but there were a few wide, deep pools in it.
The beaver travelled to such a pool, six feet wide by nine long, and
three feet deep. He inspected it carefully. Water spilled from a rock
ledge at the upper end, and made a tiny rapids that fell into the pool.
Beneath the ledge was a cavern, the rear part of which was dry. Chip
crawled out of the water onto the dry spot, and found that he could curl
up there. Then he swam back into the pool and came to the surface in the
lightening dawn.

This swift little stream that leaped from pool to pool, hurling itself
down the declines that intervened, was totally foreign to the beaver's
experience. Nor had he ever before been so high up on a mountainside.
Chip reverted to his inborn woods-wisdom and his innate knowledge of the
wild as he planned to survive whatever this new land might bring.

His former home was a lost cause. The creek, flanked by numerous farm
houses, was no better. Nor did the rill offer any possibilities for a
dam and the home Chip desired. It fell at too steep a pitch. There were
too many stones and boulders and not enough mud banks. Nor was the
timber on these rocky slopes desirable. The aspen was small and
straggling. There was little birch, and Chip had no special liking for
the quantities of beech that grew all around him.

He must go on, but he would have to stay here throughout the day. If it
were avoidable, he dared not travel by day. There was too much danger.
Even if the same peril stalked by night, darkness still offered a
friendly cloak of safety. Chip climbed out on the bank, to wait and
watch until the warblers started to stir. Then he dived back beneath the
ledge.

He climbed up on the dry part and stretched out to his full length. He
filled the tiny space, and the tip of his broad tail dangled in the
water. He dozed intermittently, but never so soundly that he could not
awaken at the least hint of anything different. This was not the pond,
with its safe and friendly lodge, but strange country. Because it was
strange, it must necessarily be hostile. Every sense must be tuned to
its sharpest pitch.

For an hour, while full daylight bloomed, nothing happened. Then the
water in the pool splashed slightly as a saw-billed merganser alighted
upon it. A school of speckled trout, little fish no more than four
inches long, frantically sought shelter beneath rocks. Four swam
hurriedly under the ledge and lingered there, fanning the water with
their fins and tails. The nervous tension that gripped them was evident
in their small bodies, poised like living arrows as they awaited the
next move of the fish-eating duck.

Wings folded close to his body, saw bill extended, the merganser swam
beneath the ledge. He was a dangerous, agile thing which, in a pool so
small, could catch even brook trout. The merganser knew all their
tricks. After the fish had sought a refuge beneath stones, or under the
ledge, he would pluck them from their hiding places. But he had not
reckoned with anything save the trout.

Just as he came beneath the ledge, Chip stirred and raised himself so
that his back was almost brushing the stone roof. He turned his head,
and in the half-light that filtered under the ledge he saw the duck.
Startled, the merganser opened his mouth and throat and half-choked on
the water that flowed in. Whirling hurriedly about, he used wings and
feet to propel himself back into the pool. Bursting to the surface, he
took panicky flight.

The beaver relaxed. When he rose, he had wanted only to see what was
invading the pool. He identified the merganser instantly, and paid no
further attention to it. Such ducks were a threat to fish but never to
beaver, and Chip wouldn't have cared if it stayed in the pool.

He remained alert, not because there was any immediate threat but
because these unfamiliar surroundings made him nervous. After a
ten-minute interval, the little trout emerged from their hiding places
and resumed their everlasting business of feeding on minute water life.
A hatch of flies fluttered down to the pool, and the trout rose to them.

Throughout the long day there was only one more interruption. A small
rabbit, hotly pursued by a weasel, stumbled into the pool and swam
wearily across. The weasel poised delicately with both fore paws on a
stone and looked at his exhausted quarry. The weasel had no intention of
getting wet, so he ran downstream to a place where the creek was
shallower and leaped across. As soon as he approached, the rabbit jumped
back into the pool and swam to the side he had recently left. Again the
weasel bounded across, and again the rabbit eluded him in the water. The
little drama was repeated half a dozen times. Finally, refreshed, the
rabbit dashed off into the forest. Once more the weasel took up his
trail.

Chip paid absolutely no attention. Judged by human standards, his world
was a harsh one. But it was the only world the beaver knew, and the
weasel-driven rabbit was a commonplace. A thousand times an hour such
scenes occurred and there would be one of two endings. The rabbit would
get away, or the weasel would catch and eat him.

The sun was sinking when Chip finally came out from behind the ledge. He
swam into the pool, and broke water so gently that only his head
protruded. Even that, to any watcher, might have been a suddenly
appearing bunch of leaves or forest debris. The beaver circled the pool,
then climbed out on the bank. He hesitated, calling into play that
native intelligence, miscalled instinct, which in times of stress is
the final resort of all wild things.

It was a sense as old as the earth itself. The beaver was guided by that
same light which had steered the first of his kind so truly and
unerringly. He did not know what lay ahead, but somewhere he would find
a place to satisfy him. And since he could not go back, he must go
ahead.

Old Chip continued up the stream, which became smaller as he went
farther. He passed a porcupine that was gnawing at the base of a birch
tree, and the porcupine stared placidly when the beaver appeared. He
continued to stare until Chip passed him, then resumed gnawing.

When the beaver came to the clear and ice-cold spring where the brook
had its source, he stopped for a long while. The spring, bubbling
between gray rocks that were hung with streamers of moss, was scarcely
six inches deep and no more than three feet at its widest. A few feet to
one side was a rotting snow drift, over which a cool wind blew. Chip sat
up, folding his fore paws against his chest. His nostrils wriggled as he
tested the air. He looked down the slope up which he had climbed, and at
the incline that lay ahead.

He saw nothing except boulders and stunted hardwoods, relieved by an
occasional open space. Long ago lumbermen had passed through here with
ruthless axes. The only reminder of the great trees which had once
covered the mountain lay in rotting, lichen-encrusted stumps. In spite
of the forbidding prospect, Chip knew that he must travel over the top
of the mountain. It was the only course. For the first time in his life,
Chip voluntarily turned his back on water.

He started up the slope, guiding himself only by a positive and inborn
knowledge. Water was essential to his way of life and here there was
none. He was still sure that he would find some if he went on.

He climbed as fast as he could, but compared with creatures naturally
endowed to live in such places his progress was slow and almost clumsy.
A snowshoe hare darted away from him. An exploding, feathered bomb, a
ruffed grouse took startled wing. A shaggy buck stamped its feet and
snorted. But without trouble the plodding beaver gained the top of the
mountain.

Here there were only a few snow-free spaces, carpeted with sodden, wet
leaves. The timber remained sparse, second-growth hardwoods. Only such
things as could find a rooting in the desolation left by the lumbermen
had grown on the mountain. It was a bleak, monotonous place.

Old Chip travelled as fast as he could. Throughout his entire life, he
had never before been far from water in which he might find safety. Here
there was no water. If an enemy threatened, he would have to fight it.
But fast travelling was his safest course. Because it was the easiest
path, he followed a trail consisting of brush-grown ruts worn long ago
by ironshod wheels of teamsters' wagons.

Rounding a bend, Chip came suddenly upon an immense black bear squarely
in the center of the path. The bear's pink tongue lolled from open jaws,
as he saw the beaver and started toward him.

Chip made ready to fight. He sat straight up, balancing on his tail as
he prepared to use his teeth, and studied the bear as it approached. The
bear stopped.

Out of hibernation for two weeks, he had been gorging himself steadily
since. A fat beaver would not come amiss, but the bear was not hungry
enough to fight for a meal. For a moment, head low, he faced Chip. Then
he ambled into the brush at one side of the trail and began to snuffle
about.

[Illustration]

The beaver continued, leaving the tote road instantly when he found a
trickle of water. The snow was gone from this southern slope, but the
little spring run babbled toward its junction with what Chip knew was a
larger stream. He kept steadily on and never left the water. A tense
excitement began to rise within him.

He was entering a great forest of aspens that were just beginning to
break out their feathery spring buds. Daylight broke and brightened, but
still the beaver did not look for shelter. Somewhere ahead lay the water
he sought.

Morning was well under way when he reached it. It was a gently flowing
brook, with shallow riffles and an occasional deep hole. Chip hurried
toward the stream, then stopped short.

A few feet away, hungry and tense, looking like a bunch of mottled
leaves on the forest floor, lay Glare, the master lynx.




  _Chapter III_

  GLARE, THE LYNX


Glare had left one of his several daytime lairs, deep in the heart of a
blackberry thicket, a little before twilight deepened the last rays of
the setting sun. Thirty-five pounds of spring-steel muscles and supple
bone, the big cat padded on enormous feet to the edge of the thicket and
waited there.

So well did his mottled-gray coat blend in with the gray thicket that,
even while in motion, he was very hard to see. An alert blue jay sitting
in a nearby tree was unaware of him. The jay flicked his tail and
preened his feathers. His head turned almost continuously, and more than
half the time his bright buttons of eyes were fixed on the sky. Two days
ago the jay had barely escaped a goshawk's strike, and the memory of it
was very fresh.

So softly and quietly that his head seemed to be moving on well-oiled
hinges, Glare turned his yellow eyes toward the jay. They were large
eyes that missed nothing, and were a perfect complement for Glare's
sensitive, tufted ears. The big lynx depended on his eyes and ears to
tell him what was around him. Compared with most other wild creatures,
the lynx had a relatively weak nose. Glare could detect odors only when
they were very near or very strong, but with his eyes and ears he did
not need a keen sense of smell.

From his vantage point he could see the valley spread far below him.
Nearer by, he saw the little herd of buck deer that moved single file
down to the stream. He regarded them with only passing interest, but he
knew all about them. The bucks were part of a little deer herd which
made a home in the aspen forest. Only a few short months ago, when they
had sought the favor of the does, they had striven earnestly to kill
each other. Then they had dropped their antlers and spent the whole
winter peacefully together. Now, while awaiting the growth of new
antlers, they remained fast friends.

Glare had no special interest in them because, antlered or not, any
adult deer was a fierce and dangerous antagonist. There was easier game:
snowshoe rabbits, mice, low-roosting grouse, muskrats, and perhaps an
occasional fawn. Glare had stalked and killed full-grown deer when
winter starvation drove him to extreme measures, but it was a dangerous
game. The lynx did not care to fight for a meal when there was a
possibility of getting one without fighting. Glare turned his eyes away
from the bucks.

Very far down the valley, the last feeble rays of the setting sun fell
squarely on an open pool in the little stream and seemed to set it on
fire. Another deer, a doe, moved into sight. Glare stared at her with
steady interest. It was too early for fawns, but they would be coming
along soon and it was well to know the exact location of every doe.
Lacking any scent at all and blending so perfectly with their
surroundings that even Glare's wonderful eyes could not see them as long
as they lay still, fawns were very hard to find. But they made a tasty
meal when they could be had.

Glare studied the valley carefully, and noted everything in it. He saw a
flock of crows glide to their night roost in a single great beech that
grew among the aspens, and far across the valley he heard a turkey
call. Chickadees twittered comfortably in the nearby trees, and the blue
jay was still preening his feathers. Glare turned his head ever so
slightly.

Ten feet away, and so faint that only very sensitive ears could have
detected it, a white-footed mouse had rustled the decaying leaves. Glare
heard the sound, and marked it exactly for he knew that it would not be
repeated. The mouse, knowing he had erred, would not move again. He
would freeze where he was, hoping nothing had heard him. Glare left the
thicket.

As soon as he did so the blue jay saw him, and immediately began to
scream, fluttering its wings and jerking its tail. It hopped higher in
the tree, announcing to everything within hearing that the lynx was
abroad. Glare paid absolutely no attention.

He made no noise whatever as he padded toward that place where the mouse
had rustled. Coming near, he slapped his broad front paw down on the
leaves and closed his claws. Glare brushed away the dirt and leaves he
had grabbed, and took the mouse from it. He swallowed the morsel, then
licked his chops.

The screaming jay had followed him, and Glare glanced at it with
irritation. Then he walked on, knowing that he could neither catch the
jay nor prevent its following him. He also knew that, as long as the
jay followed him, everything in his path would be warned of his
approach. He was hungry, but before he did anything else he must lose
the jay.

Glare walked on, seemingly unconcerned but planning exactly what he
would do. Not trying to hide, he slipped into another thicket and walked
an old rabbit trace to the center. The hysterical jay flew to a tree on
the far side and redoubled his frantic screaming. Glare moved as softly
as a puff of wind.

He stole toward the side of the thicket, a moving shadow that did not so
much as bend or ruffle one bush. Glare crouched very near the earth,
intent on a small knoll toward which he was creeping. It was his
intention to slip behind it and into the forest, but the sharp-eyed jay
saw him and followed.

Glare whirled angrily. He was a cat with a cat's explosive nervous
system, and now it gave way. The lynx leaped high in the air, his front
paw outstretched as he sought to grasp the jay and bring it down. The
jay fluttered wildly out of reach and sought safety in a tree. From
there he screamed insults. The angry Glare sheathed and unsheathed his
claws.

He walked on, his stub tail angrily erect and his ruff bristled. His
dull nose told him where snowshoe rabbits had been feeding recently, but
they were alarmed by the jay's screaming and had fled. Glare leaped
again at the jay. Alerted by the first attempt to bring him down, the
jay stayed out of reach. Glare halted, twitching his tail, his yellow
eyes staring angrily.

Aside from the morsel of the mouse, he had last eaten early this
morning, when he caught and killed a small cottontail. It had not been
nearly enough to sustain Glare's thirty-five pounds of restless energy
for very long. Now he was hungry again, but the jay was frightening
everything. After a few minutes of raging, Glare did the only thing he
could do and accepted the situation. While the jay continued to scream
and cackle, he curled up beside an aspen and slept. He knew perfectly
well that no jay cared to risk the terrors that stalked by night, and
before long this one would seek a safe roost.

Another hour passed before the jay flew into the shelter of a small
nearby hemlock. Glare raised his head, and when he did so the jay
uttered another sleepy screech. For a moment the lynx debated the
advisability of climbing the tree and trying to catch the jay, but
discarded the idea. The hemlock into which the jay had gone was very
bushy; even Glare could not climb it without some noise. Probably the
jay would fly before he was able to reach him. Glare rose and trod
softly into the aspens. The hunger in his belly was a raging thing now,
which must be satisfied.

The lynx followed the contour of the hill around to a level space where
the slope flattened. There was a profusion of small trees here, shoots
and saplings, and there were many open spaces in which new spring grass
showed green against the background of last year's dead grass. Glare
became a stalking whisper, for this was a favorite haunt of snowshoe
rabbits.

His broad paws were soft on the ground as he approached and climbed upon
a moss-grown log. He waited there, seeming to melt into the log and
become part of it. Once settled, he did not stir. Even the gentle breeze
that played along the bench ruffled his silky fur only slightly. His
ears were alert, his eyes fixed on the rabbit trace that ran beside the
log. Three-quarters of an hour later, Glare tensed.

He heard the rabbit coming before he saw it, and made ready to spring
when it was near. But the tensing of his muscles, the preparation for a
leap, did not move his body even slightly. A moment later he saw the
rabbit. It was a big one, hopping slowly along the rabbit trace. Glare
gathered himself to spring.

A split second before he was ready, there was an interruption even more
silent than Glare himself. Wraith, the great horned owl, was also
hunting on the bench. Flying silently, he swooped down and snatched up
the rabbit. Powerful wings bore Wraith and his burden into the air.

Glare sprang, but his groping claws closed only upon a tuft of feathers.
The lynx stood in the rabbit trace, his eyes aflame with anger and his
short tail jerking, as he watched the owl bear his meal away.

There was nothing he could do about it. Wraith was gone as silently as
he had come. Glare must hunt again. He moved along the bench.

But a change had come over the lynx. He had been hungry when he left the
thicket where he had bedded throughout the day and he was hungrier now.
Nor had his forty-five minutes on the log, waiting for a rabbit to
appear, improved his short temper. All wild things must have patience,
but Glare possessed a lesser degree than perhaps any other creature. He
had no wish to lay a second ambush and wait another half hour, or
longer, for another snowshoe. Nor could he stalk them. The long-legged
hares with the immense rear feet had ears fully as keen as his. Though
he made almost no noise, they heard him coming and got out of the way.
The snowshoes could not be still-hunted even by a master stalker such as
Glare.

[Illustration]

Twenty minutes after Wraith took the snowshoe almost from beneath his
very nose, the lynx left the bench. He trotted through the budding
aspens to the tiny stream that coursed down the valley, and followed it.
A few weeks ago, swollen by melting snow, the stream had overflowed its
banks and strayed far into the aspens. Now it was low, with clear water
that struggled down shallow riffles, and into limpid pools. Glare
followed the stream to a pool he knew.

It was well up in the aspens, a mile and a half from the never-failing
spring where the stream had its source. The stream made a bend here, and
violent spring and autumn floods had smashed the banks away to leave a
pool which at flood stage was about fifteen feet wide by twenty long,
and eight feet deep. Now the pool was less than half that length and
breadth, and no more than three feet at its deepest.

Glare crawled onto a half-sunken log that had one end on the stream bank
and the other in the pool. He knew this spot well. In summer when the
springs that fed the creek were at their lowest, this was almost the
only pool in the entire stream that retained more than a few inches of
water. Because of that, it was a favorite haunt of such trout as
remained in the stream. Since last year a monstrous brown trout had
ruled the fish in the pool.

Glare had tried several times to catch the King trout, but always
unsuccessfully. Now he would try again. Slowly, making no swift motions
that would alarm his quarry, the lynx lowered one front paw almost to
the water. He held perfectly still, unblinking eyes fixed on that part
of the pool which was just beneath his paw.

A foot away, the pool's surface swirled as one of the trout in it rose
to chase a swimming bug. Glare did not turn his eyes; he could catch
only what came within reach of his paw. Again he tensed as a shadow
moved near the log, then flicked his paw. His claws sank into a fat
chub.

Glare gobbled his catch and stood up. He knew he had rippled the water
when he caught his fish, and that the rest of the fish would be warned
by that and stay away from the leaning log. The lynx could not afford to
wait until they became unwary again. He was too desperately hungry.

He walked to the head of the pool, leaped across the shallow stream, and
trotted swiftly through the aspens. There were patches of hemlock and
pine scattered through the aspens, and grouse were inclined to roost in
them. Glare made his way to such a patch, stubby hemlocks whose lower
branches almost brushed the ground, and began to stalk.

He caught the scent of roosting grouse, and by walking silently back and
forth, with his bristled face tilted upward, he finally saw them. They
were dark bundles against the night sky, but already some premonition of
danger had reached them. A grouse took its head from beneath a hovering
wing, and sat bolt upright. It clucked querulously, and its mates
stirred.

Glare tried to be very quiet as he walked to the tree and reared against
it, but he was not silent enough. His claws scraped the bark, and at the
sound the roosting grouse took instant wing. They rattled into the
night, brushing branches and twigs as they flew, and settled in another
tree. Glare whirled about in a rage.

There was good hunting in the aspens, but the big lynx's temper was
thoroughly aroused and he would hunt here no more tonight. Glare struck
a steady pace through the aspens, following a deer path that paralleled
the creek and leaping the fallen logs and boulders that blocked the
path.

Two miles farther on the aspen forest ended in straggling patches of
trees. Glare swerved, remaining within the trees as long as he could.
But when he came out of them he did not hesitate. He knew the valley
here and had hunted it before.

Hills once covered with fine hemlock and pine now rose nakedly on either
side. When the lumbermen passed this way they had been absolutely
ruthless, taking every marketable tree and leaving only the culls and
unfit. A few deformed trees and scrub second growth that struggled to
get a start were the only remainders of once virginal forests. Because
there was no longer any timber to regulate its flow, every spring and
every fall the creek ran wild. Flood waters that swept the valley had
cut dozens of new channels which were completely dry except in flood
time. And high water that overflowed all channels had swept away so much
valuable topsoil that whatever grew in the valley was ragged and thin.
It was a valley of desolation, but a few stubborn human beings clung
tenaciously to the thin soil.

Glare did not like humans or anything about them, and knew that they
were always better let alone. But on various occasions, when hunting in
the aspens had been difficult, he had raided poultry yards, sheep pens,
and twice had even killed calves. He knew the people who owned such
stock as relatively dull creatures, slow to respond to an alarm and not
too dangerous when they took up his trail.

Glare did fear their dogs, and this fear had its roots in ancient times.
From the very beginning, dogs and cats had been natural enemies. It was
a foolish fear because, in a fair fight, Glare could have killed almost
any dog in the valley. He still feared them.

However, he knew every farm in the valley and was aware of which farmers
kept dogs. Following one of the creek's dry channels, Glare went past
the first farm house to the second. It was a small, unpainted house
sadly beaten by the weather, and a flood which had come to the very
doorstep had undermined part of the foundation. Last year the house had
had no occupant, but within the past six months a man had moved into it.
The last time Glare came this way, he had had no dog.

The lynx left the stream bed and walked openly toward the barnyard.
Fifty feet away he stopped, listening and watching. There was no sign of
any dog. Glare continued, passing a tethered cow that raised a nervous
head as she thought she saw something in the night. Glare gave the cow
no further attention; his eyes were on a big apple tree in which both
chickens and turkeys roosted.

He paused briefly to look at the chickens, ghostly white shapes
silhouetted against the night sky, and at the darker turkeys. Without
hesitation he started up the tree, his claws scratching the rough bark.
Grouse, or wild turkeys, would have awakened and flown. But these were
tame birds. Only when the lynx was creeping out on the limb where they
roosted did a turkey stretch its neck and cluck sleepily in the night.
Glare closed his fangs on a fat white rooster, and at once the night
silence was shattered by a startled squawk.

As though the squawk were a signal, somewhere within the house a dog
barked choppily. An instant later a light flared, and the searching eye
of an electric torch darted through the window. Inside the house, the
barking dog became frantic.

Taking a firm grip on the rooster, Glare scrambled down the tree trunk.
He had miscalculated, and in the wilds any miscalculation was apt to be
at the price of life itself. Most of the farmers were sluggish and slow
to arouse, but this one was not. There was a square of light as a door
opened and shut, and the barking dog came out of the house.

Almost at once he became silent, and Glare ran as fast as he could.
Various times, when there was snow on the ground, he had been coursed
by the motley pack of dogs which the valley farmers could assemble.
Glare was afraid of all dogs, but he had learned long ago that dogs that
barked on a trail were the least dangerous. Their sound told him where
they were and how to avoid them, but twice he had been almost overtaken
by silently running dogs who had come upon him without his knowing they
were even near. This was such a one.

Glare ran as hard as he could back toward the aspen forest, and because
the rooster slowed him up, reluctantly he dropped it. He sprang from the
top to the bottom of one of the dry channels, and raced up that. His
ears were laid back, tuned to catch a sound of the pursuing dog. Twice
he heard a stone rattle and once an eager whine, then the dog was lost.
Glare had outdistanced it.

Hungrier and angrier than ever, the lynx went back to the bench where so
many snowshoes lived. Again his own temper thwarted him. He made false
passes at two snowshoes and missed them. The morning was well advanced
when he returned for another try at the big trout.

It was no use. The school of trout lay motionless in the deepest part of
their pool. Glare wandered along the stream, then stopped suddenly. He
flattened his ears. His yellow eyes gleamed.

He saw a beaver, a big animal twice his size. It was the first beaver he
had ever seen on this stream, but he had fought and killed them
elsewhere and he knew how to do it. He had to avoid their teeth, those
great, tree-chopping tushes, but he knew how to do that. Glare poised to
leap forward to the attack.

As he did so, a rifle cracked. The bullet ploughed into the ground where
the lynx had crouched and downstream the dog yelped eagerly. Glare gave
a great sidewise spring that carried him behind a group of aspens, and
kept running.




  _Chapter IV_

  A NEW HOME


Like all other wild things, Chip had definite rules to fit every known
situation. When he did not know what to do, he simply did nothing. Chip
applied that rule now; he held perfectly still.

Glare was gone as quickly as a puff of wind, and the black and brown
airedale that came in sight a few seconds later was intent only on the
lynx's trail. He was a young dog, bursting with puppyish enthusiasm. He
bounded to the aspens, snuffled about, and slowly worked out Glare's
trail. Chip watched the dog run through the aspens, faltering here and
there but always returning to the scent he wanted. The dog was almost
out of sight when the man came.

Jed Hale was a young man with long, uncut black hair on a hatless head.
He wore khaki trousers and shirt open at the collar, and his feet were
encased in leather moccasins. He had thrown on a light jacket, but
running had made him warm and he had unfastened it so that it flapped as
he ran. A stub-barreled 30-30 dangled from his right hand. Jed Hale
paused a moment, ducking beneath the overhanging branches to see which
way the dog had gone. Then he ran on, never seeing the beaver.

Chip remained perfectly still, not moving a muscle. He was in plain
sight and he knew it, but he also knew the virtues of absolute quiet.
This was not the first time an enemy had run right past him because he
held still. But had he moved, he certainly would have been seen.

The beaver made no motion at all until the man and dog had been gone for
a full two minutes, and then he advanced only a few steps. He sat up,
balancing himself on his broad tail while he tested the wind currents
with a wriggling nose. Chip's sense of smell was not much keener than
Glare's, but he could detect nearby odors and know where their sources
were. Now the faint scents told him that Glare, Jed Hale and the dog
were a long way up the creek.

Chip dropped to all fours. Only a few feet away, the spring run he had
been following down the mountain emptied into a stream. Chip left the
winding run and walked directly to the stream. He halted on the bank,
wanting to look it over before he made any definite moves.

The stream here was not much bigger than the brooklet he had followed up
the other side of the mountain. It varied from narrow, swift riffles to
four-foot pools. Chip looked at his own reflection in such a pool, an
unusually deep one for a stream this size. It was floored with small
stones, and very clear. The beaver slipped quietly into the three feet
of water.

The pool was too small and too clear to allow him to hide, but on the
east side it extended beneath a hollowed-out cut bank. Chip swam beneath
the bank into a roomy cavern, and for the first time since crossing the
mountain he felt reasonably safe and comfortable. He was hidden here. An
enemy might smell him but none could see him. Should he be attacked, he
was in a position to defend himself.

The mere act of going into it told such a seasoned judge of water a
great deal about the stream. Though it had not much of a flow in summer,
it would not dry up completely. Water of this temperature could come
only from ever-flowing cold springs. Besides, though the stones on both
sides of the pool were clean, those in the center were coated with
aquatic moss growth which dies unless it is always submerged. When Chip
went under the bank he discovered much more.

In times of melting snow or heavy rains, this stream was subjected to
fierce, violent floods. Gouged and torn, and littered with loose
boulders of all sizes, the cavern could have been excavated only by
hammering waters of great force. More rushing water had carried the
boulders down to this dead end beneath the embankment.

Old Chip crawled to the back end of the dry cavern and slept. It had
been an exhausting, frightening climb over the mountain and down the
other side, and he was very tired. But he did not give way to
exhaustion, as a human would have. The beaver had learned too many harsh
lessons to relax even while he slept.

His senses were attuned to the gentle wash of the pool, and to the
murmur of the riffles above and below him. Chip came instantly awake
when a light tread sounded directly overhead. As a couple of pebbles
fell from the roof to rattle down beside him, he identified the tread as
that of a wandering deer. There were sharp, distinct thuds as the doe
bounded away.

Chip sat up, unable to hear anything else but alert for whatever might
come. Something had frightened the doe. A second later there was a
slightly different tone in the upstream riffle's murmuring little song.
Something had blocked the riffle for a split second, and the beaver must
be ready for it.

He saw the shadow on the pool a fraction of an instant before Ripple,
the otter, slipped under the ledge. Black as midnight, three feet of
sinuous grace, Ripple raised his sleek, dripping head and for a moment
stared at Chip. There was no fear evident about him, for Ripple feared
nothing. A peerless hunter, as much at home in the water as any fish,
Ripple turned aside only for Glare. As he slithered his shining length
all the way into the cavern, the place smelled of the musk which Ripple
carried.

Chip was ready for him. Many times had otter invaded his pond to catch
whatever they could, and often, in winter, they had carried their fight
right into the lodges. Sometimes they were successful, killing every
inhabitant of a lodge. But never of Chip's; he knew how to repulse them.
He made ready to battle Ripple, but the otter was in no mood to fight
anything so big. He slipped smoothly from beneath the ledge and swam on
downstream. Ripple was on one of the far-flung journeys that might take
him anywhere at all; he was a freebooter who went where he willed and
took what he wanted along the way.

Chip remained alert and nervous. This was unknown country which already,
in a very short time, had revealed many dangers. He would have to be
extremely careful.

Three hours later he heard Jed Hale and his dog, unsuccessful in their
hunt for Glare, pass back down the stream. The beaver held very still as
they passed, and when they were gone he moved nervously to the end of
the ledge. He had not decided exactly what he would do here, but he was
on water and would stay. If he made up his mind to leave the aspen
forest, he could travel up or downstream.

For the present, though he was hungry and growing hungrier, he wished to
remain hidden. He would go out only when twilight fell. The night had
plenty of dangers, but darkness itself was a shield to protect his
movements, and he wanted to do some exploring.

The smaller birds had already sought night roosts when Chip came out of
his cavern. The birds twittered in the aspens about him as they made
themselves ready for the night, then fell silent as Wraith, the great
horned owl, flitted noiselessly overhead. Chip was aware of his passing
but not concerned by it. Though such owls occasionally plucked swimming
kits from the water's surface, they would never attack a full-grown
beaver.

For a moment or two Chip remained in the cold pool, ready at a second's
notice to dive back into the cave. He saw the sleek doe that had come to
drink at the pool, and she stared curiously at him. The beaver returned
her steady gaze. He was a true pacifist, a rare wild creature that would
fight only when he himself was attacked. He had no feud with deer nor
had they with him. Both knew it.

The doe drank and went away to graze. Chip climbed out on the bank and
selected a small aspen whose bark was fairly bursting with new spring
sap. He reared eagerly, supporting himself on his flat tail and grasping
the tree with hand-like front paws as he began to gnaw a circle around
the aspen. His teeth bit deeply, taking out big chunks of sweet green
wood, and the tree's sap flowed pleasantly over the beaver's mouth.
Twice he stopped working to lick his chops, then resumed felling the
tree. A moment later, with a soft swishing of branches, it toppled.

Chip set to work, stripping succulent bark with his chisel-like teeth
and eating it greedily. He ate until his belly was comfortably filled,
then returned to the stream.

He had not yet decided what he would or could do. At no time had there
been evidence of gnawed sticks or chips; there seemed to be no other
beaver on this stream. Chip could take it for himself if he wanted it.
The fact that both Glare and Ripple had established previous tenancies
in the valley and on the stream made no difference. They were not of the
beaver's tribe and he could do as he wished without regard to either.

First he had to know the stream more thoroughly, must find for himself
whether or not it was worth settling. Chip returned to the water and
slipped easily back into the pool. He started upstream.

At no time did he leave the water course. Even when the riffles were so
shallow that they barely wet his belly, he stayed in them. Water was his
element; he felt happiest and safest when he was in it. As he travelled,
he noted everything in the creek and on both sides.

The aspen forest was a fine, rich, and healthy growth, ranging from
seedlings which Chip could cut with one chop of his teeth to trees
eighteen inches in diameter. And it was a promising forest for beaver.
Here, in these aspens, was food enough to supply a whole colony for many
years to come.

Chip worked with painstaking thoroughness. He travelled very slowly, and
always stopped to examine whatever seemed worth close inspection. Before
he had gone half a mile he knew beyond any doubt that beaver could
thrive in the upper part of the valley. It had everything they needed.
There was plenty of food and a never-failing supply of water. But there
were also other factors to be considered.

The beaver did not linger in the pool where the King trout lived,
although he was conscious of the school of fish swimming about beneath
him as he passed. Chip gave them not the slightest attention; he ate no
fish and fish never bothered him. He went on up to where the stream was
a mere dribble, trickling down a rocky bed lined with water-cress. Soon
he came to the source itself.

That was a spring which seeped from the very base of a great cliff. Cold
and very clear, never getting the sun's direct rays, the spring had
washed out a circular basin about two feet deep by three in diameter.

Below, other springs fed into the creek but none were so cold and pure
as this one. Chip dipped his muzzle into the spring, and liked what he
tasted.

More and more, the stream was beginning to impress him as an ideal place
in which to rebuild his shattered home. He now knew beyond any doubt
that there were no other beaver upstream. He still needed to investigate
the lower reaches more completely. Chip started back downstream.

He travelled very slowly, examining all over again places he had
inspected when he came upstream. He was a born hydro-engineer with a
knowledge of water built into his alert brain, and to that knowledge had
been added many years of experience. Now he was looking for the best
place to build his dam.

He was satisfied that there would always be enough water to maintain a
filled pond, but the stream also had its driving floods. Given enough of
a crest, such a torrent might wash out even a well-constructed beaver
dam. Before he started to build, Chip had to be acquainted with the
height of the banks on either side of his proposed pond, the available
food, and the contour of the land. He must take his own labor into
account; a small dam in the right place would back more water than a
long and rambling structure in a different and ill-chosen location.

When he came to the pool where he had first entered the stream, Chip
investigated it thoroughly. It was a good place. The banks were high and
all around the land sloped down to the stream. There was plenty of food.
Any flood, sweeping down from above, would spend its initial force on
the already-hollowed bank under which he had slept. Chip climbed out on
the bank and carefully inspected a ten-inch aspen that grew about twenty
feet from the edge of the stream. He walked around and around the tree,
examining it from every conceivable angle. It would help anchor a dam.
Then he returned to the stream and plunged in.

He had already half decided to make a new home here, but before he
definitely committed himself to starting a dam he must know more. Chip
continued downstream, mindful of everything around him.

In a pool a half mile below the one he had chosen he surprised a family
of root-digging muskrats. The muskrat family, father, mother, and three
early young, stopped digging and watched when Chip went by. They made no
move to flee, and showed no alarm, for they were kin to Chip. Muskrats
and beaver live side by side in perfect amity. Almost before Chip was
out of sight, the muskrats had resumed their everlasting search for
food.

When he came to the lower reaches of the aspen forest, Chip swam more
cautiously. He did not like this place of scattered trees, for any
beaver would be pressed to find a living here. Suddenly he halted in a
deep pool, with only the tip of his nose and his curved back showing.

A buck, one of the five which Glare had seen, leaped across the stream
and was gone in the night. Hard on its heels, silent as shadows, came
two gray wolves. Chip lingered for a long while in the deep pool. He
knew and feared wolves, savage fighters which could kill with one snap
of their iron jaws. But there was no immediate danger from this pair.
They were interested only in the desperately fleeing buck.

Chip went on, and after another twenty minutes halted again. For a
moment he swam uneasily around a small pool while the wind, blowing up
the valley, brought him the definite odor of more wood smoke. Mingled
with it were barnyard odors, and the various other scents which
accumulate wherever humans make their home.

Old Chip had all the proof he needed that people lived on this part of
the stream, and he wished to stay near no human habitation. Men were far
more dangerous than Glare, Ripple, and the wolves, combined. Still,
dangers had to be faced and he had seen only one man back in the aspen
forest. He knew of no place he could go where they would not come. And
the upper part of the stream, so far unclaimed by any beaver, was an
ideal home site. It had everything, and was far removed from any house.
Chip remembered the long, dangerous trip over the mountain. Unless
forced to it, he had no wish to make another such trip. He turned back
upstream.

Dawn was just breaking when he came to the pool near the creek bend. He
had eaten only once, when he started out, and now he was hungry again.
Chip climbed out on the bank and approached the tree he had felled last
night.

When he had eaten enough, Chip sliced a twig-laden branch from the tree
and dragged it into the stream. He laid it crosswise in the shallow
riffles that curled out of the pool, and watched the water that broke
around it. Carefully Chip inspected his handiwork, reassuring himself
that the branch lay exactly right. He moved one end so that it lay more
snugly against a big stone, then he went downstream, and with his muzzle
and front paws, rolled a bigger stone in below the stick.

[Illustration]

There was a sudden rattling from a big stub that stood forty feet to one
side of the stream. A pileated woodpecker, large as a pigeon, was
digging insects from their holes. The beaver did not look around, for
this was one of the noises whose maker could always be identified.

Now that he had finally decided upon a dam site, he was troubled by a
gnawing restlessness. From the time the previous dam was dynamited until
now he had been a homeless beaver, and a beaver without a home is lost.
There is no safety for them. Chip knew that if he would survive through
the winter he had to harvest food while summer lasted. He must also have
a place to store that food. Now that he had decided on another home, he
burned with anxiety to be about both building and harvesting. There was
no telling how long summer would last, or whether the freeze-up would
come early or late.

Chip cut two more branches, smaller ones, and placed them against the
big branch he had already laid. Reluctantly, as the day brightened fast,
he left his work and slipped into the safe cavern.

The noonday sun was warm on the earth above him, and its warmth
penetrated the cavern, when Chip awoke. He moaned softly, and looked
around. Since the start of his flight, he had been too harassed and too
busy to give much thought to anything except mere survival. Now that he
again had the start of a home, he missed Sleek terribly. Chip lay down
again, and the misery in his heart was reflected in his eyes. He could
not live alone.

But the will to live remained a strong one, and now that he was settled
Chip fell naturally back into his old routine. Twilight came and
deepened. The doe drank, and Chip felt hungry. He climbed up on the
bank, felled a small tree, and ate. Then he set to work enlarging his
dam.

He started with a small twig, which he packed into the branches he had
laid last night. He scooped mud from in front of his dam and used that
to close the openings between the branches. Every now and then he used
another stone, and every few minutes he stopped to look and listen. Once
the sighing wind brought him Glare's scent, and Chip slipped into the
hollowed-out cavern until the lynx had passed. Later, as he worked, he
was aware of Wraith cruising softly up the stream, and of the heavy
thread of Shuffle, the bear.

Chip dipped very quietly into the pool, where water was already starting
to rise. His dam was holding well, and by tomorrow night there should be
enough water to permit diving. Making as little disturbance as
possible, Chip floated near the cavern. He was afraid of Shuffle, who
could kill the biggest beaver, but the bear passed on into the night.

Chip waited a few minutes before he climbed back up on the bank. He
started felling a small tree, for it was near midnight and he was again
hungry. Chip stopped abruptly. He had come a long way up the bank and
was almost dangerously far from the pool. Now, in the aspens on the
other side he heard something else approach. Chip whirled about and fled
toward the pool. He plunged in. Almost as he did so something else
tumbled in the other side.

Chip rushed eagerly forward to meet an exhausted, bedraggled Sleek. Her
paws were worn raw, and a prowling coyote she met along the way had left
a gaping rent in her side. Tenderly Chip escorted her into the
hollowed-out cavern and gently caressed her with his muzzle. He spent a
long while beside her, and when at last he resumed work on the dam he
was bubbling with new energy and determination.

His mate had come home.




  _Chapter V_

  KING, THE TROUT


The King trout turned from the trickle of water purling into the head of
his pool and swam toward the center. The charge of his six-pound body
scattered the eight smaller trout and the two chubs who shared the pool
with him. The second largest trout, a sixteen-inch brown, moved into the
place vacated by the King.

The King settled among sodden leaves in the thirty inches of water that
now formed the pool's deepest hole. The leaves stirred sluggishly as his
dark body eased to the bottom. There he lay, not moving but with every
sense acutely alive to the threat creeping upon the pool.

Dried mud banks rose from the pool's borders. A month ago the pool had
been eight feet deep and the trickle feeding it was a stream. Now it was
shrunken to less than half its former size.

A telltale network of tracks marked the banks. Night-prowling raccoons,
bloodthirsty mink, padding lynx, sleek otter, and ponderous bears had
all walked there, and all had left a record of their passing. When the
pool had started to fall they had come to feed on the trapped fish
within it. The tracks high on the mud bank were hard and dry, sun-baked
into the stone-hard clay. The tracks near the water, some of which had
been left within the hour, were soft because the mud there was still
wet.

The danger that had sent the watchful King trout to deep water
approached as softly as a breeze. One second there was only the lowering
stream, threading its way among bare rocks that thrust out of the water.
The next second Ripple, the otter, who had decided to come back
upstream, was framed at the head of the pool.

The fish which had remained at the pool's upper end broke in wild panic,
darting into deeper water and seeking a refuge which did not exist. One
of the smaller trout splashed in the riffles at the pool's lower end
and, unable to swim down them, swam frantically back. Another dropped
out of the school. The rest continued to dash about.

Every inch of the King was motionless. Motionless, he might escape
notice.

Wet hair tight against his sleek body, Ripple started after the
sixteen-inch trout. He was in no hurry; he knew that the pool had become
a prison. Following effortlessly, he let the brown rush about. With a
final desperate burst of speed the brown flung himself at the despairing
trickle that flowed out of the pool, and tried to swim down the thread
of water. Half his broad back was exposed. Ripple bounded down the
stream, claimed his prize, climbed the mud bank, and disappeared.

Rising slowly from the bed of leaves, the King swam back to the head of
the pool. The other trout drifted near him, and the King made a savage
rush at a foot-long rainbow that tried to move in ahead of him. The
rainbow circled, came up behind the assembled school of fish, and took a
wary place in back of the King.

The pool's head was a favored spot. Even though it had become a trickle,
the stream still washed down all-important food. A yellow water cricket
floated into sight, and the King opened his mouth and engulfed the
squirming bug. He ate again when another cricket came along, but when
some black midges floated past he let them go by to the fish behind. The
twelve-inch rainbow ate greedily, and the six remaining trout crowded in
as greedily to get what was left.

Hopefully the two chubs awaited their opportunity to feed. When none was
forthcoming, they drifted back into the pool to seek food there.
Plebeians in a group of aristocrats, the chubs ate last and least.

The King shifted his position uneasily and backed away from the head.
During his long lifetime he had been sought by many enemies but had
always found some way to evade them. Now there was little room for
evasion in this pool that had become a trap.

A shadow floated over the surface. Before any fish had time to flee, the
osprey that had cast the shadow struck. He rose, flapping into the air
with an eight-inch trout in his talons, and again the smaller trout
scattered in wild panic. The King remained where he was. Too big and
heavy to fear anything that came from the air, he did not consider
ospreys a source of peril.

Still uneasy, he swam back into the center of the pool. In the spring,
when the stream had run bank-full, there had been a great many fish to
share it with him. As the pool had lowered, the population had gradually
vanished. The lower the pool had fallen, the more swiftly the fish had
disappeared.

The King warily watched a log that slanted from the mud bank into the
lowered pool. Glare, the lynx, crouched on the log, his position so
fixed that even his mottled fur did not ripple. One talon-tipped paw
dangled over the side of the log and almost touched the surface. The
King kept away from the log; he knew Glare and how he fished. He moved
slowly to the bed of leaves and hovered upon them.

Where the water lapped the mud banks, a narrow, still-wet belt extended
up the mud. Yesterday the wet belt had been higher. Because the King
always knew the depth of the water in which he swam, he knew that the
pool had dropped another two inches. He did not know this in terms of
inches, but in terms of water, safety, and life. He was endowed with an
instinct as exact as a mechanic's rule.

The King moved back to the head of the pool and again scattered the
smaller fish. The big trout was aware of time in the same sense that he
was aware of the water's depth. At this time of day he knew that a great
many water crickets would wash into the pool.

They came in profusion, little, squirming, zebra-striped bugs which,
generations back, had surrendered themselves to that whim of the water.
The King fed upon them as they washed down, and continued to feed until
he had his fill. Then he went back into the pool, noting as he passed
that only one of the chubs had come back to the head. Glare had made a
kill.

The moon's rays stole through the trees, painting the pool with clear
gold. The sad call of a raccoon floated into the darkness.

A great hatch of night flies dimpled the pool, but the King did not rise
to them. Old and wise, he knew that fish that moved a great deal at
night betrayed themselves and were the first to be caught. More than
once, in this pool and others, the King had lain undetected while some
night-prowler passed within inches.

As though it were a suddenly smashed mirror, the golden top of the pool
shattered into a thousand moon-tinted lances. On the surface the King
saw the outline of a swimming otter. Knowing well where he would find
the school of fish, the otter dived toward them. There was a little
splash at the head of the pool, and once more the curling ripples
spread. The otter did not return.

The King remained uneasily quiet on his leaf bed. A swimming mink, its
small head a cutting arrow in the water, swam past and was gone.
Something small and dark appeared on the end of the leaning log and a
raccoon's masked face showed for a second in the moonlight. There was a
great splashing at the head of the pool and three panicky trout fled
into deeper water.

Still the King remained over his leaf bed, sensing, interpreting, every
moment of threat and panic, but taking no part in the tense movement
that went on in the pool. The moon waned before its time and a period of
intense blackness preceded the early summer dawn.

A reluctant gray light filtered through the trees and spread dimly over
the surface of the pool. The King's watchfulness sharpened. During the
night the pool had dropped another two inches. The light, growing
stronger, revealed why the moonlight had waned prematurely.

Yesterday the sky had been clear. Now a dirty yellow haze spread across
the sky and darkened the rising sun. A bridge of ominous black clouds
lay on the tops of the two mountains that formed the upstream valley. A
brisk wind sprang up and set the aspens to shaking.

Minutes passed before the King saw Shuffle, the black bear, a
monstrous, shaggy shape on the bank. Shuffle's body seemed to consist
only of a head and a powerful frame. Not until he moved did his legs
become visible. He lumbered down to the pool and fixed his eyes on the
bed of leaves.

The King, knowing he had been seen, swam to the riffles at the lower
end. The riffles had dwindled to a mere seepage purling slowly around
the bases of top-dry rocks. That way there was no hope of escape. The
King swam back to the leaves.

Shuffle entered the water and waded down the middle of the pool. Head
bent, he raised a sledge-hammer forepaw to strike. But before the
smashing blow fell, the King hurled himself through an opening at one
side of Shuffle's water-blocking body and sped upstream.

He raced to the leaning log and sank under it. Shuffle sat down in the
water and looked about for the trout. Presently he saw the log and,
rising, pawed under it. The King dashed away, and at that moment a
sullen murmur shattered the morning silence. Reaching the lower end of
the pool, the King flashed back to deeper water and awaited Shuffle's
attack.

Lightning suddenly illuminated a morning grown strangely dark. Thunder
clashed. Rain slashed the surface of the pool. Bending before the
approaching gale, the aspens rattled and groaned.

Upstream, the overweighted bridge of clouds collapsed. The sullen murmur
became an ominous roar. A great wall of water--a flash flood from the
upstream cloudburst--covered the boulders, transformed the feeble
riffles into snarling rapids, and swept dirt and limbs before it.

A whirling log spun dizzily and knocked Shuffle off his feet.
Desperately he strove to reach the bank. Turning and tumbling, he
finally grasped a tree with reaching claws. With a mighty effort he
pulled himself from the water and crawled, gasping, into the forest.

The King let himself ride with the flood. For long he had known that his
only salvation lay in escaping the pool, and now he sped downstream. He
swerved slightly where the flood hurled all its terrible force against a
cut bank.

The King came to rest six feet behind the beaver dam.

    *    *    *    *    *

To Chip, hard at work enlarging his dam, the flood warning first
manifested itself in a stirring uneasiness. Chip stopped work and swam
upstream to where Sleek, completely recovered from the ordeals she had
endured, was working on the lodge they would share. Had Sleek failed to
come, Chip could have continued to live in a hole under the bank, but
her arrival made more elaborate quarters necessary.

The old beaver swam slowly around his mate, who was working in shallow
water at one side of the pond. An expert construction engineer herself,
Sleek had already built a solid foundation of mud and sticks. The top of
it was high above the water level, but Sleek was planning with an eye to
the pond that would be. She had used the intelligence born in her to
estimate the height to which water would rise when the dam was finished.
The lodge itself would be completely surrounded by water, and the
lodge's living room would have to be above that level.

Sleek stopped working for a moment and sniffed noses with Chip. She was
sprawled on top of the half-built lodge, flat tail dangling in the
water, but a moment later she climbed farther up. She sat there, looking
at Chip.

Hers was a questioning glance, as though she waited for her mate to tell
her what she needed to know. Sleek had her own share of native
intelligence, but for long she had depended on Chip to offer the first
warning of danger and to devise a way for escaping it. His senses were
keener than hers and his wisdom greater. Sleek was ready to accept
whatever Chip decided and to do as he thought best.

With his front paws Chip shoved himself away from the lodge and went
back into the water. He could offer nothing because he himself knew
nothing beyond a growing nervousness. But it was not the same tension
which had made itself felt just before the previous dam was dynamited.

Resting a few feet from the edge of the rising water, the doe gave no
sign that she sensed anything amiss. Life all around the pool flowed on
in an undisturbed and unexcited manner. The stream retained a normal
flow. There was still something wrong.

Though there were no outward signs, the tension made itself evident in
an electric tautness vaguely felt in the water itself. Chip kept only a
normal watch for enemies because nothing else was necessary. Whatever
brewed lay in the vital forces of the earth itself, and the change would
come from within them.

Old Chip swam back to the dam and painstakingly went over every inch of
what he had constructed so far. Even though everything seemed to be
holding well, he strengthened it with sticks and mud, then climbed up on
the bank and reared beside a tree.

Often, when he wished to fell a tree and there was no special reason for
hurrying, he worked more or less indifferently. Sometimes he half-felled
as many as six trees, leaving them standing on half-severed stumps until
he felt like cutting them the rest of the way through. Now he worked
hard and seriously until the tree fell, and as soon as it was down he
cut branches which he at once dragged into the rising pond. Then he swam
to the bank and dug out quantities of wet clay. Holding it under his
chin with his front paws, he carried it to the dam and packed it in
among the sticks. Grazing near the pond's edge, a shadowy figure in the
darkness, the doe did not even look around when Chip came near her. All
night he worked on the dam, but did not attempt to build it higher. From
time to time Sleek left her own work and came down to swim near him. She
did not linger, interfere, or offer to assist. Sleek had her own
pressing duties. Her mate could take care of the dam. She too was
desperately working against time, and she needed a lodge.

Dawn broke. Sleek continued to work on her lodge, fashioning it of
sticks held together with mud. Chip went up on the bank to cut one last
tree. For the first time he stopped working to look at the forming pond.

There was no apparent outward difference. Rising water had backed
almost to the bend in the stream. The little riffle that trickled down
the bend was slightly more full, but it had not changed markedly. Still,
there was an indefinable change. The sun seemed too bright. Though
awakening birds made the hushed morning a noisy one, their singing
seemed more muted than before. The pileated woodpecker did not hammer on
his stub with the same rhythmic cadence and even the doe was beginning
to sense something amiss.

She stood at the edge of the pond, and lowered a slim muzzle to drink.
The doe looked back over her shoulder into the woods, and stamped a
nervous foot. When she left she went deep into the woods.

Chip left his tree half cut and scrambled into the pond. He had heard
Shuffle coming a moment before he saw him. The big bear had been up on a
hillside ripping decayed logs apart and eating the fat white grubs that
lived within them. His paws and chest were flecked with dirt, and his
mouth hung happily open. He blinked his little eyes at the beaver,
swimming in the center of the pond, drank noisily, then padded on his
carefree way.

Chip floated for a few minutes more in the center of the pond, then swam
down for one final inspection of his dam. He felt a gnawing desire to
strengthen it more, but daylight was here. He swam back to Sleek and
waited until she dived, then followed, going deep into the pond and
coming up in the hollowed-out cave beneath the bank.

Rising water had flowed into the cave until only the highest part, the
far back end, was dry. The two beaver had to huddle side by side, and
very close together, to find a dry bed among the boulders. They would
not be able to find one after the dam was built a little higher. Chip
scratched nervously at the dirt bank, enlarging the space a little, then
curled up beside Sleek.

She slept soundly, because her mate was here to watch for enemies. But
Chip remained nervously alert, dozing in snatches. More faintly now,
since the pond had backed up so far, he heard the riffles murmur. It was
a different tone than they had had yesterday, and twice during the day
Chip slipped out to swim around the pond and inspect the dam. He found
nothing wrong.

With Sleek beside him, Chip went out while the last rays of the setting
sun still lingered on top of the surrounding mountains. They broke water
side by side, and paddled slowly about the pond while they searched the
banks for lurking enemies. None appeared, but at last Chip knew the
exact nature of the threat that hovered.

A storm was brewing. Even though the sun still shone, the air was heavy
and laden with moisture. A flight of swallows skimmed low to the ground
across a little opening; they were searching for insects forced down by
heavy air. The doe grazed nervously, raising her head every few minutes
to look about. The pileated woodpecker was strangely silent.

All the wild things knew now what the beaver had sensed last night; Chip
had known it first because he was most directly concerned. Of all the
inhabitants of the aspen forest, he could suffer most from a violent
storm. His home was directly in the path of anything that might come
down the stream.

Sleek returned to the lodge and started building the foot-thick,
dome-shaped walls that would protect them from anything that came. Chip
went back to his dam. He built more mud, sticks, and grass into it,
strengthening the structure all along the line. Restlessly, examining
every tiny crevice and crack, he went back and forth over the dam's
upstream surface. Then he climbed over and worked the downstream side.
But still he did not attempt to build the dam any higher.

The moon rose, and a light almost equalling the light of day shone over
the aspen forest. In its light Chip returned to the upstream side of the
dam, where he could work in safer water. Now, aware of the danger, Sleek
came down to help him.

The moon waned and gave way to intense darkness. Dawn broke slowly to
reveal a sky filled with ominous thunderheads. The two beaver hovered
side by side in the water, nervously alert. Both had survived many
violent storms, but both knew that this was going to be no ordinary
rain. Chip glanced once at the bank which covered the hollowed-out cave,
but stayed away from it. When the water rose, the cave might well become
a deathtrap. Followed by Sleek, he swam over and climbed up on the
half-finished lodge.

Lightning streaked, and was followed by a long roll of thunder. Then the
rain started.

It splattered into the pool, at first a mere dribble of oversized drops.
A wind rose and bent the aspens. Both the wind and the rain gathered
force. The surface of the pond became so rain-lashed that all of it
seemed to be in motion at the same time. The wind shrieked through the
aspens.

Chip and Sleek slipped into the pond, submerging far enough so that only
their heads broke the surface. They swam near the lodge, treading water
gently while they moved around and around in little circles. The shock
of the flood's thundering approach was felt a moment before the crest
struck.

The flood roared down the riffles, changing them to snarling,
white-crested cataracts, and lashed viciously at the bank which overhung
the hollowed-out cave. The roaring water cast an uprooted tree twenty
feet beyond any place where there had been water a moment before.

Momentarily thwarted, the snarling water whirled in a great eddy. Then
it spilled toward the dam, but the first force, the greatest shock, had
broken itself on the ledge. The flood ebbed up on both banks, lashing at
the trunks of trees as though seeking to climb them. A wall of water
roared over the dam.

Three hours later, when the flood started to subside, Chip knew how
skillfully he had chosen his site and how well he had built on it.

The dam had held.




  _Chapter VI_

  THE NEW COLONY


The aspens leafed out, fields of mayflowers carpeted the earth, and
white, blue, yellow, and striped violets bloomed wherever there was a
damp place. The pileated woodpecker had stopped drumming on the big
stub, for now his mate was nesting within it. Trim, the doe, was more
careful than ever. Her time was almost upon her; she was going to great
lengths to assure privacy and safety for herself and her fawn. The doe
knew perfectly well that either Glare or Shuffle would mark her down if
they could, and kill her baby afterwards. If the bear or the lynx found
her fawn, they would look upon it only as another meal.

Old Chip stood on the edge of the pond, warmed by an early morning sun,
and stared over the water. Sleek had completed her lodge. Fresh and
clean, newly stripped aspen sticks still gleaming on the outer wall, the
lodge was surrounded by a safe area of water. Sleek could not have
chosen a better location. She had built on a spot where the underwater
entrance would be well below freezing depth. No beaver would be trapped
in Sleek's lodge by ice that froze clear to the bottom of shallower
water.

Chip looked toward the dam, a strong structure four feet at its highest
by twenty-five feet long. It was a good dam, backing a deep pond that
extended clear back to the riffles in the bend. Now the wisdom of Chip's
refusal to cut the fine healthy aspen tree which he had inspected when
surveying the dam site was evident; it served as an anchor for the dam.
The old beaver had chosen shrewdly; nowhere else on the stream was there
a place where so much water could be backed with so little effort.

The head of a swimming beaver broke the surface and Chip turned his eyes
on Ebony. Fat and trim, not at all scarred or sore-footed, Ebony had
been attended by his usual miraculous luck when he escaped the
dynamiters and came over the mountain. Bears, wolves, lynx, and cougar
roamed the mountain, but Ebony had not so much as met one. As far as he
was concerned, the journey over the mountain had been only a pleasant,
slow walk. Ebony had stopped for ten days in a small aspen grove high on
the slope and had even tried to dam the spring run that coursed through
them.

Finding that impractical, he had come the rest of the way and was
accepted into Chip's pool solely because he had been a member of the
previous colony. He had not been accepted into the lodge, nor had he
built one. Ebony's mate had been lost to the poachers and he was living
in a burrow excavated under the bank.

Though he had been working on the hillside all night, Ebony started back
across the pond to fell still another aspen. He was a hard worker on
occasion, though again he would do nothing except play for days at a
time. Now he seemed to have suffered a belated awakening to the fact
that the season was advancing and he had nothing done. Swimming toward
the bank, Ebony hesitated near Sleek's lodge.

Chip watched, puzzled, as Sleek set furiously upon him. Swimming in
behind Ebony, she punished him with raking teeth and turned to slap with
her tail. Ebony forgot his goal, the aspens up on the bank, and at all
possible speed made toward the dam. He went up and over it, and as soon
as he was down the other side he turned to look for his tormentor. Sleek
made no attempt to chase him farther.

She returned to the lodge, climbed onto it, and nibbled indifferently at
a green aspen branch which she had dragged there. Chip continued to
watch, unable to find any reason for the strange behavior of his mate.
For it was true that the gentle and willing Sleek, his adored and
adoring mate, had become the meanest of shrews. Chip slipped into the
pond and swam easily toward her.

High on the lodge, still gnawing bark from the stick, Sleek did not even
glance in his direction. Finished eating, she entered the water,
splashed Chip when she passed him, dived, and entered the tunnel leading
into the lodge. Chip followed her.

He came up in the wet, muddy, lower portion of the lodge's main room.
The room was about five feet in diameter, and at its highest point was
eighteen inches above the water's level. Sleek retreated to the far side
and lay down. Chip halted indecisively. Any time except this he would
have gone straight to Sleek and lain down beside her. He did not know
what to do about this new and strange mate, and stole a covert backward
glance at the tunnel that led out of the lodge. Sudden departure might
be very essential. But when Chip advanced toward her, Sleek only raised
her head and looked irritably at him.

Chip lay down, and tried to edge himself close to his mate. Sleek moved
farther away. Chip raised an uneasy head, alternately looking at her and
at the lodge's entrance. He could anticipate almost anything that had to
do with the dam or the welfare of the colony over which he presided. But
nothing in nature, and no inborn sense, had ever taught him how to
interpret such unusual behavior on the part of his mate. He dozed
fitfully.

The mid-afternoon sun was shining directly into the pond when he slid
down the underwater entrance and surfaced. He looked about the pond, but
all he saw was the doe. She came wearily out of the aspens to the
water's edge and halted a long while before she drank. As soon as her
thirst was quenched, the doe soft-footed back into the forest.

Chip inspected the dam, diving deeply to look at the upper side of its
eight-foot base. He climbed to look over the rest, neglecting no place
where water might escape. A properly built and maintained dam meant
food, shelter, life itself, to a beaver colony. They could not get along
without it. He painstakingly filled every crack in the dam and
reinforced every place where a crack might develop. Keeping the dam in
good order was an endless task.

Then he swam back to the center of the pond. He never liked to be abroad
in daylight, but as long as he stayed in the pond he was safe. Ripple,
away on one of his long journeys, hadn't been seen for a long while.
Glare and Shuffle came often to the pond, but they were harmless as long
as they could catch no beaver out of it. There had been no man near the
pond since Jed Hale and his dog chased Glare past it. As long as he did
not become reckless, a day-faring beaver need not get into trouble.

Nevertheless Chip preferred the lodge, and he would have stayed in it
had Sleek not become so strangely hostile. He swam over close to the
lodge, scouting out what lay there, and when nothing unusual appeared he
dived into the entrance tunnel.

Sleek met him at the water level, but now she was an ugly, belligerent
beast, a complete stranger. She bristled, and when Chip appeared she set
upon him with driving teeth. Sleek raked his shoulder with her long,
tree-cutting tusks and withdrew to strike again.

Chip beat a panicked retreat, twisting around in the narrow tunnel and
swimming down it back into the pond. He surfaced beside three aspens
which had been flooded by the rising water and hovered quietly there.
Water had washed away the dirt around the aspens' roots, which formed an
umbrella-shaped clump. Chip swam underneath part of the grass-grown
overhang.

He was aware of motion in the water beneath him. Turning his head, he
saw the King trout and a school of assorted fish swim away. The King was
not the only fish that had been flood-swept into the pond. Many others,
including a dozen trout, had come with him. Here in this beaver pond
they had found an ideal refuge and an environment in which they could
prosper. There was so much water, and so many places where they could
hide, that even Ripple would have trouble catching them.

Chip remained where he was. Presently Ebony's head broke water and the
coal-black beaver swam smoothly across the pond. Looking neither to the
right nor the left, intent upon some aspens growing on the bank, Ebony
swam steadily toward them. Chip left the hiding place under the aspen
roots and swam to join his pond mate.

Without any hesitation Ebony left the pond and started up the bank. Chip
lingered in the water, unwilling to do anything rash. As soon as he was
certain that no enemies lingered on the bank, the old beaver scrambled
up to join Ebony.

He was bewildered and totally at a loss. Five long years he had spent
with Sleek, and never before had he known her to be so out of sorts with
everything that came around. Chip felled a small aspen, ate, and cut a
length from the trunk that remained. He rolled it down to the pond,
spilled it in, and dragged it behind him toward the lodge. Carrying the
length of aspen with him, Chip dived into the tunnel. He swam up to the
lodge.

A second time Sleek met him with slashing teeth. Chip dropped his stick.
Whirling so hastily that his head bumped the side of the lodge, he dived
down the tunnel. Now he dared not go back.

All night long he worked beside Ebony, felling trees, eating what he
wanted, and using the rest to put finishing touches on the dam.
Throughout the long hours, Sleek did not reappear. At last Chip returned
to the lodge and swam tentatively around it. There was no sign of Sleek,
but the stick Chip had carried into the lodge now lay just outside the
entrance. Stripped of its bark, it bobbed gently in the soft current. At
least Sleek had eaten. Chip dived disconsolately into the entrance of
the burrow Ebony had scooped out for himself, and came up beside the
black beaver. He did not like it at all, but he would have to spend the
day here in bachelor's quarters.

With the approach of twilight he left the burrow, and as soon as he
surfaced he glanced toward the lodge. Sleek lay on top of it, gnawing
bark from a tree which she herself had cut. When she saw Chip, she dived
into the entrance and disappeared.

Chip followed, making a strong, clean dive whose very momentum carried
him well up into the lodge's entrance. He hesitated in the living
quarters, ready to back out at once should Sleek attack him. But his
mate was at the far side of the lodge, shielding with her body something
Chip could not see. He walked quietly toward her and she advanced,
meeting him in the center of their living quarters. Firmly, admitting no
argument, she blocked him with her body. Chip looked beyond her at the
five newborn beaver kits that squirmed in a nest lined with shredded
wood.

He made no attempt to pass Sleek as he stared at his two new daughters
and three sons. Chip glanced once at his mate, then turned toward the
tunnel. Now he had his answer to the riddle of Sleek's behavior, even
though she had never acted in such a fashion before. She wished to
protect her young. Chip could not understand that the dynamited dam, and
the terror she had endured, had made Sleek doubly concerned for the
welfare of her newest babies. She would stand between them and anything
else, including Chip. Nothing must harm them.

Chip surfaced in the pond and scouted about. Ebony, as usual, was a
dangerously long way up on the bank cutting a big aspen. There were
plenty of smaller trees much nearer the water, and even if Ebony
succeeded in felling the big one it would take endless hard labor to cut
it into the proper lengths and roll it into the pond, but the black
beaver never took such things into account. His only mission was to cut
trees. It made no difference how or where.

The old beaver tensed himself and faced downstream. From that direction
he heard a faint sound, the far-off scraping of one pebble against
another. Instantly Chip curled his tail, and snapped its flat surface
down on the water. At this danger signal, Ebony scuttled down the bank
and jumped into the pond. Ebony swam up and circled Chip, looking for
danger.

The downstream sound was repeated; certainly something was coming. Chip
kept his eyes on the dam, unwilling to take action until he knew
exactly what approached and what threat it would mean. Then he swam
swiftly forward.

On top of the dam he happily met and sniffed noses with Peg, his
three-legged friend from the dynamited colony. Close behind Peg came
Gray, a young female not yet in her first breeding year. Gray hesitated
on top of the dam, but when Peg plunged into the pond, she followed.

Theirs had been a long and hazardous journey. Finding no way to go
downstream when the dam was dynamited, Peg had travelled up. He had met
Gray, a refugee from one of the upstream dams, and because both beaver
were alone they had stayed together. Finding no safety upstream, as soon
as the dynamiters left they started down. Instead of climbing over the
mountain, they had elected to go through the farm lands. It had been a
fear-filled trip, with only scattered hiding places and no real safety
anywhere. Far down the river, after many narrow escapes, Peg and Gray
had crossed the mouth of this stream. Rather than stay on the river any
longer, they had chanced ascending it.

Side by side, Peg and Gray swam around the pond, inspecting every inch.
They kept a good distance between themselves and the lodge, for beaver
lodges belong exclusively to those who build them. Satisfied, Peg
started to climb out on the bank.

Instantly he shoved himself back into the water as a patch of
mottled-gray grass came suddenly alive. Glare, coming to the pond while
Peg and Gray were inspecting it, had lain one of his ambushes in the
hope that an unwary beaver would venture up on the bank. Missing his
strike, Glare stalked angrily into the aspens. As soon as he had gone,
Peg climbed back up.

Chip watched without trying to interfere. The aspen forest was a good
place, but due to the nature of the land it was impossible to build a
large dam. The pond he had backed up was not big enough for two beaver
families; Ebony could live there because he was alone. If Peg and Gray
wished to build a lodge in the pond, it would be difficult to store food
for all.

A moment later Peg came down the bank and Gray swam instantly to his
side. They climbed on top of the dam, paused a moment, and went over. A
hundred and thirty yards downstream, at a spot Chip himself had
carefully inspected because he knew it was a good dam site, Peg stopped
to reconnoiter. Then he started cutting an aspen. As soon as it was
felled, Peg dragged a leafy branch into the stream and laid it exactly
as he wanted it. Gray began searching out the best place to erect a
lodge.

Leaving the new arrivals at their labors, Chip cut a limb and dragged it
into the lodge. Wary, still not trusting even her own mate, Sleek
blocked him from the kits. Making no attempt to go near them, Chip left
the piece of aspen and swam back down the tunnel and into the pond. He
climbed the dam, swam downstream, and began to help Peg. A wise old
beaver who had at once seen the impossibility of sharing Chip's pond,
Peg was working very hard to build his own dam. Before morning, a pond
had begun to form behind it.

With daylight, Peg and Gray came upstream to spend the day under the
safe banks in Chip's pond. Chip entered his lodge, halting at the top of
the tunnel and not trying to go near Sleek. She nestled with the kits so
that she could both protect them and feed them when they were hungry,
which seemed to be most of the time.

Night after night the work went on. Peg finished his dam and Gray
completed her lodge. Ebony worked hard but senselessly, felling a great
number of trees but lacking more than a faint idea of what to do with
them after they were cut. Then, on a lazy early June evening, Sleek
brought her babies out of the lodge for the first time.

Chip hovered anxiously near. Because it happened every year, this was a
familiar routine. It was also a nerve-wracking one. About the size of
muskrats, the kits were as trusting as so many puppies. They proved when
they bobbed to the surface and started swimming that they had been born
to swim. Aside from that, they knew nothing whatever. These kits had
never been hurt; it was impossible for them to imagine why anything
should want to hurt them.

Their education began as soon as they emerged from the dark lodge into
the infinitely spacious outside world. Night-roosting birds had not yet
started their evening song, and the doe was just coming for her night
drink when a big black-striped bumblebee zoomed across the pond. He
halted to flit around a few green leaves that drooped from a new stick
just added to the lodge. The bee lighted on the stick.

Four of the kits, amazed at the pond in which they found themselves and
not knowing quite what to do about it, hovered near Sleek. The fifth, a
tiny counterpart of Chip himself, kept fascinated eyes on the bee.
Bigger and much more venturesome than his brothers and sisters, the kit
swam up and put tiny paws on the lodge. Still eyeing the bee, he
climbed out of the water and approached it. The kit stretched an
inquisitive nose toward the object of his curiosity. Intent on the green
leaves, the bee paid no attention. The kit touched it with his nose.

When the bee stung him, the kit rolled backward off the lodge and
tumbled into the water. He sank, but surfaced immediately and stared his
astonishment. Again and again, the kit dipped his smarting nose into the
cold water. He had learned his first lesson.

Fifteen minutes afterward, Sleek shepherded her brood back into the
lodge.

She could keep them there only by force. The kits had outgrown the
helpless stage of babyhood. They were young, and active as fleas. Even
during the day Sleek had to sleep across the tunnel's entrance to keep
them from tumbling out. The second night, as soon as Sleek brought them
out, the kits scattered.

They had seen just enough of this great new world to convince themselves
that they must see more of it. Two climbed up on the lodge, and had a
wonderful time sliding down it into the water. One started toward an
aspen tree that was completely surrounded by water, and circled it. He
came to a partly submerged clod upon which he could stand, and reached
up to nibble at the aspen's water-brushing branches. Another grasped
Chip's tail and enthusiastically pulled on it.

[Illustration]

The fifth kit, the bee-stung baby, struck straightaway for the bank. He
had seen Ebony pass, and was resolutely following him. Chip shook his
daughter loose from his tail and struck out to catch his son. He circled
ahead of the swimming kit, who halted a moment. Determinedly he tried to
get around his father, but Chip was too quick for him. He blocked the
kit's every move.

On sudden inspiration, the kit dived deeply and tried to swim beneath
his father. Chip cut him off. The kit paddled to the surface and
hovered, puzzled. There was no way to pass. Finally he turned and swam
back to Sleek.

Chip followed, anxious and worried. He knew the world he lived in, and
its dangers. The kits hadn't a vague idea that life was not one long
happy playtime. Until they learned better, neither Chip nor Sleek could
have any rest or leave the kits unattended.

Tiring of their own games, the kits gathered around Sleek. With two
swimming on one side of her and three on the other, she started toward
some willows that grew at the head of the pond. The willows were a safe
distance from either bank, and clumps of earth broke the water around
them, providing places to stand. Chip watched his family go, then he
fell in behind them.

He neither heard nor saw Wraith, for the great horned owl hunted so
silently that few victims were aware of his presence until he struck.
Chip only glimpsed the shadow hovering above the water, before he saw
one of his daughters writhing aloft in Wraith's talons. With a great
burst of speed, Chip tried to overtake and catch the owl before he could
rise from the water with his burden, but he was too late.

Knowing something had happened but not realizing what, the four
remaining kits clustered around Sleek in bewilderment. She swam with
forequarters high in the water, chattering her rage. When Chip came
near, she dashed angrily at him. Sleek had seen another of her children
go the way so many had before, and grief prostrated her. But it could
not for long.

Though one was gone, the four must live. More slowly, turning her head
so that she could see anything else that approached, Sleek escorted her
brood to the willows and climbed out upon a grassy tussock. The
remaining kits followed her.

The four baby beaver stretched inquiring noses toward the lithe willows,
but the biggest kit was the first to act. Sitting upright, balancing
himself on his tiny, flat tail and supporting his body with his front
paws, he began to gnaw. Around and around the willow shoot he chewed,
and when it finally toppled he leaped with surprise. He snuffled at the
stick, chewed experimentally on it, and looked immensely pleased with
himself. The other three kits selected shoots of their own.

Shortly after midnight Sleek escorted her babies back into the lodge.
The next night, and every night thereafter, she took them back to the
willows. The kits threw themselves wholeheartedly into this new and
delightful game, doing it so thoroughly that, five nights afterward, all
the willows in safe places were cut. Sleek searched vainly for a
tussock, or any bit of land surrounded by water, from which her babies
could work safely. Watching her, Chip climbed up on the bank and went
twenty feet to an aspen. He made a half-hearted attempt to cut it, but
spent most of his time watching and listening.

Chip knew when Sleek brought the kits in to the bank. The enthusiastic
babies started felling some slender aspen shoots. Their father did not
glance toward them. His entire attention was centered on anything that
might approach.

A few minutes later he heard a faint but heavy tread and recognized it
at once. Only Shuffle walked exactly like that. Chip scuttled down the
bank, slipped into the pond, and slapped it with the flat surface of his
broad tail.

It was the beaver danger signal, a sound never heard except when peril
was definitely near, and it should have been instantly obeyed. But the
kits were too fascinated with their cutting to pay attention to anything
else. Chip slapped the water a second time, and a third. The frantic
Sleek tried desperately to get her kits into the water.

Chip swam strongly to the bank. He climbed upon it and passed the kits.
Sleek beside him, they went forward to face Shuffle. They met him up on
the bank, ten feet from the babies, and Shuffle halted in his tracks. It
was his intention to make a meal of one of the fat babies, but Shuffle
had no wish to pay for his meal by first fighting through two enraged
parents. He swung back up the slope. Chip and Sleek turned back to the
kits.

Just as they did so they saw Glare, a leaping shape in the night. The
lynx sprang over a fallen tree, paused for a second, and when he raced
away he carried another of the kits with him. There could be no pursuit;
Glare was much too swift. The three remaining kits submitted meekly when
Sleek herded them back into the pond.

They swam very close to her as she started back toward the lodge, and
with every little night sound they heard, every shadow that flickered,
they tried to get nearer. They had learned that the cost of disobedience
was death.




  _Chapter VII_

  TRIM, THE DOE


On a morning in early June, Trim, the four-year-old doe, drank from the
beaver pond as usual. Mists blanketed the water, twisting and weaving
before the sun rose high enough to disperse them.

Chip appeared in the pond, then dived. Trim flicked her long ears toward
the spreading ripples and watched them until they washed into
nothingness. Ordinarily she would have paid no attention to so
commonplace a thing, but this morning she was enveloped in a cloak of
nervousness. This morning she could afford to neglect nothing.

Since the spring break-up, Trim had been living near the spot where Chip
had built his dam. It was a good place, with plenty of food, a
never-failing supply of water, and no enemies from which Trim could not
run away. The old beaver and his family and friends were amiable
neighbors; Trim did not mind living near them. Late winter and spring
had been a carefree, almost lazy time. But that period of inactivity was
now over.

There was nothing lazy about her walk when she turned away from the pond
this morning. Her step was quick, furtive. She stopped every few feet to
look all about, and flicked her long ears back and forth to catch any
sound. She moved into the wind so that her nose would tell her of what
lay ahead. This morning she had an extremely important mission and could
not allow herself even one mistake. She could choose but once. It must
be the right choice.

At no time did she hurry, or increase her slow walk to that point where,
by reason of haste, she might miss something. The doe came to a hemlock
thicket that grew a hundred and thirty yards from the dam. Fifty times
she had been through the hemlocks, and had yet to find where a dangerous
beast had walked near them. She must still be absolutely certain; there
could not be another inspection.

She entered the thicket, and came out the other side. She circled the
hemlocks, her nose to the ground. There was no track, no sign of any
enemy. Trim re-entered the thicket and coursed it from side to side and
from end to end. She inspected thoroughly every inch of the ground.

Presently, satisfied, the doe trampled a bed in some dry needles. Three
times she lay down and got up, and finally she lay down a fourth time. A
few minutes later, her fawn was born. Trim stood shakily erect and
turned to look at her baby.

He weighed seven pounds, and was twenty-six inches long from the tip of
his black nose to the end of his tail bone. His color was dark red,
shading into white at the brisket. The little buck's under-belly was
white, as was the under part of his tail, and there was a large white
spot under his chin. Two white lines, a quarter of an inch wide, ran
from the base of his ear to the front of his shoulders. There they
became dotted lines which ran down his back and seemed to melt into each
other at the base of his tail. His coat was covered with over three
hundred very noticeable white spots, which varied from a quarter to a
half inch in diameter.

As soon as the fawn was born, he became subject to the forces which
would shape him. How he grew and prospered depended entirely upon how
well he adapted himself to those forces.

His first act was to spread his long, almost unbelievably delicate front
legs and raise the front part of his body. He tried to get up, and fell
back. His legs were too weak, too new, to bear even his small weight.
The fawn rested, tired by the tremendous effort of trying to get up,
while strength flowed into his body. That was part of the mold, part of
the plan. The fawn must have a chance to live, and he could not if he
was unable to rise.

Five minutes later, the fawn was on his feet. His long legs trembled,
but they supported him even though he had to spread them wide in order
to make them do so. The fawn took an unsteady step and stood still, as
though astonished by the fact that he could move. Then the uncertainty
was over. Another wild baby had learned how to get himself about; the
fawn knew exactly where he was going.

His feet braced to keep himself from falling, he fed and butted Trim's
flank with an impatient head, as though by doing so he would make the
milk flow faster. As soon as his belly was filled, he dropped down into
the hemlock needles. He stared with fascinated eyes at the world into
which he had been born.

His bed was almost under a bushy hemlock. The tree's long, spreading
branches formed a triangle that effectively prevented his seeing
anything on the two sides of the angle in which he lay; but on the other
side, ten feet away, was another hemlock. The fawn looked across that
dizzy space, and blinked his eyes when the hemlock's higher branches
moved, revealing patches of sky and more trees beyond.

The fawn slept for fifteen minutes, then he awakened and rose on legs
that were a bit stronger and steadier. He snuffled at a dangling hemlock
bough, poked his inquisitive nose at a leaf, and stood on braced legs to
watch the anxious Trim. He knew--without understanding the reasons for
it--that she was alert and fearful.

He wandered back to his bed, and when Trim uttered a hoarse bark, he
dropped instantly into it. The doe's bark had been a command. Lying so
still that he did not so much as flick an ear or twitch a muscle, the
little fawn watched Trim slip through the hemlocks and disappear. She
had gone out to feed.

As days passed, the fawn gained strength and spirit. Within a week he
had visited and thoroughly explored the hemlock across from his bed.
Before a month passed, he had travelled the thirty vast yards to the
borders of the thicket, and looked out on the great world beyond. The
fawn stood quietly and did not venture farther; he was not yet ready for
that world. He could walk, and even run, but he was still a helpless
baby whose only means of protection lay in silence and camouflage.

His life within the thicket had been one of peace and quiet. The only
creatures he had even seen were birds, a red squirrel, and his mother.
The squirrel lived in one of the hemlocks, but often descended to the
ground to dig for food, and the fawn had spent fascinated hours watching
him.

The little buck discovered dramatically that there were other creatures
in the world one late June day when at last he went outside the
protecting thicket. He walked trembling, a little fearful, but
fascinated by the bush-strewn clearing that lay between the thicket and
the nearest aspens. Then a new scent, a heavy and strange odor, assailed
his nostrils. The little fawn stretched his neck interestedly.

Then he heard Trim's warning, dropped to the earth, and lay quietly. The
alien scent grew stronger, more pungent, as the beast from which it came
drew nearer. But though the fawn was puzzled and very curious, he did
not move. The little breeze that played about him did not even ruffle
his soft hair. His head was flat on the ground, but his liquid eyes were
wide open when the wolf from which the scent came passed within ten
feet. The wolf did not smell him; until he was older, and able to run or
to defend himself, the fawn would have no scent.

Though he had never seen a wolf, deep within him the fawn felt the first
faint stirrings of fear.

He watched his mother. Her head was high, her tail erect and flashing
from side to side. The fawn felt the vibrations when the doe tapped the
earth with her front hoof, and remained exactly where he was. When
ordinary danger threatened, Trim merely uttered her bark. Now she was
flashing her tail and stamping the earth, talking to the fawn in every
way she could, and bidding him remain still while she lured the wolf
away.

The fawn saw the wolf turn, stand a moment, then spring toward his
mother. She leaped away, bounding high but not running fast, tempting
the wolf to follow her.

This was an old wolf, a veteran of the trails and killer of many fawns.
Trim's actions had told him plainly that there must be a baby near.
Instead of following her he sat down, squatting like a furry dog while
he ran his tongue out. He turned a knowing head toward the thicket.

Trim bristled, and continued to stamp her foot and flash her tail. When
the wolf refused to chase her, she ventured back toward him.

He whirled so quickly that he came within a breath of catching her off
guard, but Trim just escaped the slashing jaws. She leaped clear over a
huckleberry bush, her white tail flashing as she ran at full speed.

The wolf was chasing her because he thought he had some chance of
catching her, and Trim knew it. She knew also that he would not chase
her very far, for beyond any doubt he was aware of the fawn's presence.
He did not know exactly where her baby lay hidden, but if he searched
the thicket thoroughly, as he certainly would, he was bound to stumble
across the little buck. She would have to change her plan.

Trim hesitated just long enough to reassure herself that the wolf still
followed, then suddenly increased her speed. A dancing gray shape, she
raced madly through the aspens, and made a short circle that carried her
directly back to the thicket. When she called to the fawn he rose to his
feet at once.

[Illustration]

Trim slowed her pace so the fawn could keep up, while she started toward
the one sure refuge she knew. Then she dropped back to run behind her
baby. When he lagged, she urged him on with a prodding muzzle. The fawn
tired and dropped to a walk. Only a few yards away, sparkling through
the trees, Trim saw the beaver pond.

The doe stopped in her tracks, and when she halted the fawn did
likewise. He turned, long ears tilted questioningly forward while he
braced himself on uncertain feet. Trim jumped impulsively forward, and
when she did the startled fawn turned and also ran toward the pond. He
hesitated within a few feet of the lapping water while Trim turned to
battle the wolf.

She had been too anxious to get back to the fawn, and had not made a
wide enough circle. The wolf was very close upon her. Trim whirled,
striking with her knife-sharp front hooves as she did so, and the wolf
rolled to get out of her way. In the split second it took him to
recover, Trim made a long leap toward the fawn.

The wolf came back fast, feinting to the left, then to the right. Trim
met his threats for she saw his purpose. The wolf wanted to get past her
to the trembling fawn. When he could not, he sat down, tail stiff and
ruff bristled. The wolf, unaccustomed to being balked by a deer, was
growing angry.

Trim took the fullest advantage of every lapse on his part to inch
nearer the fawn. When the wolf attacked again, Trim reared on her hind
feet, pivoting as she did so to knock her fawn into the water. She
hurled herself backward when the wolf struck at her under-belly; his
slashing fangs missed by less than an inch. Trim righted herself in
mid-air so that, when she landed in the water, she did so feet first.

The bewildered fawn was swimming, as a natural instinct when suddenly
pushed into the water. He came near Trim and stayed close beside her as
she struck toward the center of the pond. They reached a shallow place,
a ledge upon which the fawn could stand, and looked back at the enraged
wolf.

He ran along the bank, trying to plan the best way to get at his escaped
quarry.

    *    *    *    *    *

Sleeping in the lodge, Chip was aware of something about to happen a
full two minutes before Trim and her fawn sought refuge in the pond.
Faintly he heard Trim's thudding hooves, and even more dimly he was
aware of the wolf's bubbling growls, but it was not completely that
which warned him. It was something else, a sharp sense which humans have
lost almost completely but which Chip possessed in full measure.
Trespassers in the pond literally telegraphed their approach. Something
was not as it should be, and because he understood that thoroughly the
old beaver came fully awake.

A second after Chip raised his head, Sleek raised hers and looked
steadily at her mate. Intent on the faint impulses that were reaching
him, Chip let nothing distract his attention. The kits stirred fretfully
when Sleek arose and crossed over to her mate. The biggest kit, who was
more and more proving himself the true son of Chip, separated himself
from his brother and sister and walked across the lodge to join Sleek.
Angrily she drove him back into the nest.

Chip remained alert and tense, every nerve, muscle, and sense straining
to receive and interpret the impulses that were penetrating the lodge's
walls. At first he thought Glare was again at the pond. The big lynx
came almost every day or night, and sometimes both, to see if he could
catch another of the kits. Chip had conceived a deadly hatred for Glare,
his most persistent enemy.

A second later he knew that, this time, it was not Glare who was
stalking the pond. Chip recognized Trim's thudding tread, and was
surprised because she came openly to the pond in daylight. For a long
while now Trim had come to drink only at dawn and dusk, and as soon as
she satisfied her thirst she hurried back into the aspens. There was
another, smaller deer, with Trim. And there was also something else.

Without being aware of exactly what it was, Chip knew that it was
dangerous. Trim and her fawn never would have acted as their sounds told
Chip they were acting under any normal circumstances. Therefore they
were in trouble.

The old beaver slipped down the entrance tunnel, and as soon as he
disappeared Sleek moved over to take her place in it. She stood still,
blocking the tunnel with her body and ready for instant action. If
anything got past her to the kits, it would have to kill Sleek first.
She listened intently, trying to piece together what was happening
outside from the noises that drifted in. Sleek knew when Chip reached
the end of the tunnel, and she heard the little ripple he stirred when
he surfaced. Because she could see nothing, she could not tell exactly
what was taking place. Only Chip could.

He remained exactly where his head had broken the water, not moving at
all until he had studied the situation thoroughly. He saw Trim and her
fawn standing on the ledge, with the fawn almost concealed by its
mother's body. Chip gave each only a passing glance. He knew Trim well
and definitely she was not an enemy. She had never offered to hurt any
beaver and she was doing no harm in the pond.

The fawn's tiny head was turned toward his mother, but Trim was looking
backward over her left shoulder. Chip followed her gaze and saw the
wolf. True pacifist though he was, fierce anger boiled within him.

No wolf ever came anywhere in peace, and this one could not be an
exception. Chip knew that the wolf could not get into the lodge, for no
animal unable to submerge and swim under water could do that, but still
he was at the pond. Left there unchallenged, he would pose another
threat to the kits as well as to any adult beaver he might attack. There
was already too much danger.

Chip paddled slowly to the dam and made his way along it. Looking over,
he saw Peg swimming beside his newly completed lodge. The invisible
electric something that carried information from one pond to the other,
had been felt by Peg. Only Ebony remained in his burrow beneath the
bank. Chip prepared his plan of battle.

He expected no help from Ebony, and Peg had his own lodge and mate to
protect. Sleek would not leave the kits. Whatever was to be done, Chip
would have to do. If it occurred to him at all that the wolf was here
because Trim and her fawn sought safety in the pond it made no
difference. He was certain only that the pond was threatened. That
threat must be coped with.

As though he had suddenly made up his mind, Chip left the dam and made a
bee-line for the grassy bank upon which the wolf was standing. The
beaver came to a stop in the three feet of water directly in front of
the wolf. He swam in little circles, his eyes on the furry beast. The
wolf returned Chip's gaze, let his eyes dwell for a moment on the
beaver, then resumed looking at Trim and her fawn.

The wolf had a cunning brain, but had made a mistake when he chased Trim
instead of hunting at once for the fawn and refusing to be lured away.
He had no intention of making another mistake.

He glanced again at Chip, whom he had no reason to fear, and returned to
his study of the doe and fawn. The wolf was fully aware of his problem.
He was not an aquatic beast, and in the water both the doe and fawn
could swim as fast as he could. Strategy was very much in order here.
After he had studied the situation from every possible angle the wolf
made his decision.

Trim and her fawn would not stay on the ledge after he came near, and if
they went into deep water it was probable that he would be unable to
catch them. The wolf decided that he would have to force them into
shallow water at the head of the pond, and he could do that by swimming
below them instead of making a direct approach. The wolf cast another
passing glance at Chip, then leaped lightly from the bank. Water
splashed, and curling ripples spread across the pond. Still standing on
their ledge, Trim and the fawn watched fearfully.

They saw the wolf take two strong forward strokes. His third one was
labored. He whirled about, arching his neck and looking frantically for
his attacker. The wolf snarled, and snapped his steel-trap jaws, but got
only a mouthful of water. He raised himself very high while he tried to
cope with this unexpected enemy.

He could not. The wolf knew beaver only as slow, clumsy creatures which
had sometimes furnished a meal when he caught one on land. Never before
had he met an enraged beaver in the water, and his first meeting was
bidding fair to be his last. In the water the beaver was more than a
match for him.

Sleek hair plastered flatly against his powerful body, Chip dived. He
slashed the wolf's paw, sinking his teeth almost through it. Surfacing
only to gasp more air, never coming within reach, he dived again to
strike at the wolf's chest. Almost as agile as Ripple, Chip attacked at
will.

It was the wolf who abandoned the battle. Turning desperately, he swam
toward the bank. Chip struck twice more while he climbed out. Then the
wolf found solid footing and scratched his way to safety.

Torn and bleeding, he limped into the aspens.




  _Chapter VIII_

  WINTER HARVEST


In July Ebony left the pond. He went over Chip's dam, swam through Peg's
pond, and over his dam. For days Ebony had been afflicted with a growing
restlessness. He had done little except cut enough trees to supply
himself with food, and when he wasn't doing that he tried to display his
swimming ability and general all-around prowess for Sleek's benefit.

Busy with her kits, Sleek had no time for him. When Ebony became too
much of a pest, either Chip or Sleek drove him away. But the black
beaver was not one to admit graceful defeat. Failing to lure Chip's
mate, he swam into Peg's pond and made advances to Gray. Peg set
furiously upon him, punishing with his teeth and slapping with his
tail. Ebony scuttled back over Chip's dam, dived into his burrow, and
sulked for an entire day.

He was that most forlorn of all beaver, one without a mate. Until he
found one Ebony must live in the burrow under the bank, tolerated but
always lonely. He had no hope whatever of realizing a beaver's true
destiny: fathering young to carry on the race after he was no more. But
aside from both that and loneliness, a mate had a very solid practical
value.

When Ebony went to cut food he always had to go alone. There was no mate
to accompany him and help watch for danger. If he were attacked in the
pond, Chip would help him fight because it was to the community interest
to keep the pond free of enemies. But if Ebony were surprised up on the
bank, of if his burrow were invaded, he alone would have to repel the
attacker.

It was a serious situation. To correct it, Ebony had to leave. Not
knowing where he was going, only that he must wander until he found
another mate, Ebony was off on a beaver's journey. He would not return
alone. If he found no mate he would not return at all. He would become
one of the wandering bank beaver, creatures that lived wherever
circumstance dictated.

Ebony's departure made little difference in the normal life of the two
ponds. Though he had lived with Chip and Sleek in their pond, he had
been an awkward guest. He was forever getting in the way, or cutting
trees which Chip had marked for other purposes. Largely because he
hadn't built it, Ebony seldom helped keep the dam in repair. Though he
was not driven away, things were better now that he was gone.

Two hours after his departure Chip came out of the lodge. For the old
beaver, the season had been one of constant anxiety and great activity.
Blasted out of his former home, he had had to find a new location and
build a new dam. His new home was scarcely finished when the kits came
along, and after that he had not dared relax.

Even though conditions were somewhat improved, and the kits were
beginning to acquire some sense of their own, Chip still dared not leave
them alone or trust anything to luck. The kits had learned some of the
more obvious lessons, but they were anything except experienced beaver.
Baby-like, they were curious and inclined to investigate whatever caught
their fancy. They did not always bother to look carefully before they
began their investigations.

Chip inspected the dam, and patched it where it needed patching. That
was very little. Well-built to begin with, the dam had caught silt,
sticks, and grass, which floated down from above, and was strengthened
by every addition. It was holding well, and had stood against two more
floods that had washed down from above. A steady stream of water flowed
over it into Peg's dam, and over that into the stream bed. The stream
maintained a steadier flow than it had known since the lumbermen
destroyed the trees which had originally controlled it.

Chip climbed out on the dam and stood quietly for a moment while he
inspected the banks. He saw Trim and her fawn, the latter now a strong
and agile young buck, come down to drink before browsing on the sweet
grass that grew all around the pond. Chip watched them intently.

He knew Trim was wary and sensitive, and missed very little. He studied
her now because he wished to see if she was even slightly nervous. But
she ate quietly, keeping her eyes on the fawn.

Chip swam away from the dam. Keeping well out in the water, he started
around the pond. Trim had betrayed no nervousness, but Chip wished to
leave nothing to chance. Glare, who knew all about the beaver kits, was
making regular stops at the pond in the hope that he could surprise
another one. The lynx never came at the same time every night and never
approached from the same direction twice in succession.

The beaver approached the head of the pond, where the riffles had once
been. Now water flowed over them and only a gentle current remained to
mark where they were. The King trout and his mates lay in the current,
rising freely to a great hatch of night flies. Here, where there was
plenty of water in which to maneuver and many hiding places, the trout
were unafraid to move by night or day. And the King and his school were
getting fat on the prodigious amounts of food available.

The trout did not flee when Chip swam over them; having lived in the
pond for so long they knew its builder and master. The beaver swam up
the stream that flowed into the head of the pond. He stopped when he
came to a riffle, treading water and prepared to retreat instantly if
necessary.

[Illustration]

For a long while he had been worried about the food supply which could
be reached by a comfortable safety margin. All of the trees near the
pond had been cut, some to make the dam and lodge and others for food.
Up here were a great many aspens, an endless supply, but any beaver who
undertook to cut them would have to venture far from safe water in order
to do it. Chip lingered for ten minutes, examining the virgin stand of
aspens. Then he turned and swam back into the pond.

He was driven by a restless urge. Summer was at its height, but summer
would not last forever. Chip knew that, and felt ill at ease. There was
so much to be done before cold weather.

Chip's ears were assailed by a loud, full-throated roaring. Like an
echo, a similar roaring sounded from a different quarter. The beaver
listened indifferently, recognizing the sound as that of two bull frogs
exchanging messages in the night. He needn't concern himself about the
frogs, who lived in a tule-bordered swamp some distance from the stream.
As far as he was concerned, they were harmless.

He swerved toward the lodge. He saw Sleek, her head a dim shape on the
water, swimming around and around the three kits while she tried to
maintain some semblance of order. The biggest kit, Young Chip, started
toward the bank and Sleek cut him off. Chip glided past, Sleek fell in
behind, and the three kits followed her.

Chip struck directly for that place where Trim and her fawn were
grazing. He had the utmost confidence in the doe's keen senses. The
very fact that she continued to graze near the pond, and to let her fawn
do so, was evidence that she had seen, heard, and smelled nothing to
bother her. Now when Chip climbed out on the bank, Trim merely looked at
him. The fawn spread his front legs wide and stared. He looked at his
mother, waiting to see if she would warn him, and when she did not the
fawn wandered curiously toward the beaver family.

Chip ignored him. The two smaller kits stayed as near Sleek as they
could get. The third, the biggest, walked hesitantly forward. The fawn
stared his astonishment. Then, as hesitantly as the beaver kit, he came
forward. The kit advanced another few steps. There, in the warm night,
the two babies of the wild touched noses.

The fawn blew through his nostrils, and trotted back to Trim. The
impetuous kit remained where he was, chewing on an aspen seedling.

The pond was ringed by an array of stumps from which aspens had been
cut. All about the border of the stumps was a fresh and green aspen
forest. Here and there among them a tree had been cut, but most of the
living aspens were beyond the safety line, beyond the point a beaver
should venture from his pond.

Chip fretted. The summer was passing. Before winter came and ice locked
the pond there must be many trees stored in it, enough to last Sleek,
the three kits, and himself, throughout the long winter season. But
those trees could not safely be reached from the pond as it was now.

Meanwhile, the beaver family had to eat. Chip looked once more toward
the grazing deer, then at a little clump of aspen shoots growing halfway
between the edge of the pond and the untouched aspens. Followed by his
family, he started toward them, and halted when he reached the shoots.
Chip looked back at the pond.

It was only a few yards away. Sleek and the kits could reach it if they
were threatened. Chip left his family working on the aspen shoots and
walked uphill into the forest. He selected a small tree growing near the
edge, reared beside it, and began to gnaw his hourglass incision in the
trunk. The tree toppled. Chip had just started to eat bark from its
trunk when Trim's sharp snort blasted the night.

It was a danger signal as pronounced as the slap of a beaver's tail.
Turning, Chip scuttled back to the pond. As he fled, he saw Trim and her
fawn, shadowy shapes in the night, racing away into the aspens. Then
the beaver caught the hated scent of Glare, his enemy.

Sleek had started hurrying the kits toward the water as soon as Trim
snorted, and when Chip reached the pond they were already in it. Chip
scrambled in beside them. He curled his tail, slapping its flat surface
down on the pond, to warn Peg. Chip heard Peg slap the water in turn; he
was relaying the danger signal to Gray. The smell of Glare grew stronger
as the big lynx came nearer.

Sleek took the kits to the lodge, and the four of them climbed on top of
it to await developments. Chip remained where he was, swimming near the
bank while Glare approached. Presently he saw the lynx.

Silent as a shadow, Glare came down to the pond and stared across it at
the lodge. His stub tail was angrily erect, his tufted ears very stiff,
and his yellow eyes reflected the frustration he felt as he looked at
Sleek and the kits. He had come to the pond for the sole purpose of
catching one. Now, defeated, he spat his rage as he sheathed and
unsheathed his claws.

Chip remained just off the bank, making swirling little circles in the
water and venturing so near Glare that his front paws touched solid
earth. He knew that the big lynx was a relentless and pitiless killer,
and that nothing around the pond would be safe as long as Glare
continued his harassing raids. Chip tried to entice him into the water.

On the land he was no match for Glare and he knew it. But if he could
lure Glare into the water, where he had successfully battled the wolf,
the advantage would be his. Glare refused to be tempted. He snarled at
Chip, and swung a taloned front paw in the air. Then, defeated for the
moment, he trotted softly away to hunt rabbits.

Sleek and the kits remained on top of the lodge, gnawing bark from a
tree that had washed down. Chip climbed out on the bank, ready to jump
back into the pond should there be any indication that Glare was
returning. He stared worriedly at the uncut aspens.

They were there and ripe for cutting, but he dared not fell them. His
element was the water; on land he was slow and clumsy. It took a long
while, far too long, to travel to the best aspens, and just as long to
return to the pond. Glare, or even Shuffle, could catch him on the
banks. Nevertheless, the winter supply of food must be gathered.

Leaving a wake of curling ripples behind him, Chip swam back to the head
of the pond. The King trout's school was still there, catching the flies
that floated down, and once more they held their places while the
beaver swam over them. Chip continued up the stream, and hesitated for a
long while in the center of the creek. To his left, a willow-lined
spring run trickled into the stream. Coursing through a grove of fine
and healthy aspens, the run had its source almost two hundred yards from
the stream bed.

Chip swam to the mouth of the run, sliced a couple of willows, and laid
them across the run. He raised an alert head when something ran through
the aspens beyond him, but continued his work when he recognized it as a
running snowshoe rabbit. He packed mud behind his willows, and watched a
tiny pond begin to form. He cut more willows and built his dam higher.
After an hour, with a sizable dam blocking the mouth of the streamlet,
he swam back to the lodge.

Trim and her fawn had returned to the pond, and were eating grass beside
it. The nervous Sleek had taken her kits back to the aspen shoots, where
all the kits were busy cutting and eating. The mother beaver remained
alert, tense, glancing often toward Trim for warning of approaching
danger.

When Chip came up the bank, Sleek left her kits to go forward and sniff
noses with him. Chip climbed higher up, into the aspens, and he resumed
gnawing on the tree he had just finished felling when Glare came. When
he had eaten as much as he wanted, he dragged part of his tree into the
pond.

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and with the first streaks of
dawn Trim took her fawn back into the aspens. Dragging part of a small
tree behind him, Chip went down the slope to the pond. He pushed the
tree in. The heavy green wood sank, leaving a few leaf-clothed twigs and
branches to thrust above the surface. Chip gave the dam its morning
inspection, then joined Sleek and the kits in the lodge.

The next evening he went out while the sun was still up, and his head
cut a clean furrow in the sunlit water as he swam upstream. Chip stopped
in the center of the creek, looking all about before he ventured to the
dam he had started last night in the struggling spring run. Its water,
having reached the overflow point, spilled down the face of the little
dam. Behind it a pool about twenty-five feet long by four feet wide
backed into the aspens. Chip climbed over the dam and swam slowly in the
new pool.

Now the deep wisdom and intelligence which went into all his planning
became very evident. The beaver could no longer climb to the aspens that
grew beside the pond; to do so meant to risk death. Last night it would
have been just as unsafe to go into the shallow spring run, but no
longer. The trees had not been near the water, but by careful planning
and expert engineering Chip had brought water to the trees. Two dozen
aspens of various sizes were already flooded; they could be cut without
even getting out of the forming pond. Many more were within safe cutting
distance.

It was not enough to satisfy the old beaver, and he spent an hour
enlarging his pond. He started wings to capture the water that was
trickling around the sides of his dam, and only when it was time for
Sleek and the kits to emerge did he return to the lodge.

That night, while Trim and her fawn grazed and played nearby, the beaver
family again cut aspens on the hillside. Twice they fled into the water,
when the heavy-footed Shuffle padded by and when Glare came to hunt.
Then, for two hours after Sleek took the kits into the lodge, Chip
worked on his new dam.

The next night he escorted Sleek and the kits up to it. Wraith flitted
silently overhead, but the kits had grown and were too big for him. The
owl could do nothing except fly on in search of smaller game.

Chip climbed over the center of the dam, paused a moment to look for
enemies, and finding none, plunged into the newly formed pool. It was
longer now, and wider, and many trees were flooded. Many more were very
near the rising water of the new pond. Chip and his family could work
safely in the midst of plenty, and after the trees were cut it would be
little trouble to take them down into the main pond. Instead of being
laboriously dragged over dry land, they could be pulled through water.

Now Sleek and the kits seemed to share the same restless urge which had
been besetting Chip. The kits climbed upon a little island and
immediately attacked some slender trees growing there. The older beaver
selected larger aspens, felled them, and trimmed the choicest branches.
Chip and Sleek dragged the branches over the dam, and pulled them into
the main pond. Each dragging a limb suitable to its size, the kits
followed.

Chip had already chosen the place he wanted, and when he came to it he
let go of the branch he was pulling. While it was being pulled, buoyed
by Chip himself, the branch had floated. Now the heavy green wood
settled slowly into the deepest part of the pond. Sleek left her branch
beside his. Imitating their elders, the kits released their twigs.

Diving deeply, Chip used his broad muzzle and forefeet to nudge the
branches into place. He pushed stones over the bigger ones that had a
tendency to move in the gentle current, and interlaced the twigs among
them. Finished, he left a neat, compact pile of twigs and branches
securely anchored on the bottom of the pond.

Chip surfaced, paddled around Sleek and the waiting kits, and struck
upstream again. Tiring of hard work, the playful kits now chased each
other around the pond, wrestling happily when they caught each other.
Chip and Sleek worked on, cutting branches, dragging them to the main
pond, and anchoring them in their stock piles. Cicadas droned in the
trees about them, and whippoorwills called. Once Glare came to the pond,
and Sleek herded the kits up on an island. Chip beat a slow patrol back
and forth in the water, keeping himself between the lynx and his family.

Glare stared at the kits, futilely sheathing and unsheathing his claws.
He could do nothing else. There was deep water between himself and his
intended quarry, and Glare had a cat's natural aversion to getting wet.
After half an hour he went away.

Chip and Sleek resumed their labors. Thus, while lazy summer droned on,
they assured themselves of plenty to eat when winter came.




  _CHAPTER IX_

  DOWN IN THE VALLEY


Down in the valley below, a speckled rooster sitting in the apple tree
outside Jed Hale's house extended an inquiring head in the half light of
early dawn. The chickens beside him began to stir, and the big tom
turkey in the same tree sailed gracefully to the ground. The two hen
turkeys followed, alighting beside the tom and scraping barnyard litter
with powerful legs.

The speckled rooster took a firm grip with both feet, rose, and crowed.
He crowed again, and again, shattering the morning silence with the
ancient challenge of a healthy cock. The rooster clucked gutturally to
his harem, then fluttered down from his roost. With a great squawking
and fluttering of wings, the hens did likewise. Lying comfortably in a
patch of grass, Jed's tethered cow turned mildly surprised eyes on all
this commotion.

The strutting cock stalked haughtily to Jed Hale's fenced garden and
peered between the meshes that kept him out. The rooster's bright yellow
eyes gleamed as he looked upon the rows of fresh green things within the
fence.

It was not as though he remembered last year, and the fact that then
there had been no garden, nothing except dusty ground separated by
struggling patches of choked grass, for the rooster could not remember
clearly what had taken place even yesterday. His was a dull little
brain, that merely bade him eat, rule his hens, go to roost at night,
and crow in the morning. But the rooster looked as though he were making
comparisons, as though he knew all about the miracle that had come to
the valley.

Last year the stream that now flowed past the house had been only a
drying bed, with a few scattered pools inhabited by discouraged chubs
and minnows. This year the creek maintained a steady flow. A few yards
upstream, a neat board dam with a well-constructed spillway backed a
sizable pool upon which six white ducks swam. Leading from the pond,
controlled by a sluice gate, an irrigation ditch conducted water into
the green garden.

The rooster clucked again, and in the soft earth outside the fenced
garden scratched vigorously until he had uncovered a fat white worm. The
rooster ate the worm and promptly began scratching for another.

Inside the house, Pete, Jed Hale's bristled airedale, rose from the rug
near his master's bed and stretched. Pete yawned, and stretched again,
then his toenails clicked on the carpetless floor as he walked over to
the bed and thrust his muzzle into Jed's dangling hand. Jed stirred
lazily, and tightened his hand around Pete's muzzle. Pete wagged his
stub tail happily, and reared to put his brown paws on the bed spread.
His master sat up in bed and yawned.

Pete wagged to the door, nudged at it with his muzzle, and stood looking
back over his shoulder. His ears were cocked forward; his merry eyes
invited Jed to follow him. Jed swung lightly to the floor, and padded on
bare feet into the kitchen. He let Pete out, pumped his tin wash basin
full of water, and stared reflectively at the face that looked back from
the mirror over the kitchen sink.

[Illustration]

It was a lean young face, tanned and healthy. Wide-set brown eyes and a
sensitive nose pleasantly complemented a firm jaw. Jed fingered the
stubble of beard on his chin, and continued to stare at his own face.

It seemed incredible that less than a year ago the same face had been
pale and colorless, and the body to which it belonged that of a
semi-invalid. "You'll have to get out into the country," the doctor had
said. They had been fearful words to an almost penniless youngster whose
city job paid only moderate wages.

Jed glanced away from the mirror. He had had less than a thousand
dollars saved, but the real estate man to whom he had taken his problems
seemed to have all the answers. He had just the place, Paradise Valley,
a true beauty spot in the mountains. There was a fine house, thirty
acres of land, and all of it could be bought for less than seven hundred
dollars.

Jed slipped a blade into his razor and squeezed a bit of lather onto his
shaving brush. He grinned wryly; he'd had to come into Paradise Valley,
and see it, to know what the natives thought of it. Last year, when Jed
had first moved into his house, he would cheerfully have sold it back
for what he had paid. Now he did not want to leave.

The real estate man had been unscrupulous, but the doctor was absolutely
right. The valley might be desolate, but the air was clean and the
sunshine good. Jed could not remember feeling as well as he did now.
Though he was not earning much money, not nearly what his city job paid
him, he could eat well and supply his few simple wants. There were no
rent or fuel bills to pay, and all the kerosene he needed to keep his
lamps burning for a month could be had in exchange for a dozen eggs.

Jed finished shaving and fixed his breakfast, four fresh eggs fried in
lavish gobs of butter, biscuits, and three glasses of rich milk.
Gathering up five dozen crated eggs, and with five pounds of butter in
another parcel, he went outside, called Pete, and started down the dirt
road.

The morning sparkled, and the air was cool. Later in the day, when the
sun rose high, it would bring heat but it would not be oppressive. The
valley no longer seemed the desolate place it had been.

A miracle had visited it. For the first time in more than a dozen years,
according to the natives, the stream had maintained a steady flow all
summer long and supplied water to everybody who wanted it. Long-dry
wells were filled again, and discouraged people who had resigned
themselves to life in a summer-parched land were beginning to take
heart.

More than that, destructive floods which had taken an annual toll in the
valley were strangely gentle this year. There had been one, early in the
year, which flooded some buildings and filled some of the many channels
which floods had cut. The two floods following that had been so mild
that, most places, the stream scarcely overflowed its banks.

Just as old Mose Willow, who ran the crossroads store, had always
claimed, the valley was coming back. Mose, who had known and loved the
valley when it was fresh and green, and tree-covered, had never lost his
faith. The Lord, old Mose claimed, had vented His wrath for the
destruction wrought by the lumbermen and now He had relented. Now that
the stream flowed steadily, and never destructively, the valley would
again be paradise, he said.

It might at that, Jed conceded as he walked along. Old Mose had more
money than anyone else in the valley, and he was smart, but he was also
supposed to be a little queer. He still was not too far out of line. If
a healthy young man cared to take a firm hold in the valley he would do
all right. If, for instance, he planted pines to replace the slaughtered
trees, he could reasonably expect to live until the valley was again
forested. Meanwhile he could get along, and though doubtless he would
make more money elsewhere, there were worse careers than that of
restoring devastated land.

Coursing ahead of Jed, Pete stopped to bark when they came in front of a
down-valley farmhouse. The owner, a lean mountaineer named Riley
Hankins, came to the door.

"Hi-ya, Jeddy boy?"

"Doing all right, Riley. How's yourself?"

"Fitten, I'm fitten."

Pete bristled at Riley's big brown and white collie, and walked stiffly
forward. The dogs sniffed noses, two tails began to wag, and they were
off for a romp. Jed walked up to Riley Hankins' cabin, where the
mountaineer leaned against the door frame.

"On your way to the store?"

"That's right. Got some butter and eggs to trade."

"I was there yistiddy," Riley murmured. "Had nigh onto nine dozen eggs,
and that's more'n my hens laid all last summer. Queer how a flowin'
crick and fresh water in the pump can make even a hen feel more like
workin'."

"Yeah. You've been here quite a while, haven't you?"

"Twenty year," Riley said, "and this is the first time in the past
fifteen when I ain't had a good mind to go elsewhere. Last year we
hauled even our drinkin' water from a spring on Sump Mountain. Looks
like a body won't have to scratch so hard to make a livin'. He might
even collect a few dollars ahead."

Jed laughed. "Don't tell me you're making money?"

Riley sniffed. "A dollar seventy to go until I make my first million,
but I'm doin' better'n I was. Not havin' to haul water this year, I
spent a spell down on the river. Ketched ninety-six mushrats, I did."

Jed frowned. "I thought muskrat trapping was closed for two years in
this country?"

"It is, Jeddy boy, it is. I had to sell them pelts cheap on account they
was poached, but I still got a dollar and a half each for 'em. How's
about goin' down the river with me when 'rats are prime next spring?"

"I'll think about it," Jed evaded. "Well, I'll be getting along."

Jed frowned as he continued down the road. Most of the valley residents
were like Riley, neither vicious nor lawless at heart, but simply living
for the moment only. Adversity had taught all of them to take what they
could get while they could get it. They were thoughtless and selfish,
and all they cared about was their own immediate needs.

Jed called Pete in to heel, and held the airedale's collar before he
crossed the macadam transcontinental highway that ran partly through the
valley. When there was a momentary lull in the stream of passing cars,
Jed and Pete ran across.

On the other side, at the corners where macadam road crossed dirt, old
Mose Willow had his neat store, filling station, and lunch counter. A
half-dozen cars were lined up at the gas pumps and Mose himself, an old
man with snow-white hair and beard, was helping his two men service
them. Pete galloped gaily up to lick the old man's hand, and Mose turned
to face Jed. When he spoke, his voice was soft and gentle.

"Hello, Jed."

"Hello, Mr. Willow." Nobody ever thought of calling the old man by his
first name.

"Got some trading goods, eh, son?"

"Eggs and butter."

"Let's go in."

Pete sprawled on the porch, panting, while Jed followed Mose Willow into
the store's cool interior. It was neat and clean, freshly painted, and
stocked with the wide assortment of goods which any country store must
carry. Old Mose wiped his face with a fresh towel.

"It's good to be in here," he sighed. "Ofttimes I wonder where
everybody's going in such a hurry, and why more of them don't kill
themselves getting there. But I suppose the Lord knew what He was doing
when He gave His children motor cars."

"I suppose He did, Mr. Willow."

Mose Willow looked at Jed's butter and eggs, and tabulated their value
on a strip of wrapping paper. Jed glanced at the figures idly; old Mose
never cheated anybody.

"Give it to me in flour, sugar, salt, and a cake of yeast," Jed said.

The old man nodded absently, as though his mind were filled with other
things. He put the requested articles on the counter and twisted the
stub of a pencil between his fingers. "Here you are. Jed, what do you
think of our valley now that you've lived in it?"

"I seem to have hit it lucky. From what I hear, this is the first year
in many that there's been water."

"That's true, but that was not what I meant. You came here to regain
your health, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did, and I can't remember ever feeling better than I do right
now."

"I'm glad to hear that." Old Mose glanced at him questioningly. "Then I
expect you'll be leaving us soon?"

"I had been thinking about it," Jed admitted. "I'm sure I can get my old
job back. But I'm not sure I want it now, Mr. Willow. When I first came
to the valley I thought it the most forsaken spot on the face of the
earth, but it sort of takes hold of you. I feel good here, and now that
there's water again, everybody's land is beginning to produce. Besides,
there could be extra work that would help piece out. I've been thinking.
Once these mountains grew big pine forests. If we could prove to the
State Forestry Department that we're willing to take an interest,
couldn't we get seedlings, and wages for planting them?"

"You could," the old man replied, "and I'm glad somebody feels that way.
This valley has become a sore spot, one of thousands resulting from
greedy exploitation. That damage can be repaired with a little
far-sighted effort. But neither this valley nor any other will be worth
anything without a constant supply of fresh water." He paused a moment.
"Do you know why, for the first time in years, the creek flows evenly
and without destructive floods?"

"I suppose it just happened."

"Nothing just happens." Old Mose reached beneath the counter and brought
out a foot-long aspen stick, stripped of bark and with serrated,
chisel-like markings on either end. "Do you know what this is, Jed?"

"No."

"It's a beaver cutting. I picked it up on the stream bank the other day.
Jed, the reason the creek has a steady flow, and the floods are less
violent, is because there are beaver dams up above you."

"Have you been up to see?"

"No, but this cutting and the way the creek flows prove it. I have
spoken of this to none but you."

"Why?"

"The valley people are short-sighted. With no help from them, the valley
has been started toward restoration. But if anyone except yourself knew
that there are beaver in the aspens, they would see only the price they
could get for the pelts."

Jed remembered Riley Hankins' muskrat trapping. "I see what you mean!"

"I thought you would. Those beaver must be left alone; the valley's
future depends on it. And they are not going to be unless somebody
bothers to protect them. Almost nobody goes into the aspen forest in
summer; there's nothing to attract them. But when autumn comes, hunters
will go up there, and the beaver colonies will be found."

"Do you mean I should protect them? How?"

"That's up to you. The valley has given you back your health, and here's
your chance to repay the debt. Think it over."

Carrying his parcels, with Pete trotting beside him, Jed left the store.
He was so filled with the old man's words that he only waved
half-heartedly at Riley Hankins when he passed Riley's house. Jed walked
on to his own house, stowed his groceries away, and did his chores. It
was late afternoon when, on a sudden impulse, he whistled to Pete and
started up toward the aspens.

He approached carefully. An almost black beaver--Ebony had come back to
the aspens with his hard-won mate--was working on the dam. Jed watched,
fascinated. He stole silently into the aspens and resumed his upstream
journey. Passing Peg's pond, he saw no beaver in it.

Just then he heard the pistol-shot report of Chip's water-slapping tail.
The old beaver, always alert, had known for minutes that something was
coming. Jed walked to the very edge of Chip's pond and looked it over.
Old Mose Willow was right. Beaver dams near the head waters were
controlling the stream.




  _Chapter X_

  UNDER THE ICE


Old Chip heard Jed Hale when he came to Ebony's pond, but at such a
distance the big beaver could not identify exactly the tread of a man
and he would sound no alarm until he was sure something that meant
trouble was coming. Chip swam over to Sleek and the kits, and found his
mate alert. She too had sensed something.

Sleek urged the kits to swim in front of her, and when Young Chip would
not she nipped him savagely. Swimming behind her babies, not permitting
them to lag, Sleek took them into the lodge. Tensely watching, Chip
remained where he was.

He knew when the man left Ebony's pond and started for Peg's. Peg and
Gray were in the habit of emerging late from their lodge and as yet they
had not come out. Having no young to feed, they did not have to store
nearly as much food as Chip and Sleek. Jed Hale was near Peg's pond when
Chip slapped the water with his tail.

Far down, he heard Ebony echo the sound. Ebony could have sounded the
alarm first, but he was too busy. Now that he again had a mate of his
own, and his own pond, he was the very incarnation of zeal. He spent
most of his time cutting branches to work into the dam or lodge. Ebony
went into a frenzy of excitement if Mab, his small mate, so much as
ventured near the bank.

For a few seconds Chip remained in plain sight, wanting to be positive
that Sleek and the kits were in the lodge before he himself sought a
hiding place. Then he did not go into the lodge, but chose a position
where he could watch the approaching stranger and, if possible,
determine his intentions. Chip dived, surfaced beside the lodge, and
stared steadily downstream.

He saw Jed coming, and slipped around the lodge so that it would shield
him. Only his eyes and nostrils thrust above the surface, Chip trembled
with nervous tension. He had always been uncomfortable whenever human
beings approached his pond and doubly so when the lodge contained kits
that could be so easily injured. Chip kept his steady gaze on the man.

As Jed Hale came nearer, the beaver slipped farther around the lodge,
ready to dip beneath the water. But the man merely stood at the edge of
the pond and gazed across it. Chip shied involuntarily when Pete trotted
out of the woods to join his master.

Chip had seen few dogs, but he trusted nothing which he did not know and
Pete looked somewhat like a wolf. To his relief, the creature did not
enter the pond. He merely lapped a mouthful of water, then he and the
man turned and disappeared among the aspens.

Waiting until he was sure they were out of sight, Chip dived easily. He
swam through the tunnel into the lodge, and met Sleek at the entrance.
Ready to fight anything else that came in, Sleek relaxed at once when
her mate appeared. She knew he would not be there if the threat still
lingered. When Chip left the lodge, Sleek and the kits followed.

The first pale stars were showing. A dozen bats skipped over the pond on
light wings, catching insects. Up toward the head of the pond, the King
trout and his school kept the water constantly dimpled as they rose to
flies. Chip swam down to inspect and repair his dam.

He saw Peg and Gray, hard at work in the aspens. Trim and her fawn, now
a well-grown little buck, pulled grass beside the pond. There was
another doe, a stranger with twin fawns, near them. Leaving a wake of
curling ripples, Sleek and the kits were swimming toward the head of the
pond. Chip followed them.

The harvest season was well under way and much food was already anchored
at strategic places in the bottom of the pond. But there was not nearly
enough. There was no possible way of foretelling the length and severity
of the coming winter season. Chip had known winters when no ice froze
until January and the thaw came a month later. He had lived through
others when his pond froze solid in November and remained ice-locked
until March. Since he could not be sure of a mild winter, he had to
prepare for a long and hard one.

There were three feeder dams at the head of the pond now, and Sleek and
the kits climbed over the first one. A few trees still grew within easy
reaching distance of the pond and Sleek and the kits went to work on
them.

Chip climbed over the second and third dams and plunged in the third
pond. He inspected it thoroughly, looking at the banks for ambushed
enemies. He could detect none. When the beaver family started working in
these aspens, Glare had come every night and occasionally two or three
times in a single night. Failing to catch any of the kits, the lynx had
finally given up. Now he came only when he thought there was a
possibility of a surprise move.

Satisfied, Chip returned to the dam and climbed on it. Twenty feet away
a cluster of fine aspens grew very close together. They were desirable,
just the sort of food to store in the bottom of the pond, but they were
too far from the water. Chip knew he could fell them one by one, cut
them into easy-to-handle lengths, and drag them into the pond. But that
would take a long time, and time was precious.

Leaving the dam, Chip swam once more around the pond, inspecting every
inch of the banks. Returning to the dam, he re-climbed it and looked
around him with a true engineer's eye.

There was little possibility of backing water up to the desired trees.
They grew on a mound, and to cover it with water would mean that a very
high and unwieldy dam would have to be built. Chip swam smoothly to the
bank and tested it with his front paws. Finding the place he wanted, he
began to dig. Dirt flew as he scraped it behind him into the pond. Going
down almost to the bottom water level, Chip slanted his canal upward as
he approached the trees.

The night wore on. Sleek and the kits felled aspens and took their
harvest back to the main pond. Chip continued to dig. Daylight was still
two hours away when his water-filled canal was at last within two feet
of the trees he wanted. Chip climbed out, felled an aspen, and cut a
branch. Pulling it down the canal, he climbed over the three dams and
dragged his branch into the home pond. He anchored it on one of the food
piles.

Then he surfaced, warned by some inner sense, and swam in uneasy little
circles. Something was coming through Peg's pond. No alarm sounded, but
Chip continued to wait.

Presently Digger and Root, parents of the muskrat family that lived
downstream, came over the dam and entered the water. They swam wearily
to the lodge, climbed up on it, and huddled there. Chip made no move to
stop them or drive them away. Digger and Root were his true cousins. As
peaceful as he, they were entirely welcome to live in the pond if they
cared to. Muskrats ate nothing except bulbs, water weeds, mussels, wild
fruit, and grass. They would interfere not at all with the normal life
of the pond or with the welfare of the beaver family.

Chip swam downstream to the place where Digger and Root had climbed over
the dam. He knew they had been chased because they were exhausted, and
they gave out the fear scent. Presently he saw what had chased them.

It was Killer, a white-throated brown mink. Coming upon Digger and Root
downstream, Killer had set out in pursuit. Twice he had been within
closing distance, but both the muskrats together had fought him off.
Killer had been diverted by the scent of a family of cottontail rabbits,
and had swerved to hunt them. Killing one, he had eaten what he wanted.
Then he had again taken up the pursuit of the muskrats.

Killer halted at the foot of the dam, one forefoot lifted like a
pointing dog's and the other upon the dam. As he saw Chip, his lips
formed a soundless snarl. Defeated, he faded back into the stream, and
his head cut a smooth furrow as he swam across Peg's pond.

Dawn broke slowly, but Chip waited. He was not afraid of Killer, and
knew that the mink could harm neither himself nor Sleek. But if he
caught one of the kits alone, beyond its parents' reach, he might easily
kill it.

Chip swam twice around the lodge. Huddling upon it, the muskrats watched
him with somber eyes. Knowing they would be neither attacked nor
evicted, they made no move. The sun rose and Chip entered the lodge.

His sleep was restless and broken. A dozen times he rose to pad
nervously about Sleek and the sleeping kits. There was not enough food
stored in the pond, and though the days were still warm and sultry, the
nights were beginning to assume a distinct coolness. Chip left the lodge
before sunset.

Perched on one of the stub's snag-like limbs, the young of the pileated
woodpeckers sat in a row. They had learned to fly but were still awkward
and uncertain. A blue jay found the family and at once began to squawk
his discovery. Annoyed by the screeching jay, the young woodpeckers took
clumsy wing into the aspens.

Because he was looking at the jay, Chip saw Wraith appear behind it.
Silent as death itself, Wraith grasped the jay in powerful talons and
bore it away with him. The beaver looked disinterestedly on.

With dusk Sleek and the kits appeared, and Chip led them back to the
head of the pond. He stopped well out of reach of the first dam,
treading water while he looked at it. The wind was blowing away from
him, therefore he could scent nothing. But there was something on top of
the dam, something so flat and still that it looked like part of the
structure itself. It did not belong there. Having seen it too, Young
Chip started in for a better look. Wrathfully Chip cut his rash son off
and took the dangerous post for himself. He swam closer to the dam, and
still closer.

He was so near that his feet almost touched the dam when he pushed
himself suddenly backward. As he did so, Glare sprang. The big lynx
caught himself at the water's edge. His tail twitched, he bristled, as
he looked at the swimming beaver. Chip came nearer, taunting the lynx
and trying to lure him into the water. But again Glare would not be
tempted.

    *    *    *    *    *

Before August faded, the two bull frogs from the nearby swamp came to
live in the pond. Beaten by a pitiless sun, their pond had shrunken
daily. When only a puddle remained, the two frogs set out toward the
beaver dam, guided by an unerring instinct which told them where it was.
They needed two nights for the short trip, crouching motionless in a
tiny spring-fed puddle when the first morning sun overtook them. They
completed their trip early on the second evening, and now their roaring
was added to the pond's nightly chorus.

The days passed, and though they stayed warm the nights became
increasingly colder. Trim and her fawn, who had lost his white spots and
now sported a somber gray coat, came less often to the pond and did not
stay as long when they came. The night winds bit harshly, and doe and
fawn preferred the sheltered woods. The aspens exchanged their green
leaves for bright yellow ones, which fluttered continually to the
ground.

As the nights became colder, the two bull frogs stopped their roaring.
They were lazy, unwilling to move, and one night they merely dug
themselves into the mud on the pond's bottom and did not come up. They
would stay there, dormant and breathing through their skins, until the
spring breakup.

Chip redoubled his furious efforts to store food in the pond. As the
days shortened he increased his working hours, starting to harvest trees
while the sun still shone and not stopping until it rose again. The
young woodpeckers flew away.

In late September a flight of little green-winged teal, the first of
the ducks to fly south, skidded out of the sky and alighted on the pond.
They bobbed nervously, and when night came they huddled near the beaver
lodge. Wraith swooped down, caught one, and bore it away. The rest
awakened nervously, quacked among themselves, and changed their
position. They moved again, toward the bank, when Chip swam past,
dragging part of a tree.

There was a sudden outcry among them, and they took fluttering wing.
Glare was also aware of the possibilities offered when the waterfowl
flight was in progress. For a long while he had lain in wait, hoping the
teal would come near. When they did, he made his kill.

[Illustration]

Every night now frost glittered in the air and covered the trees and
grass, wrapping even the cut aspen stumps in a coat of pure silver and
transforming them into things of beauty. A week after the first frost,
Chip saw Trim and her fawn for the last time that season.

They came to the pond at twilight, with the disconsolate little fawn
wandering out of the aspens first. Then Trim came, side by side with an
antlered buck. The fawn, whose buttons of horns were just beginning to
show through the hair on top of his head, trotted hopefully toward Trim.
The buck dashed rudely at him, striking with a front hoof, and the
fawn ran off a few feet. The buck and Trim lay down side by side. The
fawn continued to nibble disinterestedly at frozen grass.

Though he knew he must harvest more aspens, Chip watched the deer
closely. He had not forgotten their sensitivity, their alertness. The
actions of the trio would tell him whether or not something to be feared
was approaching the pond. Sleek and the kits emerged from the lodge and
set off toward the head of the pond. Chip swam in little circles.

The buck jumped suddenly to his feet, looked back over his shoulder, and
snorted. Trim arose, and the fawn trotted over to join them. All three
stood for a second. Then they bounded gracefully out of sight.

Without any hesitation Chip slapped the water with his tail. He could
see, hear, or smell nothing coming. But when deer took alarm, something
was sure to appear. Chip heard Peg echo his danger signal, and down in
the third dam Ebony repeated. Sleek herded the kits hurriedly into the
main pond, to seek refuge in the lodge. A few seconds later, Shuffle
appeared.

He was a fat and lazy Shuffle, a bear that had spent almost all his
summer eating so he could sleep through the winter. But he was willing
to eat more. He squatted on the bank, and scratched an ear with a hind
paw. The bear yawned sleepily, as though in anticipation of the warm bed
which he would occupy through the cold months. Then he ambled down to
the dam and started across it.

Chip swam nervously about, watching the big bear crush the top, the
weakest part of his dam. Water flowed over in a dozen additional places,
and sticks and mud were swept away. Shuffle halted in the center of the
dam, and swung to face the pond. The frantic beaver swam to within a few
feet. He had no ideas about fighting Shuffle, in the water or out, but
he did want to be about repairing the dam. But it was almost five
minutes before the bear lumbered to the other side and climbed the slope
into the aspens.

Sleek and Chip immediately began the repair job. They packed more
sticks, from which bark had been chewed, in the holes left by Shuffle,
and cemented them with mud. Two precious hours were lost before the work
was completed to their satisfaction. Then they swam back upstream and
resumed the vital work of harvesting. Great stock piles were already
safe in the bottom of the pond, but they wanted more.

The King trout and his school were haunting mud banks at the upper end
of the pond. This was their spawning time, and thousands of fertile
eggs were deposited in safe beds. The King was alert and pugnacious,
flying at shadows and almost ready to charge the beaver family when they
came too near.

The first ice formed around the edges of the pond the third week in
October. It was brittle, shell-like, and crumbled even beneath the kits'
weight when they climbed out on it. Ten days later winter struck with
full fury.

It began with wind-whipped snow that blew out of the north and pattered
into the pond. As the day lengthened, the wind shrieked louder and the
snow storm gathered violence. Streamers of feathery snow whirled over
the pond, curtains so thick that the aspen forest could be only faintly
seen from the lodge. Snow piled up on the banks in great white drifts.
Sheltered by driven snow, Chip made a few exploratory trips through the
pond.

He dived, passing the King trout and his school. Warned by the storm,
they had come back to deeper water and were lurking there. Digger and
Root huddled safely in the burrow they had dug under the bank.
Satisfied, Chip returned to the lodge. He shook himself dry, and climbed
over to where Sleek and the kits slept.

With night, the snow stopped as abruptly as it had started. Stars
glittered, and a pale winter's moon rose over the aspen-clad hills.
Intense cold followed.

The thin ice at the edges of the pond hardened and strengthened.
Venturing out, Chip had to break ice forming over the pond's center. He
plunged through it for a ways, breaking more ice as he swam. Frost rimed
his whiskers, and after a bit he dived into the warmer water.

It was too cold for even a beaver to be out. The aspens were entering
their dead time. Glare lay motionless in the depths of a favorite
thicket. Shuffle, deep in a snug cave, slept soundly. Even Wraith
huddled in a tree. He knew that it would be no use to hunt, for nothing
would be stirring.

Thus, in a single day and night, the forest was taken by winter's first
real attack. Two inches of ice formed over the center of the pond, and
it was even thicker at the sides. Piercing cold continued to strengthen
the ice.

Going out at mid-day, for now it was as safe to venture out of the lodge
by day as by night, Chip could not break the ice. He surfaced to breathe
in one of the many air pockets beneath the ice. A little trickle of
roily water rippled past; Digger and Root were busy scraping bulbs out
of the banks. Caught beneath the ice, the pair of muskrats could not
escape until the spring thaw. But they were safe. There was air for them
to breathe and plenty to eat.

Chip dived, staying in a deep channel and gliding smoothly toward one of
the food piles. Now the wisdom and foresight he had used in storing his
winter's supply became evident. Part of the pond was crystal ice which
light penetrated only feebly. The rest of it, where the water ran still
and deep, was clear. The beaver's food reserves were beneath that. The
bright rays of a winter sun penetrated the clear ice and revealed the
food stocks.

Selecting a stick, Chip swam back into the lodge. He entered the warm,
ice-insulated living quarters and contentedly began to gnaw bark from
his stick. For a moment he stopped eating.

There was something walking on the ice, a step so soft and faint that it
was almost inaudible. A second later, the sound of rough scraping
vibrated the walls. Undisturbed, Chip resumed his interrupted meal. He
knew that Glare, who had at last found a way to reach the lodge without
getting himself wet, was ripping at it. Chip knew also that the lynx
could not enter. No animal could. The lodge was frozen solidly together,
as tough as concrete. Unperturbed, Sleek and the kits swam down the
tunnel to get food sticks.

It was a time of peace and plenty. The beaver had worked very hard to
perfect their lodge and dam and to stock the pond with food. Now there
was little to do except keep the dam in repair and eat when they were
hungry. Chip stripped the last of the bark from his stick and carried it
out to pack into the dam. Sleek and the kits came in to eat.

While the drifts piled up outside, and most other warm-blooded creatures
prowled constantly and desperately for something to eat, the beaver
family lived in the midst of abundance. The threat of danger seemed far
away.




  _Chapter XI_

  RIPPLE, THE OTTER


For the first time in his life Ripple, the otter, was caught unaware by
a storm. Ripple had left the aspens in early spring, a few days after he
came face to face with Chip, and gone to live along the sluggish river
into which the stream emptied.

Only a beast of supreme courage and intelligence would have dared stay
there. The river was flanked by farm lands and spotted every few miles
by a village, town, or small city. The only wild vegetation consisted of
tall grass, weeds, willow thickets, brambles and vines, and occasional
clumps of aspen or sycamore trees.

Shuffle or Glare would have fled as fast as they could if some
circumstance had led them even near such a country, but Ripple came of a
different breed. Like Chip, he was aquatic and spent almost his whole
life in or near the water.

The river was a good place for Ripple because only the rich alluvial
fields and broad meadows had been completely captured by civilization.
The immediate banks were a little wilderness in themselves. In some
places the willow thickets were so impenetrable that the few fishermen
who came through them had to hack paths. In other spots the banks were
sheer, and a human being could have descended them only at the risk of
life and limb.

Ripple knew the river bank thoroughly for twenty miles either way from
the place where the stream emptied into it. He could slip instantly into
any of a hundred hiding places, knew all the thickets, and was even
fairly well acquainted with the small towns through or past which he
swam when night lowered its friendly cloak. He could go directly to
pools where fat and lazy carp and suckers swarmed by the dozen, and
where it never took him more than a few minutes to catch all he wanted
to eat. After chasing trout that lived in smaller and colder streams,
such fish were not even fair game for a fisherman of Ripple's prowess.

Besides the wildness of the banks, the otter had another advantage. The
people who lived along the river were farmers, traders, or townsmen,
rather than trappers and hunters. Though Ripple made sure that nobody
ever saw him, dozens of people saw his tracks in the mud without ever
knowing what they were or who had left them. At various times his tracks
were identified as those of a muskrat, porcupine, and fox, but never an
otter's. No human even dreamed that an otter was living along the river,
and Ripple was not afraid of the occasional prowling dog which came upon
him. He had only to slide into the water and slither away, and a dog had
no more chance of catching him than it would of catching a fish.

Nevertheless, as winter approached, the otter became uneasy and
restless. He was uneasy because he knew the river would freeze, and all
his previous winters had been spent among the small headwaters. At its
best winter was a hard time. Ripple knew how to get along in the small
creeks but he was not sure how he would fare on the river. His
restlessness sprang from a different reason.

Ripple was an adventurer, a wanderer who knew too much of freedom to be
happy without it. And he had spent a long time on the river, which
offered a changeless diet of sucker, carp, and an occasional muskrat.
The trout in the headwaters were much better eating, and there would be
grouse and rabbits to catch in the aspens. So one cold autumn night
Ripple started back up the same stream he had come down.

With daylight he crawled into a hole, curled himself into a warm ball
with his sensitive nose covered by his furry tail, and slept. It was
there that the storm caught him.

Ripple awakened when it struck, and nervously shifted his position. He
knew what the storm portended, for he had lived through many such. He
snaked to the mouth of the hole, and thrust his nose out. There was
nothing about the storm that would affect his present circumstances. The
hole was warm and dry and its entrance was well above the water level;
there was no danger of his being frozen in.

Neither was there any point in travelling. He could go on if necessary,
but it would be a difficult and hungry journey because the chances were
greatly against his catching any food en route. Nothing would move in
the fury outside. So Ripple slept all day, all night, and all the next
day.

When he left his bed he did so cautiously, and stopped at the mouth of
the hole to test the winds. He could smell nothing, see nothing moving
about the frozen, snow-heaped stillness which the valley had become.
Ripple emerged from his hole and started up the ice-covered creek.

He was very hungry, but all the pools were frozen and ice clung even to
the riffles. The otter thrust his nose into a half-inch opening and
tried to get his head in. He could not, nor could he break the ice on
either side. Ripple scraped hungrily at it. If he could get beneath the
ice he might catch some fish, but there was no opening he could enter.

Nor was there anything he could catch in the willow thickets beside the
creek. Twice Ripple stopped and sniffed hungrily at enticing odors that
came from the barnyards. There was poultry in the sheds and it might be
had, but Ripple was too clever to leave his tracks in the snow around
any houses. He would raid chicken coops only as a last desperate resort.

All night he found nothing to eat, and when morning came he crawled into
another hole. Ripple seldom made a mistake, and it would definitely be
one to try travelling through the farm lands by daylight. He knew too
well the power of aroused human beings, and their weapons.


An hour before dark he came suddenly awake. For a tense second he lay
still, until the sound that had awakened him was repeated. It was a
gentle snuffling and a heavier tread. Ripple knew that a dog was coming.
He waited until he heard a man following the dog, then he flashed out of
the hole.

He saw the dog as he left, a lean, short-legged hound snuffling at his
tracks. Much farther down, the man raised a shotgun and Ripple heard its
blast. He felt two stinging pellets burn into him as he raced upstream.

Ripple was not afraid of the dog, and ordinarily he would not have
hesitated to fight it. He did fear the man, and now he had no choice
other than travelling by daylight.

Behind him he heard the dog, roused to yapping excitement by the sudden
appearance of his quarry, but rapidly losing ground. Ripple ducked into
a place he knew, a tributary valley cut by a smaller stream, and he
raced up it. There were fewer houses in this valley, and darkness had
fallen by the time he passed them.

The dog's baying died, but Ripple kept running. He was perfectly aware
of the fact that he left tracks in the snow, and that those tracks could
be followed. He came to the stream's source and slowed to a walk.
Morning found him high on an aspen-covered hill.

For a long while he stood looking at his back trail, but he could detect
nothing on it. Ripple remained nervous, alert, not knowing for certain
whether or not he was still followed. Like a slim snake he prowled into
a laurel thicket and stopped to hunt.

He caught and ate a snowshoe rabbit, a small one that did not satisfy
his raging appetite. Ripple prowled on, knowing that he must put as much
distance as he could between any possible pursuers and himself. Also, he
was uneasy in the hills. His habitat was water.

The otter spent ten days in the hills, weathering two more storms,
catching whatever he could, and eating where he brought game down.
Finally, satisfied that his trail had been lost or forgotten, he cut
back toward the stream.

Having made a great circle, he returned to the stream well up in the
aspens. He reconnoitered, testing the winds and watching and listening.
Cold-tortured trees snapped, and frost glittered in the still air. The
wind, blowing up the creek, brought only stale scents.

Then, momentarily, the wind reversed itself and brought Ripple a fresh,
hot scent which set him drooling. He had eaten little in the hills, and
not since entering them had he had enough food all at one time to
satisfy his hunger. Now the wind brought him the warm scent of fat,
winter-locked beaver. Ripple bounded up the ice.

He came first to Ebony's dam, and mounted the lodge to snuffle at the
two beaver within. He scratched experimentally at the frozen lodge, and
when it did not yield Ripple leaped from it to prowl around the pond.
Like a coursing dog he quartered back and forth over the ice, and when
he found no way to get under it he snarled his rage.

The otter raced over Peg's dam, and again found himself blocked. Peg's
pond, like Ebony's, was all still water. There was no hole or crevice
that even a weasel could have slipped through. Driven by hunger to
extreme recklessness, ready to attack anything he could eat, Ripple
mounted Chip's dam. He was in a mad rage when he snuffled the third
lodge.

He smelled the three kits and two adults within, and in a frenzy of
impatience scraped futilely at the lodge. Unable to budge even one
frozen stick, he sprang eight feet out on the ice. Forcing himself to be
patient, he explored the ice-covered pond. Presently he halted,
deadstill, and turned his head upstream.

Faintly, like distant notes of soft music, he heard the wash of open
water. Following his ears, Ripple bounded to it. He found the foot-wide
hole a hundred feet above the pond. Swift riffles flowed here, and
their motion kept the water open. Without any hesitation, the otter
slipped into the hole.

Once beneath the ice he swam smoothly, graceful as a trout, and headed
straight for the lodge. Ripple had marked its exact location, and he did
not swerve to either side as he darted toward it. He found the entrance
and glided into it.

The hunger-mad otter came up in the lodge, breathed, and looked about.
Chip blocked the entrance-way. Behind him, Sleek was battle-ready in
front of the kits. Ripple's eyes turned on Chip.

That was his first enemy, and his most important. After he had killed
the old beaver he would have no trouble killing Sleek and the kits.
There would be meat in plenty, and Ripple could occupy the lodge as long
as he wished. He closed in.

The beaver's throat, where life pulsed nearest the surface, was his
objective. Ripple slashed at it, and discovered the instant he did so
that he had found a Tartar. Chip blocked with his shoulder the slicing
teeth intended for his throat, and struck back.

More agile than any cat, Ripple whipped his slim body around so that it
lay against Chip's, out of reach. The beaver missed. Ripple quested with
his teeth.

[Illustration]

Suddenly the otter squalled, an ear-slitting scream that filled the
lodge with noise and even sent faint echoes out over the ice.
Concentrating on his immediate antagonist, he had neglected those behind
him. Young Chip, edging around Sleek, had noted Ripple's flowing tail
and bitten it half in two. The otter leaped convulsively, flinging
himself against the lodge, and when he did, Chip had another opportunity
to bite. He sank his teeth as deeply as he could, and withdrew them to
strike again. But Ripple was too swift.

Defeated, he plunged down the entrance way and up beneath the ice. He
could not swim as swiftly now, and blood stained the water behind him.
When he climbed out on the ice, he left red streaks to mark his way as
he walked slowly and painfully upstream.

Back in the lodge, Chip lay in a pool of his own blood. For a few
minutes he did not move, not because he was unable to but because he
thought Ripple might return and he wanted to be ready. When the otter
did not come, the sorely hurt beaver limped to the entrance tunnel and
swam down it. He surfaced in an air pocket, unable to swim easily
because of his wound. Ripple's teeth had gone through skin and flesh
into the bone.

The old beaver knew the quickest way to congeal flowing blood.
Presently the cold water exerted its healing effect; blood flowed less
freely and numbness stole some of the pain. Chip remained motionless,
breathing from the air pocket and trying not to use his right front foot
and shoulder at all.

After a while, travelling very slowly and favoring his injured side as
much as he possibly could, Chip swam down to a stock pile, selected a
food stick, and carried it back to the lodge. He limped into the living
quarters, ate less than half the bark from his stick, and went to sleep.

Growing hungry, one of the smaller kits swam down to get food. Sleek
made no attempt to interfere. The kits had learned a great deal during
the summer. Now they were learning more of what a beaver must know; how
to live beneath the ice. Sleek made no move to stop her kit because she
was sure that Ripple would not be back. If he intended to return, he
would have done so before this. The kit could take care of herself.

Chip slept uneasily, awakening now and then to cry softly to himself.
Sleek remained alert, not relaxing when the other two kits sought food
sticks and brought them back into the lodge. She watched them eat, and
carry the stripped sticks out to pack into the dam.

The kits returned, and Sleek went out to get food for herself. She ate,
gave the dam a careful inspection, and returned to the lodge. But she
did not take her customary place near the kits. An able-bodied beaver
must be constantly in the entrance-way, ready to fight whatever came,
and until her injured mate could again do so Sleek would.

Chip mended swiftly, but the encounter with Ripple had done much to
intensify his natural caution. He worked on the dam, and made regular
patrols through the pond, but he had no wish to venture very far from
the lodge. Chip knew well that Ripple's visit had been no accident, and
that the otter might come back when his own wounds were healed. He must
be ready. But the winter ebbed on and Ripple did not return.

It was Sleek who took the longest journeys. One late-winter's day she
was swimming up the pond when she stopped suddenly.

The pattern of the ice-locked pond, dark shadows under crystal ice and
much lighter ones where the ice was clear, had become very familiar.
Sleek stopped in surprise because she saw something that did not conform
to the routine she knew, something that was out of place.

She studied it carefully. Deep water washed the edge of the bank, and
was ordinarily very dark. Now it was clear. Sleek saw a patch of
sun-brightened water, not the softly changing winter shadows. She waited
until she had identified the reason for the change.

A spring bubbled out of the bank at that point, and during the summer it
flowed constantly. In winter it froze, but now the spring had burst its
icy shackles, and had melted a circular patch of ice. The sun was
shining into the pond.

Sleek swam cautiously toward it, as though unwilling to believe what she
saw. Then she entered the melted place, thrust her head out of water,
and for the first time since ice had locked the pond, breathed deeply of
fresh, untainted air. She trembled with sheer delight as she looked at a
patch of willows six feet from the edge of the ice.

The food stored in the pond had been there all winter, and though it was
still nutritious it had lost most of its taste. Sleek climbed out on the
ice, a dark spot in a white world, and walked toward the enticing
willows.

She reared, balancing herself on her broad tail while she sliced and ate
a willow. Ready to cut another, she was warned by a shadow that drifted
between her and the melted hole. Sleek turned to see Glare, less than
four feet away.

The big lynx, a thin and hungry shadow of his former self, had been
stalking through the aspens in the hope of finding rabbits or grouse
when he saw Sleek come out on the ice. It had been a long and bitter
winter, with food scattered and hard to get. Now, at last, he saw food
in plenty.

Glare had waited until the beaver reached the willows before he made his
stalk. His objective was to cut her off, and prevent Sleek's getting
back under the ice. He had almost done it.

The lynx stood erect, his broad paws gripping the ice and his yellow
eyes glowing. He made his spring, dodging and coming in from the side as
Sleek scuttled down to the ice. His talons sank into her thick hide, and
pinned her down. Glare opened his mouth to drive his sharp teeth through
her spinal cord. The ice suddenly gave way.

The dripping spring had opened long cracks in the ice, and the light jar
of Glare's springing body was just enough to open them wider. The ice
around the spring hole broke into four separate cakes.

The smallest, that upon which Glare struggled with Sleek, tilted into
the water. The beaver strained toward it, pulling with all her
strength. The lynx strove to pull her in the opposite direction, toward
the bank. The cake of ice tilted farther. A second before it tipped
completely over Glare released his hold and sprang for firm land. He
made it, alighting on all four feet just beyond the water's edge.

A second later, the head of another beaver broke water and a wrathful
Chip appeared beside his mate.




  _Chapter XII_

  JED HALE'S PROBLEM


After weighing all possible factors, Jed Hale had finally made up his
mind to stay in the valley. And now that he had decided, he gave himself
wholeheartedly to furthering his plans.

Above all, he knew that the beaver in the aspens must be protected so
they could go on with their work of conservation. Water had flowed
evenly all summer long, and the valley had enjoyed the most prosperous
year it had known since lumbering days. If the beaver responsible for
that were destroyed, then the creek would again bring roaring floods in
spring and fall and leave a drought the rest of the time.

A dozen times, always starting very early in the morning or late in the
afternoon so nobody else would offer to accompany him, Jed went up into
the aspens to see how the beaver were doing. Summer melted into fall and
still the beaver remained undiscovered. But they would be found before
very long; late fall and winter, when there were few chores to do and
men had time to hunt, would be the danger period.

In mid-October, feeling he had to share his problem with someone else
and recruit help if possible, Jed walked down to Riley Hankins' house.
Riley's youngest son, a freckle-faced boy called Bud, was playing in
front of the house. Bud flashed a wide grin at Jed.

"Hello, Bud. Is your dad home?"

"Yeah. He's inside."

Jed knocked, and was greeted by Riley's drawled, "Come in."

Riley was sitting in front of a pot-bellied wood stove in his front
room, cleaning a rifle. He squinted through the barrel, put a clean
patch on his ramrod, and shoved it through the bore. The patch came out
spotlessly clean. Riley replaced the bolt and stood his rifle in a
corner.

"Runnin' out of deer meat," he explained casually. "Got to go find me
some."

"You might wait until the season opens."

Riley grinned. "Seasons is for them as believes in such foolishness. Me,
I get my game when and where I wants it. What's on your mind?"

Jed fumbled and Riley looked keenly at him. "I just came in to say I've
got extra vegetables in my garden if you need any."

"Right nice of you, Jeddy boy. Right nice it is. Mary!" Riley raised his
voice. "How about a cup of coffee?"

Riley Hankins' wife, a thin woman who managed to retain grace and good
humor despite the hardships she must accept, came into the room with a
coffee pot and two cups. Jed greeted her, and took the cup she gave him.
He drank it thoughtfully.

He had intended to tell Riley Hankins all about the beaver, and to make
a frank appeal for help in protecting them, but now he changed his mind.
Riley was too ready to do anything, without regard as to whether or not
it was legal. Jed put out a cautious feeler.

"What's making the creek stay so even this year?"

"Jest the way it is," Riley Hankins said. "Some years she's good and
some years she ain't. Jest happens to be a good year."

"Is that all?"

"Sure! Cricks flow one way or t'other. Good thing she kept up this
year, though. Everybody was better off for it."

Jed finished his coffee and left. He was depressed, but he should have
known that his mission was fore-doomed to failure. Mose Willow and
himself were the only two who understood what the beaver were doing for
the valley. He'd better keep their presence a secret as long as he
could.

The storm helped. Striking suddenly, it was accompanied by winds so
violent that Jed had to reinforce the windows in his house. Leaning
against the wind, he struggled to his outbuildings to see how the
poultry and cow were doing. Snow fell furiously, whirling around the
buildings, and Jed could not even see the house from the barn. Feeling
his way, he returned to the kitchen.

The storm was far worse than any he had experienced last winter. Snow
blew against the house and whirled to the ground, piling up so swiftly
that drifts covered the lower halves of windows that faced the north.
Intense cold followed, and Jed clung close to his big wood stove.
Pulling his bed near it, that night he slept beside the stove.

It was in the night that the idea came to him. Last year there had been
heavy snows, but at no time was there more than two feet of it on the
ground. Sporadic thaws had melted and packed it, and it had not been
especially difficult for hunters to go wherever they wished.

This first terrible storm of a new winter was different; in the first
few hours there were more than two feet of snow and the high wind had
heaped tremendous drifts. The next morning Jed woke to a cold,
snow-covered world. He scraped frost from the window pane to look at his
thermometer, and whistled when he saw it hovering at ten degrees below
zero.

Jed ate, then put two wool shirts over a double layer of underwear. He
slipped a checked wool jacket over that, pulled a stocking cap down to
cover his ears, and went outside to harness snowshoes to his pacs. When
Pete would have followed he ordered him back. The snow was much to deep
to allow any dog freedom of movement. Jed started up the valley.

The deep snow seemed almost Heaven-sent. Coming early in the year, it
provided a definite handicap to travel. Only the most ambitious of the
valley men were ardent enough hunters to strap their snowshoes on and go
into the aspens through such a heavy fall. And if they did, they would
follow a broken trail rather than break one of their own.

Jed stopped to rest. The snow was soft and fluffy; despite his snowshoes
he sank deeply. He opened his jacket and pushed the stocking cap up on
his head. Wiping a film of perspiration from his forehead, he went on.

He stayed away from the creek, remaining on an old tote road that ran a
quarter of the way up a hillside. Jed stopped when he came opposite the
beaver dams. He could not see them; neither the frozen ponds nor
evidence of beaver cuttings were visible from the trail. Jed continued
plodding through the snow, breaking his trail up to a point more than a
mile above the beaver colonies. That should lead any hunters safely
past. He stopped again, trying to think of something else he might do.

There was nothing, no way to prevent any hunter's leaving the trail and
stumbling on the ponds. Or a dog, pursuing game, might bay it on one of
the beaver ponds and thus make them known. Jed had done all he could and
something must remain to chance. Certainly it was reasonable for anyone
who wished to go into the aspens to follow the trail he had laid out.

The next day Riley and Bud Hankins passed Jed's house. Riley carried a
double-barrelled shotgun, while Bud proudly clutched a rusty BB gun.
Smelling the pair, and recognizing them, Pete barked disinterestedly.
Jed went to the door.

"Come on," Riley invited. "Me and Bud are goin' up to see can we get us
a mess of snowshoes."

Jed shook his head. "Not today, Riley."

"Aw, come on. Do ya good."

"Got work to do."

"Well, we'll haul our tails along then."

"Good luck."

Jed waited, gnawed by worry. With evening Riley and Bud came out of the
aspens with half a dozen big snowshoe hares slung over their backs.
Riley stopped to leave two at Jed's house, and accepted the cup of
coffee Jed gave him.

"You should of come," he said. "We had good huntin' and easy travel. Did
you break out the snow into the aspens?"

"Yeah. Went up yesterday."

"Right handy," Riley said. "We didn't have no trouble a'tall. Hardly got
off the trail."

With every fresh snow, Jed re-packed his trail into the aspens. At the
head, where his trail ended, a dozen different snowshoe traces showed
where different men had headed into favorite hunting grounds on the
slopes. So far, nobody had gone toward the beaver colonies. Jed crossed
his fingers and hoped luck would continue to run his way.

In the middle of March the winter broke. Sun shone brightly, and streams
of melting water made the dirt road a quagmire. Water ran over the ice
on the creek, and the snow melted swiftly. Two days later patches of
snow-free ground spotted the drifts and some of the creek was free of
ice. Then the ice broke, sweeping down the creek in a piled-up jam. Jed
saw a flight of crows, the first he had seen since fall, and then a
meadow lark. The next morning a disconsolate robin huddled on the
ridgepole of his house. Jed waited expectantly for what he knew would
come next, and two days later he heard it.

It was a far-off, muted gabbling, like laughter in the skies.
Bareheaded, Jed ran out to scan the cloud-blocked highways used by
northbound birds. He saw the geese while they were far down the valley,
a thin, wavering line that breasted strong wind currents. The geese
settled lower, and still lower, until they were only a few hundred feet
above the ground. The head winds did not blow so powerfully at that
altitude, and the ragged column straightened out.

Jed watched, fascinated. There was something about the geese, far
travellers who summered in the north and wintered in the south, that
never failed to capture the imagination and to provide a thrill. More
than anything else, wild geese represented the real spirit of lost and
lonely wilderness. They were the truest of all adventurers.

Suddenly, down the valley, a rifle blasted. There was another shot, and
another. Riley Hankins was shooting at the geese with his deer rifle.
The flying column scattered, and climbed as fast as it could. Jed
watched the birds re-group, and except for one, all continued their
journey.

Trying desperately to keep up, the lone straggler fell far behind. The
geese were over the aspens now, with the laggard still trying to
overtake his fellows. Riley Hankins had scored a hit. The wounded goose
called desperately. A single bird left the column and came back to fly
beside its mate. They dipped lower, and still lower, until finally they
disappeared in the aspens.

Fifteen minutes later, Bud and Riley Hankins came up the road. Bud
carried his rusted BB gun; Riley packed his deer rifle. The lean
mountaineer's face was alight, his eyes excited.

"I hit one, Jeddy boy! I hit one and am I tickled! It's many a month
since I sank my teeth in roasted goose!"

Jed faltered. "I--I didn't see one come down."

"Wan't one," Riley Hankins said. "There were two, and they're bound to
be some 'res on the crick! We're goin' to get 'em! Come on along!"

Jed fell in beside Riley. The geese were down on the creek, no doubt
about it. It looked to him as though they had descended on one of the
three beaver ponds, but maybe he could persuade Riley to search above or
below the colonies. Jed swerved toward the creek.

"Let's go down here."

Riley shook his head. "They're further up. I know jest about where."

Jed's heart sank as Riley Hankins swerved from the tote road straight
toward the upper pond. Silent as a puma, the lean mountaineer held his
rifle ready. Jed saw water sparkle through the trees and knew that, at
last, the secret was out. There was no mistaking a beaver dam. When
Riley Hankins turned around, his eyes glowed.

"Beaver! Thar's beaver in here!"

Jed tried to remain casual. "Thought you were after geese?"

"Not when thar's beaver about! You know what this means?"

"What?"

"Nobody else knows about it! Not a single soul! You'n'me can ketch
these beaver ourselves and split up what we git for 'em."

"Beaver are out of season."

"Oh foosh! You and your laws! Told you afore that I know where to sell
pelts."

They came out beside Chip's pond. Bud, who had never seen a beaver
colony, stared wonderingly at the lodge. Riley got down on his hands and
knees to examine a felled aspen. He turned delightedly to Jed.

"Old pair and some last year's kits," he announced. "Come on. Let's go
see what's below."

"I wanta stay here and watch," Bud said.

"Don't reckon you can do harm just watchin'. Mind you don't get into
trouble."

"I won't."

Jed caught a fleeting glimpse of the two geese, staying very near the
shore as they sneaked upstream. But his mind wasn't on geese. There was
a possibility, a faint one, that he could talk Riley out of harming the
beaver. But how to do it?

Riley stopped beside Peg's pond and examined the cuttings.

"Old pair," he said, "and that one's a big cuss. That's good. Blanket
beaver are worth more."

Riley led the way toward Ebony's pond, and Jed followed helplessly. The
argument would have to come there, he decided, and if argument didn't
work, fists might. When Riley started to search for sign around Ebony's
pond, Jed touched his shoulder.

"Riley, it won't work."

"What won't?"

"Trapping these beaver. For the first time in twenty years, there have
been no floods down the valley and water flowed all summer. These beaver
are responsible."

"So what! Their pelts are worth plenty."

"Their pelts aren't worth the good they're doing. You've got to leave
them alone."

When Riley looked at Jed, his eyes were clouded with hostility.

"Are you tellin' me to lay off?"

"I'm telling you that these beaver have done what we couldn't. The creek
is under control. Don't you see . . ."

He was interrupted by Bud's terrified scream.




  _Chapter XIII_

  END OF A KILLER


Chip, out for a morning's scout, heard the geese when they alighted on
his pond. He halted in the water, remaining motionless while he
identified the source of the disturbance. The gander, obviously in
trouble, came down with a great splashing and much rippling of the
water. The goose descended more gracefully, scarcely rippling the pond
when she touched it. She swam at once to her crippled mate.

The beaver paid no further attention to them, but he was glad they were
there. Even Trim, who had returned alone to the pond, was not more alert
or wary than they. The geese were sensitive to every change, and nothing
could come even near without their noticing it and giving the alarm. If
the pond provided them with a nesting place, and water for their
goslings, it would be a safer pond because they were in it.

Chip swam on to the feeder dams at the head of the main pond, no longer
afraid to venture abroad in daylight. It had been a safe year. During
the winter, while the pond was ice-locked, no man had walked on it, nor
had he seen one since. And he was unafraid of any four-footed creature
as long as he remained in the pond. Therefore he now swam by day.

Sleek and the kits were in the lodge. The kits were becoming more
restless almost daily. They had been with their parents almost a year
now, and had learned all the basic essentials of a beaver's life. Young
and fretful, all three wanted to set out on their travels for that, too,
was part of a beaver's destiny. Having learned how to fell trees, and as
much as any youngster could of dam and lodge building, the kits were
ready to seek or be sought by mates of their own.

Chip climbed up on the bank and felled a young aspen. He was not
particularly hungry, but he ate anyhow, the fresh wood tasted so good.
The stock piles in the pond had lost their succulence. They were not to
be compared with the fresh, sap-filled green aspens. As soon as Chip was
certain that the pond would not freeze again, he would clean out last
year's food reserves and build them into the dam or lodge.

The beaver stopped eating to hold perfectly still for a moment. He
dropped to all fours, looking across the pond, and ready to scuttle into
the water.

Presently Trim came out of the aspens. She ambled down to the pond
almost carelessly. This season, until her next fawn was born, was the
only time Trim could be carefree. Winter was a ceaseless struggle to
find enough to eat. Throughout part of the spring, all summer, and most
of the fall, Trim must care for her fawn. Now she had nothing except
herself to concern her. She walked down to the pond and drank.

Chip resumed eating bark, then looked around again when there was a
splashing in the shallows.

It was only the King trout, chasing minnows. Like everything else in the
protective pond, the King and his cohorts had wintered through very
well. Presently the thousands of eggs they had deposited would hatch,
and fill the pond with tiny trout. Digger and Root were already
sheltering their first litter of young muskrats.

Then Chip glanced toward the geese, and noticed that they were hovering
close to the bank. The beaver slipped unhesitatingly into the water.
When the geese gave a warning, it could always be trusted. Chip slapped
the water with his tail, and heard Peg repeat the alarm. Chip had
started toward the lodge when his eyes were attracted by faint motion in
a thicket. A second later Glare walked out of it.

He soft-footed down to the pond, his head erect and tail twitching
angrily. The lynx lifted one paw, curling it beneath him, and stared at
the beaver. Chip swam nearer the bank, hatred in his eyes.

Glare was his most persistent enemy, the greatest peril to visit the
pond. Not forgotten was Glare's raid of last summer, and the kit he had
taken then. Only weeks ago he had almost killed Sleek. Chip swerved when
less than ten inches of water lay between himself and the bank. He
remained still, inviting the lynx to attack. Glare snarled, and looked
at Chip with hungry eyes.

The geese had left their sheltering bank to return to the center of the
water. The lynx stared at them, and licked his chops, but he knew geese
too well to plan any stalk. Wild geese could be caught only by the
greatest of good luck. They were alert and never seemed to rest. Still,
Glare marked them as something to watch. The geese could not be caught,
but in due time there would be goslings that were not so wary.

Chip was also watching the geese, but for a different reason. Black
necks almost straight up, they were paddling in uneasy little circles.
Then they suddenly lowered their heads, seemed to melt into the water,
and started swimming toward the upper end of the pond.

When Chip looked again for Glare, the big lynx was gone. Worried, the
beaver swam to the lodge. Sleek and the kits had to come out to feed,
and their only food was up on the banks. If Glare decided to stay around
the pond, any beaver that ventured out of it would be in danger. Chip
looked once more at the two geese, slinking close to the bank, and then
slipped behind the lodge. Something was coming.

Two men and a smaller human came directly to Chip's pond. Leaving the
boy where he was, the two men went downstream toward Peg's pond. Chip
heard them pass that. When he could no longer hear the men, he came
around the lodge far enough to look at the boy.

He kept his head low, so that only his nostrils and eyes showed above
the water, while he studied the strange creature. Never before had he
seen a human being so small. Chip remained half curious and half afraid.
Then his fear began to fade. Since coming into the aspens he had been
disturbed by no humans, and surely there could be no harm in one so
little. Chip came farther around the lodge.

The boy saw him, and a smile broke on his freckled face. The beaver
stayed where he was, not too much inclined to hide again. The small
human did not seem threatening, and he had not moved.

Chip suddenly stiffened. Glare had come to the edge of his thicket, and
now sat on his haunches like some great house cat while he looked
intently at the boy. The lynx was as curious about this strange being as
the beaver was.

A jay alighted in a tree behind Glare and began to scream. The boy
turned around to look. He saw the lynx, less than twenty feet away, and
took a backward step. He took another, and another, until he had backed
to the very edge of the pond. Slowly, fighting for control of himself,
he raised his rusty little BB gun and aimed it.

Chip heard the snapping report, and saw the transformation it wrought in
Glare. Left alone, the lynx was merely curious. But stung on the nose by
a BB pellet, Glare became a mad thing. He was a volatile creature
anyhow, and his always uncertain temperament was further unsettled by
hunger. For a second he crouched at the edge of the thicket while he
wavered between running and rending the thing that had hurt him. Then he
sprang forward.

[Illustration]

The boy screamed, and desperately clubbed the BB gun to defend himself.
He had retreated to the very edge of the pond, a place where lapping
waters had undermined the bank and left a thin shell of grass-covered
earth overhanging the water. As the snarling lynx whipped his paws about
and brushed the ineffective gun aside, a few clods splashed from the
under side of the earthen shelf into the water. Then the shelf
collapsed, breaking cleanly at the point where it joined solid earth.
Boy and lynx disappeared and, sputtering, came up again.

Ignoring the boy struggling toward the bank, Chip swam powerfully
forward.

This was what he had waited and hoped for, ever since Glare started
visiting the pond. His arch-enemy was in the water, where Chip had hoped
to catch him. The beaver came up in back of the wet lynx, put his paws
on Glare's back, and bit hard. All he got in his teeth was a mouthful of
fur.

Glare bent like a whip, scoring Chip's side with his teeth and raking
with powerful claws. The beaver held his grip, unmindful of hurts. He
struck again, taking his enemy in the ribs, and this time a long strip
of Glare's velvet fur came loose in Chip's teeth.

The beaver was fighting a blind, courageous, bulldog's battle. He was
bigger than Glare, but the lynx was made of spring steel and whipcord.
He could bend himself almost double, and did. His raking claws sought
and found Chip's belly, ripping away skin and flesh, but he reached no
vital spot. The hard muscles that sheltered Chip's whole body were his
armor. The snarling lynx was unable to pierce them.

Glare tried to break away and reach the bank. Chip dragged him back,
striking with his teeth and flailing with his paws. The big beaver had
forgotten everything now save that he finally had the battle he had long
wanted, in his own element. A second time, and a third, Chip dragged
Glare away from the bank.

For Chip nothing had any meaning except this death battle with his hated
enemy. He did not even see the boy climb up the bank, nor did he notice
the return of the two men. The beaver was fighting ferociously to
destroy something that had terrorized his colony, killed one of his
kits, and almost killed his mate.

The lynx stopped trying to break away and gave his whole effort to
winning the battle. He struck with claws and teeth. But Chip was an
elusive creature that gave with the water, and Glare's best efforts
worked only superficial damage.

They were over deeper water now, and the water-logged lynx tried one
last time to sink his teeth into a vital spot. Then he was overwhelmed,
forced beneath the surface. Chip had fastened his teeth in Glare's neck
and was dragging him down. A fighter to the last, the lynx tried to
strike back.

When he opened his mouth, water flooded into it. Before he could rake
with his claws, he was forced deeper. He could not reach his enemy.

Finally Glare moved no more.

    *    *    *    *    *

Up on the bank, the three human beings stood spellbound, silent, aware
of the final stages of the battle only because of the violently surging,
roily water. Then the water grew still. The beaver did not reappear, but
the limp body of the lynx bobbed to the surface.

Riley Hankins brushed the sweat from his face. "Let's go," he said. "Got
to get my wet young'un home."

"What about--"

"Jeddy boy, if them beaver want to move into my parlor, they can do it
any time--and welcome!"




  _Chapter XIV_

  THE HUMANS COME


All the rest of the day and half the night Chip stayed in his lodge,
licking the wounds inflicted by Glare. None of them was as serious as
the shoulder slash given him by Ripple, but there were a great many more
cuts, and after he had lain still for half an hour, Chip began to
stiffen. He got up, forcing himself to move around the lodge.

The old beaver was a healthy wild animal, tough-bodied, hard-muscled,
and inured to hardship. A human being, wounded proportionately, would
have been hospitalized for weeks. But Chip had mended enough so that he
felt hungry by midnight. He slipped down the passageway and into the
pond.

Chip swam slowly, careful not to exert himself too much. The snow-cold
water was both soothing and stimulating. He felt better, and save for an
occasional twinge his stiffness had departed. The wounds were healing
fast; by tomorrow night Chip would be his old self. He swam slowly up to
the dam, where Sleek was busy at something.

Limp and bedraggled as a wet dish rag, Glare's body lay where the water
had cast it up on top of the dam. Sleek had climbed up beside the dead
lynx. She shoved with her nose and shoulder until she had tumbled the
carcass down the front of the dam.

Off in the aspens a prowling wolf heard the noise. The gaunt and hungry
beast stopped in his tracks, ears pricked up and tail drooping. Then he
trotted straight toward the dead lynx. Thus ended Glare.

    *    *    *    *    *

Two days later a stranger came into the valley. He was a shaggy man, red
of hair and beard, and he carried a beaver cutting in his hand. The
red-haired man strode purposefully past Jed's house toward the aspens.
Two hours later he came back. Jed stopped him.

"Looking for something up this way?"

"Yeah. People who mind their own business."

The stranger passed on and Jed questioned him no more. But he knew.
Somewhere down the creek the stranger had picked up a beaver cutting,
and he had come clear to the head of the valley to find the colony or
colonies from which it had floated.

Jed did not go to bed that night. The hour was very late when Pete
growled warningly. Jed silenced the dog, and went to his front window.
He saw five shadowy shapes in the night going toward the aspens.

Jed slipped into a jacket and went out.

    *    *    *    *    *

Chip swam easily, carefree for the first time since the ice had broken.
Ripple had not returned to the pond after his winter's attack on the
lodge. Glare was dead. Of course there was Shuffle, but since he had
crawled out of his winter's bed the bear had been spending his time high
in the hills, ripping apart old logs for the grubs they contained, and
digging roots. Even if he came back to the pond, Shuffle was a clumsy
beast who always announced his own approach. He could catch only very
careless beaver.

The water was cut suddenly by a line of ripples. Digger and Root were
taking their young for a swim. The King trout, exuberant and wishing to
demonstrate his prowess, leaped clear of the water. He leaped again and
again, wriggling when he went into the air and splashing back. The King
submerged and swam swiftly up the pond, scattering his mates as he did
so.

Although he did not know it, in a single year the beaver had wrought a
miraculous change that affected every creature in the stream and in the
valley through which it ran. Aside from Chip and his family, his pond
had provided a refuge for the trout, for the muskrats, for the geese,
and for the frogs. In time of great stress, the pond had even been a
haven for Trim and her fawn.

More than that, the three ponds now controlled the creek. There was
always an even flow of water, never floods. The stream was adjusting
itself to what it was intended to be. Now that they again had a
favorable environment, the creatures who lived in it were multiplying.
Nature was working to restore what man had destroyed.

The old beaver was aware of none of this as he swam to the bank. He knew
only that he was hungry, and he ascended the slope to a grove of young
aspens. He did not stop eating when Young Chip paused beside him.

The kit had grown like a milkweed in the sun, and was fulfilling his
early promise of superior size and intelligence. A third bigger than
the other two kits, he had proven his skill at mastering the crafts
which a beaver must know. He could patch the dam almost as expertly as
Sleek and Chip, and in one corner of the pond he had already built his
own small lodge which he entered whenever the impulse moved him. Young
Chip had learned all his parents could teach him, and from now on he
would have to be taught by experience.

He was restless. A little distance away, the other two kits were
contentedly chewing bark. They were restless too, but not in the same
degree. Young Chip left his father to go straight to the pond. He
plunged in and swam upstream. Then Sleek's head cut a clean path across
the water as she followed her son. Chip watched his mate trail the kit
up the pond, but made no move to follow.

When Sleek came back she came alone. She had followed her impetuous son
clear to the bubbling spring at the source of the creek, and had tried
to turn him back. He would not be turned. Reaching the spring, he had
unhesitatingly started into the aspens. Young Chip had started out on
his travels. If he returned at all, he would have a mate with him.

Sleek swam across the pond and climbed up to where the two remaining
kits were eating aspen bark. They would go soon and Sleek would try to
stop them; her maternal instinct was very powerful. But grief at losing
her babies would be alleviated when new ones arrived. Then Sleek would
have all she could do, and it was well that the others were going. It
would be impossible to take care of all of them.

Chip, having eaten all he wanted, returned to the pond and climbed out
on top of the lodge. He saw the geese float lazily past, gently
propelling themselves with webbed feet. The goose's head was under her
wing, but the gander's was erect. The two geese, never very far apart,
did not sleep at the same time. One or the other was always wide awake.
They knew too well the dangers of the life they lived to relax even for
a minute. In the wilderness, death never took more than an instant to
strike.

The gander spoke softly to his mate, and she raised her head. Alert, the
two geese remained side by side and swam a little faster. A second later
Wraith cruised over the pond.

There was a series of splashes at one side of the pond as Digger, Root,
and their young, dived from the bank into the water. Wraith swooped low
over them, and when he rose he bore one of the young muskrats in his
claws. Digger and Root, and their remaining young, frantically sought
their burrow.

Chip watched, unaffected one way or the other and not understanding that
this was part of a muskrat's destiny. On land the big snowshoe rabbits
bred prolifically, producing several litters a year and sometimes
increasing so rapidly that every brush copse concealed one or more
rabbits. In water the muskrats did the same. Within a few weeks the
young rats would have young of their own, and Root was already heavy
with another litter. Muskrats had no weapons of offense and few of
defense. They survived only if they multiplied more rapidly than their
enemies could kill them.

When the sun rose, the two kits and Sleek sought the lodge's snug
interior. Chip lingered a few moments more to inspect and repair the
dam. Trim came down for her morning drink. The doe moved almost lazily.
She flicked her long ears at Chip, stood a moment, and then ambled back
into the aspens. Chip dived deeply to enter the lodge.

He felt so much better that, when he went in, Sleek rose from the place
she had taken beside the entrance and moved over to sleep near the kits.
Chip stretched out in the doorway, again ready to meet any enemy that
tried to enter the lodge. He dozed peacefully. In the middle of the day
he rose to make an exploratory trip around the pond. He saw the geese,
resting comfortably near the lodge, and up on the bank Trim stretched in
the sunshine. There was no disturbance, nothing to fear. The only sound
was the familiar rattle of the pileated woodpeckers, who had come back
to their stub and were drumming on it. To all outward appearances,
everything around the pond was normal. All the beaver's old
acquaintances of last year were back. Chip stopped again to look up on
the bank.

Trim's fawn of last year, now a strutting little buck with six-inch
antlers, came out of the aspens and, bursting with self-importance,
trotted toward Trim. She waited until he was within twenty feet, then
rose. The hair on top of her neck bristled, she bleated angrily as she
rushed her son. The little buck whirled and fled back into the aspens.
Trim returned to her basking place. She was staying near the pond
because experience had taught her that it was a safe nursery. Since she
would soon be called upon to take care of a new baby, she could not
concern herself with the old. The little buck must take care of himself.

Chip re-entered the lodge to sleep again. He came out at sunset, and at
once went down to repair the dam. The two kits climbed up on the bank
to fell trees and eat bark, while Sleek joined her mate at the dam. They
reinforced weak places, and packed mud and sticks in wherever so much as
a trickle of water escaped. Then Chip left the dam to climb up to his
anchor tree.

There were trees that could be safely reached if the pond were only
bigger. Chip made a careful trip around the bank, trying to decide what
he should do in order to accomplish the desired objective. He swam
across and surveyed the other bank.

The dam already backed a large body of water, but by building it higher,
and lengthening the right wing, Chip could flood another part of the
natural basin that was not already water-covered and reach at least a
portion of the desired trees. That was an engineering project for the
immediate future.

He swam toward the geese, dipping for succulent aquatic bulbs in one of
the pond's shallower spots, and the geese hissed at him when he passed.
It was not a vicious threat, for the geese knew and tolerated Chip. He
had never even attempted to harm them, but they wished to remain certain
that their own privacy would be respected. They wanted no intimate
acquaintances save each other.

Chip climbed up on the bank to join Sleek, and sat erect until he had
located the kits. They were a few yards away, hard at work on two trees
they were cutting. Chip gnawed a small aspen, cut the peeled portion
from the tree, and dragged it into the pond. He laid it on top of the
dam, and again ascended the bank to examine the place he wanted to
flood.

Then he swam up the pond, intending to climb over the feeder dams and go
into the aspens there, when he saw the geese go past. They were
skulking, heads low and settled as far into the water as they could get.
They paddled softly to the opposite bank, and headed toward the upper
part of the pond. All Chip's old nervousness returned.

Though he could see, hear, or smell nothing, his inner senses warned him
that something was coming. The geese always knew. Chip curled his flat
tail and slapped it down on the water. He heard Sleek and the kits
scrambling down the bank, and then the water splashed slightly when they
entered it.

The kits dived at once into the lodge, the safest retreat they knew, but
Sleek swam to her mate's side and circled him questioningly. Chip did
not move. He was high in the water, his head raised so he could detect
any scent or sound. When he looked around for the geese, they had
melted into the darkness at the upper end of the pond.

Sleek entered the lodge to be with her kits. Chip climbed on the dam. He
crouched there, head and shoulders up and broad flat tail behind him.
Out in the aspens a night-waking bird twittered and went back to sleep.
The King trout splashed.

Two minutes later Chip heard a sound that struck terror in him. A year
ago, almost to the day, he had heard the same sound at his previous dam,
a short time before the dynamite exploded and Chip began his journey of
fear. Again humans were coming in the night, several of them.

The old beaver remained where he was, trembling, not knowing what to do,
as he awaited their arrival. He saw their flashlights, winking bright
eyes among the aspens, coming nearer and nearer. Chip slipped into the
pond, swam to the lodge, and hid behind it.

    *    *    *    *    *

His fear grew. He could fight Ripple if need be, and Glare, and even
Shuffle. He did not know how to fight men or the weapons they carried.
His life had taught him only how to cope with the wilderness.

He did not move when the men halted on the banks of the pond, but ducked
farther behind the lodge when a flashlight's beam strayed toward him.
His fear deepened, for an eddying breeze had carried the men's scents to
him, and they were identified as positively as humans identify close
acquaintances by their faces.

There was no doubt now. They were the same humans who had destroyed his
previous dam.

Then there was a new sound, one so faint that even the beaver could
scarcely hear it. More men were coming, but they came very quietly,
making no unnecessary noise. Chip knew when the two groups came close
together, saw a bright light beamed from the second group, and heard a
strong, commanding voice. He could smell the fear smell which came from
the first group of humans.

The watching beaver saw the light gleam on bright objects which the
first group had carried. Then there were various sounds as the objects
were dropped on the ground. The first humans raised their hands above
their heads. There was a short interval, and the sound of angry voices.
Then, leaving their objects on the ground, the first group went back
down the valley.

Chip trembled, worried because the second group was staying near the
pond. He knew two of them; they were the ones who had come with the
small human, the day he had fought Glare. For a long while the second
group stood beside the pond, looking across it. Then they picked up the
objects the first group had left on the ground, and they, too, went
away.

    *    *    *    *    *

It was early on a lazy, late-summer day. Chip floated near his dam,
waiting until he was sure Sleek had taken her five small kits into the
lodge. Trim and her twin fawns cropped grass beside the pond, and the
King trout's school loafed near the headwaters. Once in a while a large
trout left the school to go chase some of the hundreds of tiny trout
that swam in the shallows. The geese escorted a flotilla of downy
goslings, and the two frogs were croaking near the bank. Digger and Root
were safe in their burrow with a brand new family.

Above Chip's pond, Young Chip and another older kit had their own dams
and lodges and were living with the mates they had won. The third kit
had never returned.

Chip came suddenly alive, disturbed by a sound he had never heard
before. It was an offensive sound, loud and wailing, and he could not
identify it. The beaver gave the warning signal, then hid behind the
lodge. He peered around it, and through the trees saw a strange white
animal. Because he had never seen one before, Chip could not know that
it was a white horse hitched to a cart with ungreased wheels.

The cart stopped and Riley Hankins and Jed Hale leaped out of it.
Shouldering packs of pine seedlings, carrying mattocks in their hands,
they walked side by side through an opening in the aspens, digging with
their mattocks as they walked. Every place they dug a hole, they put a
seedling in and tamped the earth over it. Chip stared, mystified by such
behavior.

Being only a beaver, he could not know that one day some of his own
descendants, far in the future, would again know the cool shade of
mighty pine forests.


  =Transcriber's Notes:=
  - hyphenation, spelling and grammar have been preserved as in the
    original (other than as listed below)
  Page 62, with puppyish enthusiam ==> with puppyish enthusiasm
  Page 70, neverfailing supply of water ==> never-failing supply of water
  Page 165, surface beside the lodge ==> surfaced beside the lodge




[End of Chip, the Dam Builder, by Jim Kjelgaard]
