We afterward sought out our newly-found neighbors, the beavers, finding their pond a short distance below us on the creek, and a little lower down the dam itself. Many more trees had been cut for the latter than were used in its construction, several having been abandoned when almost ready to fall. We noticed that the butts of the prostrated trees were sharpened down gradually like the point of a lead-pencil, but both ways, instead of one, so that a tree cut nearly through met from above and below at the point of breaking, like the waist of an hour glass. This dam was most interesting to all of us, since it seemed so much to resemble the work of man. In this waste place of the earth, it really seemed almost like company, and we felt a strong desire to have a friendly conference with the builders. But these had formed this reservoir for the express purpose that in its depths they might escape intrusion, and now the whole regiment of engineers seemed asleep in barracks. Still our men secured a few very fine ones by trapping. It appeared that the beavers were a vacillating set of architects, as all the trees which stood near the water and leaned over it at all, were gnawed more or less, and many of them left when almost ready to fall. The position of the dam had evidently been determined by the tree which fell first. From the reckless manner in which they had slashed around with their teeth, it was pertinently suggested that this colony must have obtained from the beaver congress a government subsidy. Having been acquainted with the art of building before man mastered it, the beaver race also probably understood how to do it at little personal expense. The beaver appears to be distributed in considerable numbers all over the western half of Kansas, although the spring floods sweep away their dams almost every season. Once afterward, when lost on the plains for a day, I came across a beaver dam. Several hours of anxious suspense in the solitude, fearing to meet man lest he should prove a savage, begot a strange feeling of companionship when I came in sight of the rude structure of logs. If not civilization, it was a close imitation of it, and I laid down and fell into a refreshing sleep, soothed, in the fantasies of Dreamland, with the whir of looms and hum of factory life. CHAPTER XVII. PREPARATIONS FOR THE CHASE--THE VALLEY OF THE SALINE--QUEER 'COONS--A BISON'S GAME OF BLUFF--IN PURSUIT--ALONGSIDE THE GAME--FIRING FROM THE SADDLE--A CHARGE AND A PANIC--FALSE HISTORY AGAIN--GOING FOR AMMUNITION--THE PROFESSOR'S LETTER--DISROBING THE VICTIM.