But if Gray Wolf had visions of her own Kazan understood nothing of
them. He had killed two of the creatures that had dared to invade their
home. To the little beavers he had been as merciless as the gray lynx
that had murdered Gray Wolf's first children on the top of the Sun Rock.
Now that he had sunk his teeth into the flesh of his enemies his blood
was filled with a frenzied desire to kill. He raved along the edge of
the pond, snarling at the uneasy water under which Broken Tooth had
disappeared. All of the beavers had taken refuge in the pond, and its
surface was heaving with the passing of many bodies beneath. Kazan came
to the end of the dam. This was new. Instinctively he knew that it was
the work of Broken Tooth and his tribe and for a few moments he tore
fiercely at the matted sticks and limbs. Suddenly there was an upheaval
of water close to the dam, fifty feet out from the bank, and Broken
Tooth's big gray head appeared. For a tense half minute Broken Tooth and
Kazan measured each other at that distance. Then Broken Tooth drew his
wet shining body out of the water to the top of the dam, and squatted
flat, facing Kazan. The old patriarch was alone. Not another beaver had
shown himself.
The surface of the pond had now become quiet. Vainly Kazan tried to
discover a footing that would allow him to reach the watchful invader.
But between the solid wall of the dam and the bank there was a tangled
framework through which the water rushed with some violence. Three times
Kazan fought to work his way through that tangle, and three times his
efforts ended in sudden plunges into the water. All this time Broken
Tooth did not move. When at last Kazan gave up the attack the old
engineer slipped over the edge of the dam and disappeared under the
water. He had learned that Kazan, like the lynx, could not fight water
and he spread the news among the members of his colony.
Gray Wolf and Kazan returned to the windfall and lay down in the warm
sun. Half an hour later Broken Tooth drew himself out on the opposite
shore of the pond. He was followed by other beavers. Across the water
they resumed their work as if nothing had happened. The tree-cutters
returned to their trees. Half a dozen worked in the water, carrying
loads of cement and twigs. The middle of the pond was their dead-line.
Across this not one of them passed. A dozen times during the hour that
followed one of the beavers swam up to the dead-line, and rested there,
looking at the shining little bodies of the babies that Kazan had
killed. Perhaps it was the mother, and perhaps some finer instinct
unknown to Kazan told this to Gray Wolf. For Gray Wolf went down twice
to sniff at the dead bodies, and each time--without seeing--she went
when the mother beaver had come to the dead-line.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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