Many old beaver colonies have a den in addition to the house, and others have a tunnel under the pond that comes out on shore some distance beyond the shoreline. This tunnel is sometimes used in winter while the pond is frozen over. But these new settlers were without tunnel or den. These beaver pioneers had founded a new home before winter came. The house was completed, a deep water pond had stored in it the autumn harvest--food for months. This necessary work was completed a month before the pond froze solid and several weeks before the first snow. This main pond is off the stream, connecting with it by a ditch through the side of another pond, and will thus receive but little sediment. But each year a layer of fine material will sift in and settle on the bottom, making the pond shallower. Although this pond will live longer than most ponds it, too, will meet the common fate--be filled in with rich soil, be buried and forgotten beneath grass, wild flowers, willows, and groves of trees. Several times through the ice I saw the beavers in the pond. A number of times I watched them by the food pile cutting off sticks of rations. Other times they were swimming about as though just having their daily cold bath. While the glassy ice covering of the pond was still clear I once saw them at play in the water beneath the ice; all nine. They wrestled in pairs, they mixed in masses, they raced two and three, they followed the leader circling and criss-crossing. Now and then one dropped out, rose against the under surface of the ice where there was an air pocket, and here I suppose had a few breaths and then resumed the play. CHAPTER XI THE WARY WOLF One day in western Wyoming an elk was killed by hunters. It was left lying on the ground all night. Its only protection was a handkerchief tied to one of the horns. Tracks in the snow showed that wolves were about and that they had circled the carcass, but without going close enough to touch it. In another instance a deer was left out all night in the wolf country. “How did you protect it?” someone asked the hunter. “By simply rubbing my hands over it,” he answered. A mature wolf will not eat or touch anything that has human scent upon it, or that carries the scent of iron or steel, which he evidently associates with the deadly scent of man. A cowboy shot his injured pony and left it lying on the plains. The pony was shod. Wolves did not touch the carcass. On another occasion and in the same locality a pony was killed by lightning. It was not shod and carried no human scent. Upon this pony the wolves were feasting within a few hours.