flat on his belly a few feet away, watching him and wondering mightily.
And through this half-dry mud Umisk would also dig his miniature
canals, just as a small boy might have dug his Mississippi River and
pirate-infested oceans in the outflow of some back-lot spring. With his
sharp little teeth he cut down his big timber--willow sprouts never
more than an inch in diameter; and when one of these four or five-foot
sprouts toppled down, he undoubtedly felt as great a satisfaction as
Beaver Tooth felt when he sent a seventy-foot birch crashing into the
edge of the pond. Baree could not understand the fun of all this. He
could see some reason for nibbling at sticks--he liked to sharpen his
teeth on sticks himself; but it puzzled him to explain why Umisk so
painstakingly stripped the bark from the sticks and swallowed it.

Another method of play still further discouraged Baree's advances. A
short distance from the spot where he had first seen Umisk there was a
shelving bank that rose ten or twelve feet from the water, and this
bank was used by the young beavers as a slide. It was worn smooth and
hard. Umisk would climb up the bank at a point where it was not so
steep. At the top of the slide he would put his tail out flat behind
him and give himself a shove, shooting down the toboggan and landing in
the water with a big splash. At times there were from six to ten young
beavers engaged in this sport, and now and then one of the older
beavers would waddle to the top of the slide and take a turn with the
youngsters.

One afternoon, when the toboggan was particularly wet and slippery from
recent use, Baree went up the beaver path to the top of the bank, and
began investigating. Nowhere had he found the beaver smell so strong as
on the slide. He began sniffing and incautiously went too far. In an
instant his feet shot out from under him, and with a single wild yelp