In Beaver World Part 6

I thought to myself that the coyote, stuffed as he must be with the seared flesh of fire-roasted victims, would not attack them; but a lion wants a fresh kill for every meal, and so I watched the movements of the latter. He adjusted his feet a trifle and made ready to spring.

The beavers were getting close; but just as I was about to shout to frighten him, the coyote leaped among them and began killing.

In the excitement of getting off the crag I narrowly escaped breaking my neck. Once on the ground, I ran for the coyote, shouting wildly to frighten him off; but he was so intent upon killing that a violent kick in the ribs first made him aware of my presence. In anger and excitement he leaped at me with ugly teeth as he fled. The lion had disappeared, and by this time the beavers in the front ranks were jumping into the pond, while the others were awkwardly speeding down the slope. The coyote had killed three. If beavers have a language, surely that night the refugees related to their hospitable neighbors some thrilling experiences.

The next morning I returned to the Moraine Colony over the route followed by the refugees. Leaving their fire-ruined homes, they had followed the stream that issued from their ponds. In places the channel was so clogged with fire wreckage that they had followed alongside the water rather than in it, as is their wont. At one place they had hurriedly taken refuge in the stream. Coyote tracks in the scattered ashes explained this. But after going a short distance they had climbed from the water and again traveled the ashy earth.

Beavers commonly follow water routes, but in times of emergency or in moments of audacity they will journey overland. To have followed this stream down to its first tributary, then up this to where the colony in which they found refuge was situated, would have required four miles of travel. Overland it was less than a mile. After following the stream for some distance, at just the right place they turned off, left the stream, and dared the overland dangers. How did they know the situation of the colony in the willows, or that it had escaped fire, and how could they have known the shortest, best way to it?

The morning after the arrival of the refugees, work was begun on two new houses and a dam, which was about sixty feet in length and built across a gra.s.sy open. Green cuttings of willow, aspen, and alder were used in its construction. Not a single stone or handful of mud was used. When completed it appeared like a windrow of freshly raked shrubs. It was almost straight, but sagged a trifle downstream. Though the water filtered freely through, it flooded the flat above. As the two new houses could not shelter all the refugees, it is probable that some of them were sheltered in bank tunnels, while room for others may have been found in the old houses.

That winter the colony was raided by some trappers; more than one hundred pelts were secured, and the colony was left in ruins and almost depopulated.

The Moraine Colony site was deserted for a long time. Eight years after the fire I returned to examine it. The willow growth about the ruins was almost as thrifty as when the fire came. A growth of aspen taller than one's head clung to the old sh.o.r.e-lines, while a close seedling growth of lodge-pole pine throve in the ashes of the old forest. One low mound, merry with blooming columbine, was the only house ruin to be seen.

The ponds were empty and every dam was broken. The stream, in rushing un.o.bstructed through the ruins, had eroded deeply. This erosion revealed the records of ages, and showed that the old main dam had been built on the top of an older dam and a sediment-filled pond. The second dam was on top of an older one still. In the sediment of the oldest--the bottom pond--I found a spearhead, two charred logs, and the skull of a buffalo. Colonies of beaver, as well as those of men, are often found upon sites that have a tragic history. Beavers, with Omar, might say,--

"When you and I behind the veil are past, Oh but the long long while the world shall last."

The next summer, 1893, Moraine site was resettled. During the first season the colonists spent their time repairing dams and were content to live in holes. In autumn they gathered no harvest, and no trace of them could be found after the snow; so it is likely that they had returned to winter in the colony whence they had come. But early in the next spring there were reinforced numbers of them at work establishing a permanent settlement. Three dams were repaired, and in the autumn many of the golden leaves that fell found lodgment in the fresh plaster of two new houses.

In the new Moraine Colony one of the houses was torn to pieces by some animal, probably a bear. This was before Thanksgiving. About mid-winter a prospector left his tunnel a few miles away, came to the colony and dynamited a house, and "got seven of them." Next year two houses were built on the ruins of the two just fallen. That year's harvest-home was broken by deadly attacks of enemies. In gathering the harvest the beavers showed a preference for some aspens that were growing in a moist place about one hundred feet from the water.

Whether it was the size of these or their peculiar flavor that determined their election in preference to nearer ones, I could not determine. One day, while several beavers were cutting here, they were surprised by a mountain lion which leaped upon and killed one of the harvesters. The next day the lion surprised and killed another. Two or three days later a coyote killed one on the same blood-stained spot, and then overtook and killed two others as they fled for the water. I could not see these deadly attacks from the boulder-pile, but in each case the sight of flying beavers sent me rushing upon the scene, where I beheld the cause of their desperate retreat. But despite dangers they persisted until the last of these aspens was harvested. During the winter the bark was eaten from these, and the next season their clean wood was used in the walls of a new house.

One autumn I had the pleasure of seeing some immigrants pa.s.s me _en route_ for a new home in the Moraine Colony. Of course they may have been only visitors, or have come temporarily to a.s.sist in the harvesting; but I like to think of them as immigrants, and a number of things testified that immigrants they were. One evening I had been lying on a boulder by the stream below the colony, waiting for a gift from the G.o.ds. It came. Out of the water within ten feet of me scrambled the most patriarchal, as well as the largest, beaver that I have ever seen. I wanted to take off my hat to him, I wanted to ask him to tell me the story of his life, but from long habit I simply lay still and watched and thought in silence. He was making a portage round a cascade. As he scrambled up over the rocks, I noticed that he had but two fingers on his right hand. He was followed, in single file, by four others; one of these was minus a finger on the left hand. The next morning I read that five immigrants had arrived in the Moraine Colony. They had registered their footprints in the muddy margin of the lower pond. Had an agent been sent to invite these colonists, or had they come out of their own adventurous spirit? The day following their arrival I trailed them backward in the hope of learning whence they came and why they had moved. They had traveled in the water most of the time; but in places they had come out on the bank to go round a waterfall or to avoid an obstruction. Here and there I saw their tracks in the mud and traced them to a beaver settlement in which the houses and dams had been recently wrecked. A near-by rancher told me that he had been "making it hot" for all beavers in his meadow. During the next two years I occasionally saw this patriarchal beaver or his tracks thereabout.

It is the custom among old male beavers to idle away two or three months of each summer in exploring the neighboring brooks and streams, but they never fail to return in time for autumn activities.

It thus becomes plain how, when an old colony needs to move, some one in it knows where to go and the route to follow.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MORAINE HOUSE BEFORE AND AFTER ENLARGEMENT]

The Moraine colonists gathered an unusually large harvest during the autumn of 1909. Seven hundred and thirty-two sapling aspens and several hundred willows were ma.s.sed in the main pond by the largest house. This pile, which was mostly below the water-line, was three feet deep and one hundred and twenty-four feet in circ.u.mference. Would a new house be built this fall? This unusually large harvest plainly told that either children or immigrants had increased the population of the colony. Of course, a hard winter may also have been expected.

No; they were not to build a new house, but the old house by the harvest pile was to be enlarged. One day, just as the evening shadow of Long's Peak had covered the pond, I peeped over a log on top of the dam to watch the work. The house was only forty feet distant. Not a ripple stirred among the inverted peaks and pines in the clear, shadow-enameled pond. A lone beaver rose quietly in the scene from the water near the house. Swimming noiselessly, he made a circuit of the pond. Then for a time, and without any apparent purpose, he swam back and forth over a short, straight course; he moved leisurely, and occasionally made a shallow, quiet dive. He did not appear to be watching anything in particular or to have anything special on his mind. Yet his eyes may have been scouting for enemies and his mind may have been full of house plans. Finally he dived deeply, and the next I saw of him he was climbing up the side of the house addition with a pawful of mud.

By this time a number of beavers were swimming in the pond after the manner of the first one. Presently all began to work. The addition already stood more than two feet above the water-line. The top of this was crescent-shaped and was about seven feet long and half as wide. It was made mostly of mud, which was plentifully reinforced with willow cuttings and aspen sticks. For a time all the workers busied themselves in carrying mud and roots from the bottom of the pond and placing these on the slowly rising addition. Eleven were working at one time. By and by three swam ash.o.r.e, each in a different direction and each a few seconds apart. After a minute or two they returned from the sh.o.r.e, each carrying or trailing a long willow. These were dragged to the top of the addition, laid down, and trampled in the mud.

Meantime the mud-carriers kept steadily at their work; again willows were brought, but this time four beavers went, and, as before, each was independent of the others. I did not see how this work could go on without some one bossing the thing, but I failed to detect any beaver acting as overseer. While there was general cooperation, each acted independently most of the time and sometimes was apparently oblivious of the others. These beavers simply worked, slowly, silently, and steadily; and they were still working away methodically and with dignified deliberation when darkness hid them.

Beaver Pioneers

I often wish that an old beaver neighbor of mine would write the story of his life. Most of the time for eighteen years his mud hut was among the lilies of Lily Lake, Estes Park, Colorado. He lived through many wilderness dangers, escaped the strategy of trappers, and survived the dangerous changes that come in with the home-builder. His life was long, stirring, and adventurous. If, in the first chapter of his life-story, he could record some of the strong, thrilling experiences which his ancestors must have related to him, his book would be all the better.

"Flat-top," my beaver neighbor, was a pioneer and a colony-founder. It is probable that he was born in a beaver house on Wind River, and it is likely that he spent the first six years of his life along this crag and aspen bordered mountain stream. The first time I saw him he was leading an emigrant party out of this stream's steep-walled upper course. He and his party settled, or rather resettled, Lily Lake.

Flat-top was the name I gave him because of his straight back. In most beaver the shoulders swell plumply above the back line after the outline of the grizzly bear. Along with this peculiarity, which enabled me to be certain of his presence, was another. This was his habit of gnawing trees off close to the earth when he felled them. The finding of an occasional low-cut stump a.s.sured me of his presence during the periods I failed to see him.

The first beaver settlement in the lake appears to have been made in the early seventies, long before Flat-top was born, by a pair of beaver who were full of the pioneer spirit. These settlers apparently were the sole survivors of a large party of emigrants who tried to climb the rugged mountains to the lake, having been driven from their homes by encroaching human settlers. After a long, tedious journey, full of hardships and dangers, they climbed into the lake that was to them, for years, a real promised land.

Driven from Willow Creek, they set off upstream in search of a new home, probably without knowing of Lily Lake, which was five miles distant and two thousand feet up a steep, rocky mountain. These pilgrims had traveled only a little way upstream when they found themselves the greater portion of the time out of water. This was only a brook at its best and in most places it was such a shallow, tiny streamlet that in it they could not dive beyond the reach of enemies or even completely cool themselves. In stretches the water spread thinly over a gra.s.sy flat or a smooth granite slope; again it was lost in the gravel; or, murmuring faintly, pursued its way out of sight beneath piles of boulder,--marbles shaped by the Ice King. Much of the time they were compelled to travel upon land exposed to their enemies.

Water-holes in which they could escape and rest were long distances apart.

This plodding, perilous five-mile journey which the beaver made up the mountain to the lake would be easy and care-free for an animal with the physical make-up of a bear or a wolf, but with the beaver it is not surprising that only two of the emigrants survived this supreme trial and escaped the numerous dangers of the pilgrimage.

Lily Lake is a shallow, rounded lily garden that reposes in a glacier meadow at an alt.i.tude of nine thousand feet; its golden pond-lilies often dance among reflected snowy peaks, while over it the granite crags of Lily Mountain rise several hundred feet. A few low, sedgy, gra.s.sy acres border half the sh.o.r.e, while along the remainder are crags, aspen groves, willow-clumps, and scattered pines. Its waters come from springs in its western margin and overflow across a low gra.s.sy bar on its curving eastern sh.o.r.e.

It was autumn when these beaver pioneers came to Lily Lake's primitive and poetic border. The large green leaves of the pond-lily rested upon the water, while from the long green stems had fallen the sculptured petals of gold; the willows were wearing leaves of brown and bronze, and the yellow tremulous robes of the aspens glowed in the golden sunlight.

These fur-clad pioneers made a dugout--a hole in the bank--and busily gathered winter food until stopped by frost and snow; then, almost care-free, they dozed away the windy winter days while the lake was held in waveless ice beneath the drifting snow.

The next summer a house was built in the lily pads near the sh.o.r.e.

Here a number of children were born during the few tranquil years that followed. These times came to an end one bright midsummer day. Lord Dunraven had a ditch cut in the outlet rim of the lake with the intention of draining it that his fish ponds, several miles below in his Estes Park game-preserve, might have water. A drouth had prevailed for several months, and a new water-supply must be had or the fish ponds would go dry. The water poured forth through the ditch, and the days of the colony appeared to be numbered.

A beaver must have water for safety and for the ease of movement of himself and his supplies. He is skillful in maintaining a dam and in regulating the water-supply; these two things require much of his time. In Lily Lake the dam and the water question had been so nicely controlled by nature that with these the colonists had had nothing to do. However, they still knew how to build dams, and water-control had not become a lost art. The morning after the completion of the drainage ditch, a man was sent up to the lake to find out why the water was not coming down. A short time after the ditch-diggers had departed, the lowering water had aroused the beaver, who had promptly placed a dam in the mouth of the ditch. The man removed this dam and went down to report. The beaver speedily replaced it. Thrice did the man return and destroy their dam, but thrice did the beaver promptly restore it.

The dam-material used in obstructing the ditch consisted chiefly of the peeled sticks from which the beaver had eaten the bark in winter; along with these were mud and gra.s.s. The fourth time that the ditch guard returned, he threw away all the material in the dam and then set some steel traps in the water by the mouth of the ditch. The first two beaver who came to reblockade the ditch were caught in these traps and drowned while struggling to free themselves. Other beaver heroically continued the work that these had begun. The cutting down of saplings and the procuring of new material made their work slow, very slow, in the face of the swiftly escaping water; when the ditch was at last obstructed, a part of the material which formed this new dam consisted of the traps and the dead bodies of the two beaver who had bravely perished while trying to save the colony.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE IN LILY LAKE]

The ditch guard returned with a rifle, and came to stay. The first beaver to come within range was shot. The guard again removed the dam, made a fire about twenty feet from the ditch, and planned to spend the night on guard, rifle in hand. Toward morning he became drowsy, sat down by the fire, heard the air in the pines at his back, watched the star-sown water, and finally fell asleep. While he thus slept, with his rifle across his lap, the beaver placed another--their last--obstruction before the outrushing water.

On awakening, the sleeper tore out the dam and stood guard over the ditch. All that afternoon a number of beaver hovered about, watching for an opportunity to stop the water again. Their opportunity never came, and three who ventured too near the rifleman gave up their lives,--reddening the clear water with their life-blood in vain.

The lake was drained, and the colonists abandoned their homes. One night, a few days after the final attempt to blockade the ditch, an unwilling beaver emigrant party climbed silently out of the uncovered entrance of their house and made their way quietly, slowly, beneath the stars, across the mountain, descending thence to Wind River, where they founded a new colony.

Winter came to the old lake-bed, and the lily roots froze and died.

The beaver houses rapidly crumbled, and for a few years the picturesque ruins of the beaver settlement, like many a settlement abandoned by man, stood pathetically in the midst of wilderness desolation. Slowly the water rose to its old level in the lake, as the outlet ditch gradually filled with swelling turf and drifting sticks and trash. Then the lilies came back with rafts of green and boats of gold to enliven this lakelet of repose.

One autumn morning, while returning to my cabin after a night near the stars on Lily Mountain, I paused on a crag to watch the changing morning light down Wind River Canon. While thus engaged, Flat-top and a party of colonists came along a game trail within a few yards of me, evidently bound for the lake, which was only a short distance away. I silently followed them. This was my introduction to Flat-top.

On the sh.o.r.e these seven adventurers paused for a moment to behold the scene, or, possibly, to dream of empire; then they waddled out into the water and made a circuit of the lake. Probably Flat-top had been here before as an explorer. Within two hours after their arrival these colonists began building for a permanent settlement.

It was late to begin winter preparation. The clean, white aspens had shed their golden leaves and stood waiting to welcome the snows. This lateness may account for the makeshift of a hut which the colonists constructed. This was built against the bank with only one edge in the water; the entrance to it was a twelve-foot tunnel that ended in the lake-bottom where the water was two feet deep.

The beaver were collecting green aspen and willow cuttings in the water by the tunnel-entrance when the lake froze over. Fortunately for the colonists, with their scanty supply of food, the winter was a short one, and by the first of April they were able to dig the roots of water plants along the shallow sh.o.r.e where the ice had melted. One settler succ.u.mbed during the winter, but by summer the others had commenced work on a permanent house, which was completed before harvest time.

I had a few glimpses of the harvest-gathering and occasionally saw Flat-top. One evening, while watching the harvesters, I saw three new workers. Three emigrants--from somewhere--had joined the colonists. A total of fifteen, five of whom were youngsters, went into winter quarters,--a large, comfortable house, a goodly supply of food, and a location off the track of trappers. The cold, white days promised only peace. But an unpreventable catastrophe came before the winter was half over.

One night a high wind began to bombard the ice-bound lake with heavy blasts. The force of these intermittent gales suggested that the wind was trying to dislodge the entire ice covering of the lake; and indeed that very nearly happened.

Before the crisis came, I went to the lake, believing it to be the best place to witness the full effects of this most enthusiastic wind.

Across the ice the gale boomed, roaring in the restraining forest beyond. These broken rushes set the ice vibrating and the water rolling and swelling beneath. During one of these blasts the swelling water burst the ice explosively upward in a fractured ridge entirely across the lake. In the next few minutes the entire surface broke up, and the wind began to drive the cakes upon the windward sh.o.r.e.

A large flatboat cake was swept against the beaver house, sheared it off on the water-line, and overturned the conelike top into the lake.

The beaver took refuge in the tunnel which ran beneath the lake-bottom. This proved a death-trap, for its sh.o.r.e end above the water-line was clogged with ice. As the lake had swelled and surged beneath the beating of the wind, the water had gushed out and streamed back into the tunnel again and again, until ice formed in and closed the outer entrance. Against this ice four beaver were smothered or drowned. I surmised the tragedy but was helpless to prevent it.

Meanwhile the others doubled back and took refuge upon the ruined stump of their home. From a clump of near-by pines I watched this wild drama.