So he pushed Brighteyes from the trap and tried to hurry away with her. But, with true feminine wilfulness and curiosity, she persisted, and a moment later the trap was sprung and she was held fast by the toes of one of her forefeet.
She tugged and twisted, pulled and turned in every direction, but it would not let go. Then Shaggycoat got hold of the chain with his teeth and pulled too, but with no better success.
Brighteyes struggled until her paw was nearly wrenched from the shoulder, but the persistent thing that held her by three toes still clung like a vise.
At last when both beavers were filled with despair, and a wild terror of being held so firmly had seized them, a bright idea came to Shaggycoat. He gnawed off the stake that held the chain upon the trap and his mate was free to go, with the trap still clinging to her paw, and the chain rattling along upon the stones. Then they tried all sorts of experiments to get the trap off, the two most ingenious ways being drowning it, and burying it in the mud, and then seeking to steal away quietly without disturbing it. But the trap was not to be taken unawares in this way, and always followed. Finally it caught between two stones where the brook was shallow, and came off itself. You may imagine they were glad to see the last of it, and Brighteyes never forgot the lesson.
It was several days before her shoulder got fairly over the wrenching, but it may have saved her glossy coat in after years.
Finally, after traveling leisurely for about a week, they came to the mountain stream that Shaggycoat had in mind. It wound through a broad alder covered meadow, with steep foothills a mile or so back on either side. The meadow was about two miles long and at the lower end, where the stream ran into a narrow valley, there were two large pines, one on either bank.
Up in the foothills were innumerable birch and maple saplings and here and there in the meadow were knolls of higher land, covered with small pines and spruces.
Perhaps Shaggycoat had seen this wild meadow covered with water in the spring during a freshet, or maybe he had only imagined it, but there was a picture in his active mind of a strong beaver dam at the foot of the narrows and a broad lake that should be enclosed by the foothills; upon the islands were to be many beaver lodges, the first of which should be occupied by Brighteyes and himself.