He had frequently seen Bruin watching the fish in some deep pool and trying whenever they came to the surface to sweep one out on the land with his paw, but one day he discovered a bear watching something else in the water.
Shaggycoat could not see anything to watch, but he did notice an occasional bubble coming to the surface. This was what interested the bear.
Presently Bruin dove head first into the water and after remaining down for several seconds came blowing and puffing to the surface, bringing a half drowned beaver in his jaws. If anything more was needed to add to the unfortunate beaver's trouble, it was that one of his forepaws was firmly held in a trap. The bear had evidently discovered the beaver in a trap, and had driven him to the bottom. He laid his unfortunate victim down and with one blow of his strong paw broke the beaver's neck.
This was enough for Shaggycoat and he fled like a hunted thing, and after that day he always kept as much water between himself and the bear family as possible.
CHAPTER X
A TROUBLESOME FELLOW
The first time that Shaggycoat saw the brown fisherman, he came sliding over the surface of the beavers' pond, and the manner of his coming both astonished and angered Shaggycoat.
The thing that astonished him was to see the otter slide, and he was angry, because the stranger acted just as though the pond belonged to him and Shaggycoat knew that it was his own. Had he not spent days and weeks searching in the wilderness for a spot where he could make his home and had not he and Brighteyes built the dam that flowed the meadow? It was all his and the manner of this merry stranger made him furious.
He would show him who was master here, so the beaver began swimming rapidly about under the ice, trying vainly to find an escape to the outer air. But Jack Frost had shut down a transparent ice window over the pond the night before, and, although Shaggycoat could still see the sky and the trees along the shore, yet the outer world would not be his again until spring. He could find an airhole by going up-stream two or three miles to some rapids, but the return trip overland was not inviting, for he, like other beavers, was a poor pedestrian and would not go any long distance except by water. So true is this of the beaver, that one naturalist says he may be kept a prisoner in a certain portion of a stream, simply by placing wire netting across the current and running it inland for a hundred feet in either direction. A beaver so held between two wire fences at right angles to the stream, will spend several days in captivity before he will venture around the end of the fence to freedom.