There is where the hunter and the hunted met
There are still a few small drops of blood, and eager tongues have licked up many more, for the snow is blotted and streaked with these tongue marks. Here and there are brown hairs that tell their pathetic story to the woodsman who can see it all in the tracks as well as though it had happened before his own eyes.
The unfortunate wood-cutter had fallen a victim to one of those ferocious lynx bands, that range the woods in extreme winters when hunger drives them to hunt in company. It had been cleverly done as things are, in the woods. One of the company had come up the stream and cut off the beaver's chance of escape to his burrow. He had then followed on the fresh track to the poplars where the band had closed in on their unfortunate prey.
Only the uncanny night knows how pitiful was the cry from the terrified and agonized beaver as these three furies hurled themselves upon him and in fewer seconds than it takes to tell it, tore him to shreds.
CHAPTER XII
THE BUILDERS
When the tardy spring at last came to Beaver City, it was with a rush.
On the first day of March the snow was three feet deep in the woods along the foothills, and two feet upon the smooth surface of the beavers' lake. By the tenth of the month, one might search long to find even a small snow-bank along the north side of the woods, or behind some protecting boulder.