During the next few days Shaggycoat saw signs of much tree-cutting and they were all evidently cut by the creature who pounded on the trunk with his bright stick. The following week he came upon something that interested and astonished him even more than this, and that was a real dam, more symmetrical than his own, and holding in its strong arms a beautiful lake. He was sure that the dam was not made by beavers, for many of the logs used in its construction were too large for a beaver to manage. Besides there was a queer doorway in the middle of the dam for the water to run through. The lake was rather low and considerable water was escaping through the door.
Our industrious dam-builder thought this waste of water a great pity, and although the dam did not belong to him, he set to work and in half a day had stopped the sluiceway very effectively.
This industry greatly astonished the real owners of the dam, who discovered it a week later. They were a party of log-men, who had built the dam to help them in getting their logs through a long stretch of shallow water.
The following day Shaggycoat came upon a great number of logs in the stream.
They stretched miles and miles, and he thought these must be remarkable creatures, who could cut so many logs. He also thought it was getting to be a perilous country, and no place for a beaver who wished to live a long life, so he started homeward.
The leaves had just turned red upon the soft maple along the little water courses and that was a sign that he always heeded.
The second day of his return journey, while wading through a shallow in the stream, he put his remaining good forepaw in one of Joe Dubois's traps. It was only a mink trap, and would not have held, had he been given time to wrench himself free, but he had barely sprung the trap when the alder bushes on the bank parted and the celebrated trapper, club in hand, stood upon the shore within ten feet of the terrified beaver.
"Oh, by gar!" exclaimed Joe at the sight of him. "You is just one pig, fine skin by gar. I got you.
"Now you run away, I shoot. You keep still, I kill you with my club. That not tear you fine coat."
So Joe got hold of the end of the chain and began carefully working the beaver in toward him, holding the club ready.