Who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, who-o-o, came the cry again, this time close at hand, but the young beavers continued their play and the great horned owl his hunt.
Suddenly Shaggycoat noticed something large above them that darkened the sky and which kept flapping like the bushes along the lake when the wind blew. There were two fiery, yellow balls and a strong hook between them, and two other sets of hooks that looked sharp as the brambles on the thorn-bush. This much Shaggycoat saw, for the great flapping thing was just above them and much nearer than he wished. Then a set of hooks reached down and gripped his brother in the back of the neck and bore him away. Higher and higher the strange thing went, carrying the owlets' supper in the strong set of hooks, and Shaggycoat knew by the piteous cry floating back that something dreadful had happened, but he was too young to understand just what.
Then a strange terror of the woods and the shore came over him and he fled to the lodge and did not leave it again for days.
Where his brother went, and who the stranger was, Shaggycoat never knew, but the owlets in the top of the tall tree in the deep woods tasted beaver meat and found it good.
CHAPTER XV
KING OF BEAVERS
"Joe," said Wahawa to the trapper one evening, as they sat by the fire, munching corn bread and bacon, "I believe you have caught the sacred beaver of my people, the good Puigagis, King of all the Beavers."
Joe laughed. "Py gar, what foolishness you tink in your hade now. You is one foolish leetle gal, he your sacred beaver, you say?"
But Wahawa did not laugh. She looked very serious as she replied, "It is nothing to laugh at, Joe. If this is really the sacred beaver, no good will come of it. Did you notice he had lost one forepaw? My people always let a maimed beaver go when they trap him because of something that happened many moons ago. Listen, Joe, and I will tell."