THE WARY ANIMALS HAD DIVED OUT OF SIGHT AT HEARING THE BOYS APPROACH.
"Fearless Bear once told me," remarked Raven Wing, "that hunters rarely see beavers building a dam. He says that they build at night and that it is no easy matter for a hunter to watch them."
"The musquash is easier to hunt," said Hawk Eye. "But he is less than half the size of the beaver; besides, his pelt is not so valuable."
"I've seen a beaver caught that weighed almost eighty pounds," said Raven Wing. "It had beautiful fur and a tail as big as a musquash."
"No fur on its tail," laughed Hawk Eye. "It's covered with rough scales. Beaver uses it to scull its way through the water."
"I wish the dam were larger," said Raven Wing. "Big dam, many beavers."
"There are plenty of beavers here," said Hawk Eye. "Enough for you and me unless some hunter comes across it before another snow."
As Raven Wing stepped off the dam and walked upstream along the bank, he said; "Fearless Bear told the hunters one night when I was in his lodge, that he had seen a beaver dam near a great body of water that measured two hundred and sixty feet long and six feet high."
"Might not have been so many beavers at work on it," said Hawk Eye. "Probably it took a long time to build it."
