A Beaver Appeared with a Long Stick, Which He Placed with Others on the Roof.—[Page 130.]
"Yes," agreed Hugh, "it was nice. I'll acknowledge that; and we're likely to see lots more of it. Of course we want to see the pleasant sights, and then besides that we want to get something to show for our trip. I think we'll do both. Come on now, let's mount and go on further. The day is only about half gone and I want to learn all I can."
From here on for quite a long way up the stream, beaver seemed abundant. The valley had grown much narrower, and instead of being a wide, grass-grown prairie with more or less morass about it, it was a narrow valley filled with beaver ponds, most of which seemed to be occupied.
They took a hasty survey of it and had no more opportunity to watch the animals at their work and their play. Several times as they were riding along the edge of the valley they startled white-tailed deer from the willows, but all those they saw were old does.
"I reckon," said Hugh, "that the fawns are too little as yet to run with their mothers. The old ones hide them and run away, and then just as soon as the danger is past they circle back and come close to them again. Curious thing, isn't it, son, that these little fawns don't give out any scent?"
"Mighty curious if it's so, Hugh."
"That's what people say," declared Hugh, "and I reckon likely it's true, because, if you think of it, you'll know that the wolves and coyotes are hunting all the time for these little fawns, and it's pretty sure that they don't find many of them. If they did, the deer wouldn't be half as plenty as they are."
"Then I suppose the white tails hide their young ones just as the elk and the antelope do," said Jack.
"Yes," said Hugh, "that's just what they do, or for a matter of fact just the way a buffalo cow hides her calf, or a common cow hides hers. You see all these animals seem to have that one instinct. When their young ones are very small and too weak to run fast or far, they hide them, and the plan works well, too, for I guess it carries most of them through. That fawn that those two lynxes were eating the other day was probably either one that they stumbled on by accident, or else perhaps one that had died from some sickness. They do that sometimes."