"How did you know who the Shaggy Man was?" asked Twink.
"Oh, everyone knows about the Shaggy Man of Oz, and when I saw you here discussing your journey to Oz, I was almost sure this could be none other than the famous Shaggy Man."
Shaggy looked modestly down at the ground.
Twiffle asked: "Just how far are we from this Deadly Desert?"
"Quite a distance," replied the beaver King. "The Desert lies just beyond our own Kingdom which is in the hills and mountains you see in the distance."
"And what is your plan for crossing it?" asked the Shaggy Man.
"Come to my palace where you will be comfortable," said the King, "and we will discuss my plan."
"It must be a long walk," sighed Twink. "And the farther we go toward the Desert, the rockier and grayer the country becomes."
"Oh, we shan't walk. It will be much quicker to ride," declared the beaver King.
With that the King of the Fairy Beavers walked to the edge of the stream and uttered a shrill whistle. Shaggy and his friends followed the little animal. A few hundred feet below them the river curved to the left. Around this bend in the stream they could now see some twenty little heads—beavers swimming swiftly upstream, and pulling after them a barge-like boat with a canopy to shut out the rays of the sun.