“For anybody. If you haven’t found it out yet, you will,” Holly prophesied, clinging grimly to her gloomy philosophy. “She had an appointment, but nobody came. It makes me wonder if Horace and Honey will keep their appointment here at the beaver dam.”
“Don’t be silly. Of course they will. Horace intends to convince his editor that the beavers will make a good story. Peter may come, too, if he gets the message I left for him. I hope he does,” declared Judy. “There are so many things I want to ask him.”
“What sort of things?” questioned Holly.
“Oh, about rivers and stuff,” Judy replied airily, still not sure enough of what she had seen to report it. “Things could drift down with the current, you know. I mean, if the Cowanesque heads the other side of this hill it must flow past several houses including that one the matron of the orphanage was talking about. Probably it’s one of the forks of the Susquehanna, and I think this creek must be another.”
“But she said it was near the head of the Genessee,” Holly objected. “And you told me yourself that we could see three great river valleys from that watershed we crossed.”
“It was beautiful!” Judy remembered. “We could see hills and valleys for miles and miles.”
“I like open places like that,” declared Holly. “Here in the woods you get the feeling that someone is hiding and watching you.”
“Beavers, no doubt. We’re the ones who should be hiding and watching them,” Judy reminded her. “We shouldn’t be talking, either. We were told not to make a sound.”
“That’s right,” Holly agreed, lowering her voice to a whisper.
Not another word was said as they broke their way through the underbrush until they came to a fairly large tree that had been gnawed down by the beavers. The stump was right at the edge of the pond. Judy ran her hand over it to make sure it was flat enough for her camera. It surprised her to discover what experts the beavers were. Their dam was solidly constructed of mud, brushwood, and poles. But there were other things in it, too. Things that puzzled Judy more and more as she and Holly watched and waited. There was no sound of falling trees as the beavers worked. Holly asked why.