“And do you know Squinty, the comical pig, and Mappo, the merry monkey?” asked Slicko.
“I haven’t met them yet, but maybe I shall,” answered Toto. “But I’d rather be back at the beaver dam and hear my mother tell me to come in and get some poplar bark.”
“I am sorry for you,” chattered Slicko, who had once lived near the dam. “I’m going back to the beaver pond now, and I’ll tell your father and mother what’s happened to you.”
“Oh, thank you!” said Toto. “Maybe they can come and take me away.”
“I hope so,” said Slicko.
Then the river grew wider, the boat moved out farther from shore, and Toto and the squirrel could no longer talk to one another. But Slicko waved her bushy tail at the beaver boy in the cage on the deck of the houseboat.
For several days Toto was kept a prisoner in the cage on the houseboat. It was not a fast boat, and did not go very far any day. Only a mile or two would it move down the river, and then it would be tied up to the shore, while the man and his wife and Donald went walking in the woods. The man painted pictures, and he would stop at every pretty scene he came to. So, though a week had passed since Toto was caught in the trap, he really was not carried very far away from his own home at the beaver dam in Winding River.
The boy who had caught the beaver in a trap was kind to Toto. He brought bits of bark, potatoes, apples and sweet water-plant roots to the little prisoner each day. At first Toto would not eat, but finally he grew so hungry that he had to. His leg was not sore any longer, and he could have waddled on the ground, or he could have paddled through the water if he could only have gotten loose. But he was kept shut up in a tin-lined wooden box with wire in front. This was his cage.