Toto had asked his mother if he might go out on the ice and play, and she had said he might. Toto was about a year old, having been born the previous spring, and he knew that in winter there was not much to eat outside the beaver house. But he had gnawed a number of sticks of poplar, and of willow, with the sweet, juicy bark on, and now he was not hungry. He was tired of being cooped up in the dark house, frozen fast in the river. So Toto had gone out, and had walked along the ice until he was quite a long way from home.
“But I guess I can easily find my way back,” thought Toto to himself. “It’s pretty slippery walking, and I’d a good deal rather swim, but if I walk slowly I won’t slip.”
So he had walked along the ice until he was out of sight of his home, around one of the many curves in Winding River. That was the reason Mrs. Beaver could not see her little boy, and also why Toto could not hear his mother calling to him. He did not really mean to stay out when his mother did not want him to.
“Ah, that looks like something good to eat!” said Toto to himself, as he saw some straggly bushes growing on the bank of the river. The bushes had no leaves on, of course, for this was March, and winter was still king of the land. But Toto thought there might be bark on some of the twigs of the bushes, and bark was what the beavers mostly ate in winter. He was not hungry, but Toto, like other boys, was always ready to eat.
Toto walked slowly over the ice, and, standing up on his hind legs and partly sitting on his broad, flat tail, which was almost like the mortar trowel a mason uses, the little beaver boy began to gnaw the bark.
But he had not taken more than a bite or two before he stopped suddenly.
“Ouch!” cried Toto. “Something bit me!”
He looked about—there were no bees or wasps flying, which might have stung him. Still something had pricked him on his tongue. Then he looked more closely at the twig he had been gnawing.
“Oh, ho!” exclaimed Toto. “No wonder! This is a blackberry bush, and the thorns pricked me. I won’t gnaw any more of this bark.”
Toto backed away and started over the ice again, but he had not moved more than a few feet from the thick clump of blackberry bushes, growing on the edge of the river, when, all of a sudden, the little beaver boy heard a queer noise—several noises, in fact.