He was sitting on the old wishing-stone, and before him stretched the Green Meadows, joyous with happy life. He wasn’t a beaver at all, but he knew that he had been a beaver, that he had lived the life of Paddy the Beaver. He could remember every detail of it, and he shuddered as he thought of those last dreadful minutes at the food-pile when he had felt himself drowning helplessly. Then the wonder of what he had learned grew upon him.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “a beaver is an engineer, a lumberman, a dredger, a builder, and a mason! He’s wonderful. He’s the most wonderful animal in all the world!” His face clouded. “Why can’t people leave him alone?” he exploded. “A man that will trap and kill one of those little chaps is worse than a lynx or a wolf. Yes, sir, that’s what he is! Those creatures kill to eat, but man kills just for the few dollars Paddy’s fur coat will bring. When I grow up, I’m going to do something to stop trapping and killing. Yes, sir, that’s what I’m going to do!”
Tommy got up and stretched. Then he started for home, and there was a thoughtful look on his freckled face. “Gee!” he exclaimed, “I’ve learned a pile this time. I didn’t know there was so much pleasure in just work before. I guess I won’t complain any more over what I have to do. I—I’m mighty glad I was a beaver for a little while, just for that.”
And then, whistling, Tommy headed straight for the wood-pile and his ax. He had work to do, and he was glad of it.
CHAPTER THREE
WHY TOMMY TOOK UP ALL HIS TRAPS
If there was one thing that Tommy enjoyed above another, it was trapping. There were several reasons why he enjoyed it. In the first place, it took him out of doors with something definite to do. He loved the meadows and the woods and the pastures, and all the beauties of them with which Old Mother Nature is so lavish.
He loved to tramp along the Laughing Brook and around the Smiling Pool. Always, no matter what the time of the year, there was something interesting to see. Now it was a flower new to him, or a bird that he had not seen before. Again it was a fleeting glimpse of one of the shy, fleet-footed little people who wear coats of fur. He liked these best of all because they were the hardest to surprise and study in their home life. And that was one reason why he enjoyed trapping so much. It was matching his wits against their wits. And one other reason was the money which he got for the pelts.
So Tommy was glad when the late fall came and it was time to set traps and every morning make his rounds to see what he had caught. In the coldest part of the winter, when the snow was deep and the ice was thick, he stopped trapping, but he began again with the beginning of spring when the Laughing Brook was once more set free and the Smiling Pool no longer locked in icy fetters. It was then that the muskrats and the minks became most active, and their fur coats were still at their best. You see the more active they were, the more likely they were to step into one of his traps.
On this particular afternoon, after school, Tommy had come down to the Smiling Pool to set a few extra traps for muskrats. The trapping season, that is the season when the fur was still at its best, or “prime,” as the fur dealers call it, would soon be at an end. He had set a trap on an old log which lay partly in and partly out of the water. He knew that the muskrats used this old log to sun themselves because one had plunged off it as he came up. So he set a trap just under water on the end of the old log where the first muskrat who tried to climb out there would step in it.