To
them he was no more than a floating stick, a creature out of their
element, along with the fish, and they continued on their way not
knowing that this uncanny creature with the coal-like flappers was soon
to become their ally in one of the strange and deadly feuds of the
wilderness, which are as sanguinary to animal life as the deadliest
feuds of men are to human life.

The day following their meeting with the otter Gray Wolf and Kazan
continued three miles farther westward, still following the stream. Here
they encountered the interruption to their progress which turned them
over the northward ridge. The obstacle was a huge beaver dam. The dam
was two hundred yards in width and flooded a mile of swamp and timber
above it. Neither Gray Wolf nor Kazan was deeply interested in beavers.
They also moved out of their element, along with the fish and the otter
and swift-winged birds.

So they turned into the north, not knowing that nature had already
schemed that they four--the dog, wolf, otter and beaver--should soon be
engaged in one of those merciless struggles of the wild which keep
animal life down to the survival of the fittest, and whose tragic
histories are kept secret under the stars and the moon and the winds
that tell no tales.

For many years no man had come into this valley between the two ridges
to molest the beaver. If a Sarcee trapper had followed down the nameless
creek and had caught the patriarch and chief of the colony, he would at
once have judged him to be very old and his Indian tongue would have
given him a name. He would have called him Broken Tooth, because one of
the four long teeth with which he felled trees and built dams was broken
off. Six years before Broken Tooth had led a few beavers of his own age
down the stream, and they had built their first small dam and their
first lodge. The following April Broken Tooth's mate had four little
baby beavers, and each of the other mothers in the colony increased the
population by two or three or four. At the end of the fourth year this
first generation of children, had they followed the usual law of nature,
would have mated and left the colony to build a dam and lodges of their
own. They mated, but did not emigrate.

The next year the second generation of children, now four years old,
mated but did not leave, so that in this early summer of the sixth year
the colony was very much like a great city that had been long besieged
by an enemy. It number