its
greatest width before Broken Tooth and his workmen discovered the breach
in the wall of the dam. The work of repair was begun at once. For this
work sticks and brush of considerable size were necessary, and to reach
this material the beavers were compelled to drag their heavy bodies
through the ten or fifteen yards of soft mud left by the falling water.
Peril of fang no longer kept them back. Instinct told them that they
were fighting for their existence--that if the embrasure were not filled
up and the water kept in the pond they would very soon be completely
exposed to their enemies. It was a day of slaughter for Gray Wolf and
Kazan. They killed two more beavers in the mud close to the willows.
Then they crossed the creek below the dam and cut off three beavers in
the depression behind the windfall. There was no escape for these three.
They were torn into pieces. Farther up the creek Kazan caught a young
beaver and killed it.

Late in the afternoon the slaughter ended. Broken Tooth and his
courageous engineers had at last repaired the breach, and the water in
the pond began to rise.

Half a mile up the creek the big otter was squatted on a log basking in
the last glow of the setting sun. To-morrow he would go and do over
again his work of destruction. That was his method. For him it was play.

But that strange and unseen arbiter of the forests called O-ee-ki, "the
Spirit," by those who speak the wild tongue, looked down at last with
mercy upon Broken Tooth and his death-stricken tribe. For in that last
glow of sunset Kazan and Gray Wolf slipped stealthily up the creek--to
find the otter basking half asleep on the log.

The day's work, a full stomach, and the pool of warm sunlight in which
he lay had all combined to make the otter sleepy. He was as motionless
as the log on which he had stretched himself. He was big and gray and
old. For ten years he had lived to prove his cunning superior to that of
man. Vainly traps had been set for him. Wily trappers had built narrow
sluice-ways of rock and tree in small streams for him, but the old otter
had foiled their cunning and escaped the steel jaws waiting at the lower
end of each sluice. The trail he left in soft mud told of his size. A
few trappers had seen him. His soft pelt would long ago have found its
way to London, Paris or Berlin had it not been for his cunning. He was
fit for a princess, a duke or an emperor. For ten years he had lived
and escaped the demands