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"Hello!" said Baree, wiggling his whole body and talking as plainly as a human tongue could talk. "Do you care if I play with you?" Umisk made no response. His three playmates now had their eyes on Baree. They didn't make a move. They looked stunned. Four pairs of staring, wondering eyes were fixed on the stranger. Baree made another effort.
Where his elders floated timbers from three inches to a foot in diameter to the big dam, Umisk brought small sticks and twigs no larger around than a lead pencil to his playground, and built a make-believe dam of his own.
For almost a week Baree had not been near the pond. He had not forgotten Beaver Tooth and Umisk and the other little beavers, but Wakayoo and his daily catch of fresh fish had been too big a temptation for him. Now Wakayoo was gone.
For the moment all the hard training nature had been giving him was lost. He was no longer a fighter, no longer a hunter, no longer a seeker after food. He was a puppy, and in him there rose a desire that was greater than hunger. He wanted to go down there with Umisk and his little chums and roll and play.
A short distance from the spot where he had first seen Umisk there was a shelving bank that rose ten or twelve feet from the water, and this bank was used by the young beavers as a slide. It was worn smooth and hard. Umisk would climb up the bank at a point where it was not so steep.
And then, close under him not more than ten feet from where he lay he saw something that almost gave voice to the puppyish longing for companionship that was in him. Down there, on a clean strip of the shore that rose out of the soft mud of the pond, waddled fat little Umisk and three of his playmates. Umisk was just about Baree's age, perhaps a week or two younger.
And then there followed a strange and disquieting silence. Softly Baree whined, and his whine was almost a sobbing cry. Why had Umisk and his little mates run away from him? What had he done that they didn't want to make friends with him? A great loneliness swept over him a loneliness greater even than that of his first night away from his mother.
When the tree fell, and the old beaver scurried away, Baree scurried, too. Then he came back and smelled of the cutting, wondering what it was all about, and why Umisk's uncle or grandfather or aunt had gone to all that trouble. He still could not induce Umisk and the other young beavers to join him in play, and after the first week or so he gave up his efforts.
He capered about extravagantly for a few moments, telling Umisk how much he liked him, and that they'd be great chums. Umisk didn't talk. He didn't make a move until he resumed his supper. But he was a companionable-looking little fellow, for all that, and Baree was happier than he had been since the day he left the old windfall.
They came waddling from behind a low willow, making queer little chuckling noises, their little flat tails dragging like tiny sledges behind them. They were fat and furry, and mighty friendly looking to Baree, and his heart beat a sudden swift-pit-a-pat of joy. But Baree did not move. He scarcely breathed. And then, suddenly, Umisk turned on one of his playmates and bowled him over.
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