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BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 59 
in a body but many seemed to have ‘‘waiting orders” 
only, or word to move along the line of travel and hunt 
convenient winter quarters en route without regard as 
to the location of the advanced pioneers in their front. 
Beavers from the Milk River, Yellowstone and Big 
Horn regions followed the general hegira down stream; 
but here and there a broken family turned off from the 
main artery and followed a side stream until a conveni- 
ent spot was reached. In some places a primitive wild 
was found—a place where their beaver predecessors 
had been destroyed years before. Hoping they had 
evaded or distanced the being with the steel trap or rifle 
ball, they put forth every energy to build new homes.— 
But the hope was a vain one as many newspaper readers 
knew, wherein some local scribe would relate in his 
home paper that after an absence of many years, ‘‘bea- 
_ver have appeared here again,’’ and then would state 
some specific.stream in which a family was known to be 
located, by their building a house or dam or both, or 
by brush cuttings. Such items appeared in an irregular 
way in several newspapers about the years 1890-1-2-3 
along the James, Sheyenne and other rivers in both 
of the Dakotas. These scattered beaver families were 
but stragglers of the great exodus, and for the most 
part paid the penalty of desertion with their lives. For 
_the newspaper notice would reach some old trapper, 
who, true to the instincts bred in his calling, would sac- 
rifice $20 worth of time for a two dollar skin. In this 
way the beavers gradually lost their lives, as the owner 
of the lands did not seem interested enough in these 
hunted animals’ fate or had compassion for their distress. 
The Big Knife River had a case in point, and the 
to 
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