BEAVERS—THEIR WAYS. 65 
the monster man or his horrible torturing trap, and it 
was indeed pleasant to float along the shadows of the 
trees on a moonlit summer evening, and not be terrified 
by the loud report of a gun from ambush, or in coming 
or going up his well worn slide to cut off a twig or sap- 
ling for his evening meal, the fear of an injudicious step 
that would bring clasped iron jaws around his ankles, 
and if not killed, lose a foot and make after life a burden. 
No dynamite fiend to blow open their houses in midwin- 
ter, or ghoul with his spade to expose and murder them 
in their hiding places as had been their bitter experience 
in the past on their own beloved Douglass River. It 
_ was only a few moons back—that the grandaddy of their 
colony—old and feeble, who had lived securely as near 
neighbors to the soldiers through all the days of the 
military occupation—went out in the moonlight to bring 
home a young cottonwood for their suppers. But his 
absence went into days instead of hours—and when he 
did return it was asalog drifting by the force of the 
wind. Covetous man had heard him fall atree and 
creeping up to where he was cutting up the top, poured 
into his vitals a load of buck shot ere he could reach 
water and escape. He had reached the water 
only to sink in death, but he had baffled his murderer 
and rendered profitless bis crime in so doing. An end 
to all this would come when they reached the new and 
beautiful body of clear water that the Marco Polo of 
the Douglass River beaver colony had discovered. But 
alas for the too sanguine. 
On the morning of the first Sunday in September, 
1902, in company with Photographer Diesen and two 
young misses impatient for an outing on such a perfect 
