10 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 2, 1910. 
shuffle before I could resume the campaign. It 
was gorgeous. 
Ponto looked pleased enough to join me, 
but his dignity forbade his doing so. He sat 
quietly by looking on while I celebrated, and 
when I had finished and reloaded, went quietly 
to work again. Of course I missed the next one. 
I could not kill them all—did not want to. 
I thought the cover exhausted now and was 
ready to move on, but the big dog had doubts, 
so I left it to his more experienced judgment. 
Over and over again he worked the ground and 
finally came down on another steady point. I 
was flushed with success, and getting quite nerv¬ 
ous, but determined to do my best. It was a 
straightaway—a big, strong flying old cock that 
went up like a rocket. Pie flinched at the re¬ 
port, but kept on, flying strongly, though show¬ 
ing a bit ragged. I marked him down, believing 
him hit, and we went after him and found him 
dead—out of bounds—and we had four. 
It was a bag to be prdud of and I was proud 
enough. With lunch untouched and the day yet 
young, I set out for home with my four heavy 
birds. They really made a load for a boy, but 
they did not burden me. 
Swinging them over my shoulder by a strong 
cord I got to the road soon as possible, and like 
veritable conquering heroes Ponto and I marched 
along. I was not at all sorry to see the road 
much traveled that day, and took pains to give 
all passersby an opportunity to observe my fine 
bag of birds. 
Hard cash was scarce in those days and I 
was often pressed for the funds necessary to 
keep me in ammunition, but an offer to buy two 
of my birds—made in good faith by an old gen¬ 
tleman driving by—seemed little short of a de¬ 
liberate insult. I felt almost like resenting the 
injury by an appeal to arms. 
That afternoon, with a very limited supply of 
ammunition remaining, we went out for a short 
round. 
Ponto found a covey of quail near a cornfield, 
and on the flush they went into the corn. Fol¬ 
lowing them, we got one bird and sent the sbr- 
vivors out to the far edge of the field, and from 
there they scattered nicely in an open bit of 
cover where the conditions were the very best for 
shooting, but sad to relate our powder was out. 
Sitting on the fence with empty gun I gazed 
over the nice level ground and thought of what 
I could do to that lot of birds if I only had 
ammunition. It was too far to return home for 
a supply and I concluded I would have to give 
up and quit. 
At this moment I heard the report of a gun 
away off on the other side" of the cornfield, and 
springing from the fence, started on the run to 
find the hunter, hoping to get powder from him 
to continue the hunt. 
It was a long way across the field, but Ponto 
and I were good runners, and we were soon 
near the spot where the shot had been fired, and 
I shouted to attract the gunner’s attention, so 
that he would let me know his whereabouts. 
Immediately a short distance away there was 
a commotion and I caught a glimpse of two men 
dashing off through the corn as though badly 
frightened. Shouting again I hurried after them 
and was apparently gaining when one of them 
turned and fired both barrels of a double gun 
point black at me a little high—whether inten¬ 
tionally or not—as the heavy charges of shot 
cut a shower of corn silks and leaves from just 
over my head. I went down at once, hugging 
the ground and shouting lustily to let them know 
where I was, supposing of course the shot had 
been fired at game and without knowledge of 
my being in range. Cautiously raising my head 
I heard sounds of the men retreating rapidly 
through the corn and wondered what was the 
reason for their not heeding my calls, or at least 
of their not stopping to see if their careless 
shooting had done me an injury. 
Determined to see it out I started after them 
again and reached the edge of the field just in 
time to see the two of them scrambling into a 
buggy standing in a road near the cornfield. One 
of them grabbed the lines and the other snatched 
the whip, which he applied vigorously, and they 
were soon out of sight in a cloud of dust. 
“Well, what do you make of that?” I inquired 
of my experienced companion, but he gazed after 
the wildly fleeing men, evidently as much at a 
loss to account for their strange conduct as I. 
There being nothing else to do I climbed over 
the fence and started for home, still puzzling 
over the strange conduct of the men in the buggy. 
Just outside I came on the first clew. A lot 
of corn thrown over the fence to the roadside. 
A little further out toward the buggy several 
ears dropped. Where the buggy had stood sev¬ 
eral more, and along the road in the direction 
of the wild flight more corn dropped. 
The men had been stealing corn and had mis¬ 
taken me for the farmer in pursuit and had 
probably fired the shots as a rather serious bluff 
to stop my approach. 
“The miserable, low-down thieving ras-” I 
was mentally commenting, when in memory I 
suddenly saw a small boy and a large dog run¬ 
ning as for life from a watermelon patch, vigor¬ 
ously pursued by irate farmers and vicious dogs 
and felt again the awful fear of that occasion. 
Stealing corn was a pretty low business for 
men pretending to be out hunting, and shooting 
at a man supposed to be only protecting his own 
property—even if a bluff — decidedly high-handed, 
but my own recent experience was too fresh in 
mind to permit me to condemn them as I other¬ 
wise would have done. 
[to be concluded.] 
How the Beaver Builds His House. 
New York City, June 25.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: To some of us, not so very many years 
ago, it seemed probable that the beaver was 
doomed to extinction. Over a great portion of 
the country where once it flourished, it had been 
exterminated, and, while it was believed that it 
might linger long in the North, the date of its 
extermination seemed not very far off. 
Since then great changes have taken place. 
Considerable areas have been set aside where 
the beaver are absolutely protected. They have 
been reintroduced in sections from which they 
had been exterminated; and in parts of New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and Maine, 
these introduced beaver have thriven and greatly 
increased. In such places as the Yellowstone 
Park, in Wyoming, and the Algonquin Park, in 
Ontario, beaver are enormously abundant—pos¬ 
sibly as much SO as they ever were. On the 
other hand, advices received within the last six 
or eight years from the extreme North show 
that there the beaver is slowly being reduced in 
numbers; so much so that, according to Mr. 
Preble, during the winter of 1903 and 1904 not 
more than 700 skins were reported to have been 
traded at Fort Norman, in the Mackenzie dis¬ 
trict—a post which receives the fur from a very 
large territory. 
Perhaps more has been written about the 
habits of the beaver than about any other Ameri¬ 
can rodent, and of this great mass of writings 
much has been myth. Some of this myth has 
been intentional invention; but perhaps most has 
been innocent, but entirely unjustifiable inference 
from what beavers have done, or from what 
people have thought they did. 
It has been assumed that the beaver is a 
trained engineer and builder, and he has been 
credited in his work with the acts and the rea¬ 
soning of white men. Of course, this is all 
wrong. Beaver do not select trees of precisely 
the right length to reach across the stream, fell 
these trees and use them as the foundations for 
their dams. They do not reinforce their dams 
by stakes set in the ground; they do not apply 
mud to the surfaces of dams or houses, and then 
smooth it out with the tail as a trowel, as a 
mason does his mortar. 
On the other hand, beaver do cut down trees 
of considerable size, but their purpose in felling 
them is to get at the twigs and upper branches, 
the tender bark of which they use for food. 
The dams which they build are singularly 
effective. These dams are built to hold back 
the water to make ponds in which the beaver 
may take refuge when danger threatens. Beaver 
are large and slow animals. The adults weigh 
from thirty-five to fifty pounds; they can¬ 
not run swiftly, and their only means of es¬ 
caping from their enemies is to dive into the 
water, hide and escape under it. As a rule their 
