Читать книгу Chip, the Dam Builder - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 6

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Born in the above-water apartment of a beaver lodge, a kit's first act upon leaving his nursery bed has to be to go down the tunnel and into the pond, since there is no other way out. Swimming, for him, is as natural and much easier than taking the first steps is for a human baby. He is much more at home in the water than on land, and so refined does his experience make his knowledge of water that he learns to respond to its smallest change.

As he grows older, even a slight ripple spreading across the pond carries its own message as exactly as an air current carries news to a fox, deer, bear, or other beast that depends much on its nose. He learns to know whether water is disturbed by big trout chasing minnows, swimming turtles, or wading birds. He becomes so sensitive to changes in the pond that when a tiny leak starts in the dam, even on the blackest night, he can go directly to it. He knows the transformations wrought by rain, snow, and ice. There is nothing about water which a wise beaver does not know.

Thus, when he was forced through the broken dam, Chip was instantly aware that he had no chance of fighting the torrent that carried him along. He simply rode with the tons of water that had been suddenly released when the charge of dynamite ripped a gaping hole in the dam.

The shock of the explosion left him partly dazed, but even so his reactions were almost automatic. Though he was unable to fight the flood, he was not helpless in it. Using his broad tail as a rudder, swimming strongly, he kept his nose pointed downstream. And he used his marvellous knowledge of water to the fullest advantage.

He could not see it, but water curling on both sides told him that a submerged boulder was in his path. Steering with his tail, Chip plunged vigorously with his webbed hind feet and went up and over.

He released some of the air which he had gasped into his lungs a second before he dived. Though he must ride the flood, he had no intention of doing it blindly. And no matter what he found ahead, it could not possibly be more deadly than the terror from which he was fleeing.

The old beaver knew men as well as he did other enemies. A half-dozen times in his memory they had come to the pond with steel traps, and always the pond had lost some of its inhabitants when they came. Chip had seen his mates struggling in traps, or drowned in clever sets, and he had always given them as wide a berth as possible. He had thus learned about traps, and that he must avoid everything which he did not thoroughly understand.

Poachers who dynamited dams were new to him, but Chip had lived partly because he was instantly able to meet and adapt himself to new situations. He understood the difference, if not between life and death, at least between a live beaver and a dead beaver. He was aware that the snapping rifles in the hands of the five men had killed numerous members of his colony. He knew also that men did not have to be close to whatever they wished to kill. Therefore it was well to stay submerged, and out of sight.

Chip surfaced only after he was swept around a bend, more than three hundred yards down the creek. He gulped air into his aching lungs as he continued to ride the flood crest. He could no longer see the lights, but he still heard the snapping rifles and hoarsely shouting men. The poachers at the dam were killing all the beaver left in the pond. Some fled into the lodges, only to have them ripped apart over their heads. Nor was there any place to hide on the bare mud flats which the drained pond had become.

After another two hundred yards, the flood began to spend its terrific initial force. Chip remained on the surface, able to control himself now and swim swiftly downstream. Throughout his life he had known many worried moments, and some fear-filled ones, but there had never been a night of terror such as this. It was unthinkable to go back, or ever again to return to where the dam had been.

Thus the old beaver decided his own hard fate, and he knew beforehand what that decision involved. Among wilderness dwellers, it is unwritten law that everything is entitled to its own home. The kingfisher, for instance, had never hunted farther than a big sycamore overhanging the creek. If he had tried to do so he would have had to fight another kingfisher that had staked out the adjoining territory for his own. Chip had lived in the pond by right of being born there. Now that the pond was no more, he had necessarily become an outcast and a wanderer. Before he could build a new home he must find a place not yet claimed by any other beaver.

Two miles down the creek, the flood was noticeable only because water was lapping banks which ordinarily it would not have touched at this season. In spite of the higher water, there were many shallow riffles, and places where Chip could not submerge. He swam on regardless, not knowing where he was going but not fearing what he would find nearly as much as the poachers who had destroyed his pond. A half mile farther on, the beaver swam to the bank and climbed out.

For a full five minutes he held perfectly still, waiting and watching. Now he understood the full significance of the danger signals he had read yesterday. Chewed sticks again floated past, and the water bore a trace of mud. The night before last the poachers must have blown out another dam farther up the creek. The signs were the same.

When nothing stirred, Chip ventured cautiously to an aspen tree and ate some tender twigs. Regardless of what else happened, he must eat. He felled a small tree, and stripped some of the bark from it.

Terror remained with him. He looked constantly back up the creek and at the water, fearful of what he would see, hear or smell there, and he ate less than half of what he normally would. For a few more minutes he lingered uncertainly on the bank. Like all beaver, he loved the company of his kind and now he was very lonesome for Sleek, Broken-Tooth, Peg, and the kits. But he had no way of knowing whether any of them had escaped. Chip returned to the water's edge.

The stream, swelled by the backed-up pond, was still flooded beyond its usual seasonal run. But the flood was receding fast. Chip inspected it carefully, with an expert's knowledge. Then he chose a rock as yet untouched by water and scented it with castor. It was a heavy, sweetish, musty smell, not at all unpleasant and so powerful that it could have been detected even by the comparatively dull nose of a human being. Chip had chosen his place carefully. The scent would linger for days, and tell any beaver who followed that Chip had passed this way.

Then he slipped into the water and continued his downstream journey. He had never been this far down before, and he did not know what lay ahead. He did know that he could not return to the pond, and its terrors. He must search out a new world and make a place for himself in it. Chip stopped swimming to float silently.

A shadow moved beside the stream, and the angry snarl of a prowling mongrel sliced the stillness. So warily that he left scarcely a ripple to mark the place, Chip dived. With long, powerful strokes he swam downstream, until his progress was halted abruptly by a shallow riffle.

The beaver had only a slight forewarning that the riffle lay ahead. A half second before he came to it the water flowed faster, became shallower, and began to be filled with rocks. With a sudden rush and a great splashing Chip surfaced, and galloped heavily down the riffle toward the next pool.

The big woolly dog, lingering upstream at the place where his proposed quarry had disappeared, heard the noise and barked again. With a long leap, he started toward the riffle. The dog was a confirmed night-prowler and a ferocious fighter. He had never seen a beaver before, and wanted to catch this strange beast before it escaped.

Surprisingly fast despite his squat build, Chip continued to run down the riffle toward the next pool. But it was a long riffle, and the rangy dog could run three times as fast as the fleeing beaver. Snarling, raising spray in his wake, the dog prepared for the last swift rush that would overwhelm his quarry. He closed in.

Chip was a peaceful creature, but he did not lack courage or knowledge of fighting. He humped his back, and flexed the dozens of hard muscles that lay just beneath his thick skin. Slashing like a wolf, the dog got only a mouthful of hair. At the same time, Chip bent his body in a half circle and closed his jaws.

He sank his two-inch teeth, chisels capable of taking a big chip from an aspen or birch, through the dog's front leg. Then he threw all his seventy pounds into a backward lunge. The dog's belligerent snarl changed to a frightened whine, then to a yelp of pain. Chip opened his jaws and sought a new hold, but the dog was too fast.

Still yelping, he flung himself backward so violently that he fell. His shoulder ploughed through the riffle, but almost at once he was on his feet. Tail plastered flat to his rump, racing on three legs, he left a trail of frightened yells behind him as he fled. Chip waited until he was sure the enemy would not return, then resumed his downstream journey.

He stopped again, questing with his nostrils when an acrid taint of wood smoke assailed them. The beaver swam silently to the center of the creek, ready to dive at a second's notice. Dimly he saw a sagging barbed-wire fence that paralleled the creek, and beyond that an open field. Squat shapes in the black night, a house, barn, and out-buildings loomed up faintly in the field. The wood smoke filtered from the house's tin smoke pipe.

Staying in the center of the stream, Chip swam silently past and rested easily again only when he was once more in aspen forest. But his senses had been sharpened. He gave up all thought of staying the rest of the night around this place, and of perhaps seeking a new dam site. He did not want to live near any human-inhabited building.

Suddenly he was in another clearing, and again the smell of wood smoke tainted the air. The beaver slowed, and made a little circle that carried him back up the creek. Only he dared not go back that way for there lay enemies. He had to continue downstream, but he did not like this country. Too many farms broke the forest.

Twenty minutes later Chip crouched, terrified, beneath a railroad bridge while a train thundered over it. The bridge's brick foundations trembled, cinder specks rained into the creek. The passing train left Chip shivering in the water.

Some beaver build their dams beside railroad tracks, and even fill drainage ditches to enlarge their ponds. But Chip was a creature of the wilderness, and knew only wild ways. To him a train was a monstrous, terrifying unknown. When he resumed his downstream journey he swam faster than ever, and when he neared a small tributary creek he at once swerved into it.

The tributary was a spring-fed brook, a rill that began two-thirds of the way up a mountain that flanked the creek and ran a brawling course to the bottom. It was much colder than the main stream. Chip stopped at the mouth of the creek to leave another castor, as an unmistakable sign that he had passed this way. It was peculiarly his own scent, unlike any other, and among beaver it marked him as positively as a man's finger-prints identify him. If any member of the colony came this far, they could have no doubt that they were following their leader.

Despite the iciness of the tributary, the beaver's downy under-coat kept him both warm and dry. But he was tired and hungry, and would have to find shelter before daylight. He stopped to fell another aspen, and ate the bark from it. Some of the smaller and more tender twigs he ate whole, swallowing them as a rabbit does. Gravely he washed his face and combed out his fur with the single claw on his rear paws.

It was still dark, but the night had almost run its course and dawn was due to break very soon. The morning thrush was already fluting his six-note song and then repeating it backward. Chip planned carefully to meet the day.

The creek was very small, but there were a few wide, deep pools in it. The beaver travelled to such a pool, six feet wide by nine long, and three feet deep. He inspected it carefully. Water spilled from a rock ledge at the upper end, and made a tiny rapids that fell into the pool. Beneath the ledge was a cavern, the rear part of which was dry. Chip crawled out of the water onto the dry spot, and found that he could curl up there. Then he swam back into the pool and came to the surface in the lightening dawn.

This swift little stream that leaped from pool to pool, hurling itself down the declines that intervened, was totally foreign to the beaver's experience. Nor had he ever before been so high up on a mountainside. Chip reverted to his inborn woods-wisdom and his innate knowledge of the wild as he planned to survive whatever this new land might bring.

His former home was a lost cause. The creek, flanked by numerous farm houses, was no better. Nor did the rill offer any possibilities for a dam and the home Chip desired. It fell at too steep a pitch. There were too many stones and boulders and not enough mud banks. Nor was the timber on these rocky slopes desirable. The aspen was small and straggling. There was little birch, and Chip had no special liking for the quantities of beech that grew all around him.

He must go on, but he would have to stay here throughout the day. If it were avoidable, he dared not travel by day. There was too much danger. Even if the same peril stalked by night, darkness still offered a friendly cloak of safety. Chip climbed out on the bank, to wait and watch until the warblers started to stir. Then he dived back beneath the ledge.

He climbed up on the dry part and stretched out to his full length. He filled the tiny space, and the tip of his broad tail dangled in the water. He dozed intermittently, but never so soundly that he could not awaken at the least hint of anything different. This was not the pond, with its safe and friendly lodge, but strange country. Because it was strange, it must necessarily be hostile. Every sense must be tuned to its sharpest pitch.

For an hour, while full daylight bloomed, nothing happened. Then the water in the pool splashed slightly as a saw-billed merganser alighted upon it. A school of speckled trout, little fish no more than four inches long, frantically sought shelter beneath rocks. Four swam hurriedly under the ledge and lingered there, fanning the water with their fins and tails. The nervous tension that gripped them was evident in their small bodies, poised like living arrows as they awaited the next move of the fish-eating duck.

Wings folded close to his body, saw bill extended, the merganser swam beneath the ledge. He was a dangerous, agile thing which, in a pool so small, could catch even brook trout. The merganser knew all their tricks. After the fish had sought a refuge beneath stones, or under the ledge, he would pluck them from their hiding places. But he had not reckoned with anything save the trout.

Just as he came beneath the ledge, Chip stirred and raised himself so that his back was almost brushing the stone roof. He turned his head, and in the half-light that filtered under the ledge he saw the duck. Startled, the merganser opened his mouth and throat and half-choked on the water that flowed in. Whirling hurriedly about, he used wings and feet to propel himself back into the pool. Bursting to the surface, he took panicky flight.

The beaver relaxed. When he rose, he had wanted only to see what was invading the pool. He identified the merganser instantly, and paid no further attention to it. Such ducks were a threat to fish but never to beaver, and Chip wouldn't have cared if it stayed in the pool.

He remained alert, not because there was any immediate threat but because these unfamiliar surroundings made him nervous. After a ten-minute interval, the little trout emerged from their hiding places and resumed their everlasting business of feeding on minute water life. A hatch of flies fluttered down to the pool, and the trout rose to them.

Throughout the long day there was only one more interruption. A small rabbit, hotly pursued by a weasel, stumbled into the pool and swam wearily across. The weasel poised delicately with both fore paws on a stone and looked at his exhausted quarry. The weasel had no intention of getting wet, so he ran downstream to a place where the creek was shallower and leaped across. As soon as he approached, the rabbit jumped back into the pool and swam to the side he had recently left. Again the weasel bounded across, and again the rabbit eluded him in the water. The little drama was repeated half a dozen times. Finally, refreshed, the rabbit dashed off into the forest. Once more the weasel took up his trail.

Chip paid absolutely no attention. Judged by human standards, his world was a harsh one. But it was the only world the beaver knew, and the weasel-driven rabbit was a commonplace. A thousand times an hour such scenes occurred and there would be one of two endings. The rabbit would get away, or the weasel would catch and eat him.

The sun was sinking when Chip finally came out from behind the ledge. He swam into the pool, and broke water so gently that only his head protruded. Even that, to any watcher, might have been a suddenly appearing bunch of leaves or forest debris. The beaver circled the pool, then climbed out on the bank. He hesitated, calling into play that native intelligence, miscalled instinct, which in times of stress is the final resort of all wild things.

It was a sense as old as the earth itself. The beaver was guided by that same light which had steered the first of his kind so truly and unerringly. He did not know what lay ahead, but somewhere he would find a place to satisfy him. And since he could not go back, he must go ahead.

Old Chip continued up the stream, which became smaller as he went farther. He passed a porcupine that was gnawing at the base of a birch tree, and the porcupine stared placidly when the beaver appeared. He continued to stare until Chip passed him, then resumed gnawing.

When the beaver came to the clear and ice-cold spring where the brook had its source, he stopped for a long while. The spring, bubbling between gray rocks that were hung with streamers of moss, was scarcely six inches deep and no more than three feet at its widest. A few feet to one side was a rotting snow drift, over which a cool wind blew. Chip sat up, folding his fore paws against his chest. His nostrils wriggled as he tested the air. He looked down the slope up which he had climbed, and at the incline that lay ahead.

He saw nothing except boulders and stunted hardwoods, relieved by an occasional open space. Long ago lumbermen had passed through here with ruthless axes. The only reminder of the great trees which had once covered the mountain lay in rotting, lichen-encrusted stumps. In spite of the forbidding prospect, Chip knew that he must travel over the top of the mountain. It was the only course. For the first time in his life, Chip voluntarily turned his back on water.

He started up the slope, guiding himself only by a positive and inborn knowledge. Water was essential to his way of life and here there was none. He was still sure that he would find some if he went on.

He climbed as fast as he could, but compared with creatures naturally endowed to live in such places his progress was slow and almost clumsy. A snowshoe hare darted away from him. An exploding, feathered bomb, a ruffed grouse took startled wing. A shaggy buck stamped its feet and snorted. But without trouble the plodding beaver gained the top of the mountain.

Here there were only a few snow-free spaces, carpeted with sodden, wet leaves. The timber remained sparse, second-growth hardwoods. Only such things as could find a rooting in the desolation left by the lumbermen had grown on the mountain. It was a bleak, monotonous place.

Old Chip travelled as fast as he could. Throughout his entire life, he had never before been far from water in which he might find safety. Here there was no water. If an enemy threatened, he would have to fight it. But fast travelling was his safest course. Because it was the easiest path, he followed a trail consisting of brush-grown ruts worn long ago by ironshod wheels of teamsters' wagons.

Rounding a bend, Chip came suddenly upon an immense black bear squarely in the center of the path. The bear's pink tongue lolled from open jaws, as he saw the beaver and started toward him.

Chip made ready to fight. He sat straight up, balancing on his tail as he prepared to use his teeth, and studied the bear as it approached. The bear stopped.

Out of hibernation for two weeks, he had been gorging himself steadily since. A fat beaver would not come amiss, but the bear was not hungry enough to fight for a meal. For a moment, head low, he faced Chip. Then he ambled into the brush at one side of the trail and began to snuffle about.

The beaver continued, leaving the tote road instantly when he found a trickle of water. The snow was gone from this southern slope, but the little spring run babbled toward its junction with what Chip knew was a larger stream. He kept steadily on and never left the water. A tense excitement began to rise within him.

He was entering a great forest of aspens that were just beginning to break out their feathery spring buds. Daylight broke and brightened, but still the beaver did not look for shelter. Somewhere ahead lay the water he sought.

Morning was well under way when he reached it. It was a gently flowing brook, with shallow riffles and an occasional deep hole. Chip hurried toward the stream, then stopped short.

A few feet away, hungry and tense, looking like a bunch of mottled leaves on the forest floor, lay Glare, the master lynx.