Gray Wolf and Kazan returned to the windfall and lay down in the warm sun.  Half an hour later Broken Tooth drew himself out on the opposite shore of the pond.  He was followed by other beavers.  Across the water they resumed their work as if nothing had happened.  The tree-cutters returned to their trees.  Half a dozen worked in the water, carrying loads of cement and twigs.  The middle of the pond was their dead-line.  Across this not one of them passed.  A dozen times during the hour that followed one of the beavers swam up to the dead-line, and rested there, looking at the shining little bodies of the babies that Kazan had killed.  Perhaps it was the mother, and perhaps some finer instinct unknown to Kazan told this to Gray Wolf.  For Gray Wolf went down twice to sniff at the dead bodies, and each time—­without seeing—­she went when the mother beaver had come to the dead-line.

The first fierce animus had worn itself from Kazan’s blood, and he now watched the beavers closely.  He had learned that they were not fighters.  They were many to one and yet they ran from him like a lot of rabbits.  Broken Tooth had not even struck at him, and slowly it grew upon him that these invading creatures that used both the water and land would have to be hunted as he stalked the rabbit and the partridge.  Early in the afternoon he slipped off into the bush, followed by Gray Wolf.  He had often begun the stalking of a rabbit by moving away from it and he employed this wolf trick now with the beavers.  Beyond the windfall he turned and began trotting up the creek, with the wind.  For a quarter of a mile the creek was deeper than it had ever been.  One of their old fording places was completely submerged, and at last Kazan plunged in and swam across, leaving Gray Wolf to wait for him on the windfall side of the stream.

Alone he made his way quickly in the direction of the dam, traveling two hundred yards back from the creek.  Twenty yards below the dam a dense thicket of alder and willow grew close to the creek and Kazan took advantage of this.  He approached within a leap or two of the dam without being seen and crouched close to the ground, ready to spring forth when the opportunity came.  Most of the beavers were now working in the water.  The four or five still on shore were close to the water and some distance up-stream.  After a wait of several minutes Kazan was almost on the point of staking everything on a wild rush upon his enemies when a movement on the dam attracted his attention.  Half-way out two or three beavers were at work strengthening the central structure with cement.  Swift as a flash Kazan darted from his cover to the shelter behind the dam.  Here the water was very shallow, the main portion of the stream finding a passage close to the opposite shore.  Nowhere did it reach to his belly as he waded out.  He was completely hidden from the beavers, and the wind was in his favor.  The noise of running water drowned what little sound he made.  Soon he heard the beaver workmen over him.  The branches of the fallen birch gave him a footing, and he clambered up.