“Ah!  Jones, that is a whopper.”

“Sure as I live, but the beaver slept every night with the trapper, and in the day time, if he left the tent, the beaver would fall to work and make a dam across the floor of the tent, using the chist, skins, arms and everything.”

“Oh!  Jones!”

“But, I tell you it is true.  Tame a beaver once, and you’ll find I’se tellin’ a plain statement as true as ever a Padre made.”

“Padre! who’d believe a Mexican priest?  Mr. Jones, that tame beaver of your’n must have been born in the States, where he hadn’t trees and mud to build dams with, and had to resort to furnitur.”

“That beaver,” responded Jones, “was as near like a human bein’ as any man present.”

“How do you make that out, Mr. Jones?”

“Why, one day his master died.  Well, they tried all they could to console the beaver, but it ’twant no use.  He wouldn’t be consoled.  All he did was to git an ole shoe belonging to his master, an’ if he didn’t haul that ere shoe around day after day wherever he went.  Well, the beaver ‘gan to grow thin, and one night they found he was a dyin’, jest from starvin’ himself to death and a huggin’ the ole shoe.”

“Oh!  Jones,” said the greenhorn, “you don’t expect I’ll swallow all that yarn?”

But Mr. Jones and all of the other trappers present preserved an imperturbable dignity of mien, as if the very reference to the animal mentioned demanded from them all due reverence.

“Well, but that was not doing as a human being would do.  I never seen a man carry an old shoe around till he died from starvin’.”

“That is neither here nor there,” continued Mr. Jones.  “It was when the trapper first made the beaver’s acquaintance that he showed he knew as much as a human critter.  At that time he had one wife and lived with her all alone in a hole, side o’ the dam.  They had two sons and a darter.  The darter the old beaver had married to a fine lookin’ young beaver who lived t’other side the dam.”

The whistle which the neophyte here gave seemed to give great dissatisfaction to all of the trappers present.  One of them quietly asked him—­

“Is that the way, youngster, you’se bin eddicated in perliteniss of manners?  If it is, I know a beaver who kin larn you sumthin’.  In the fust place, if a young beaver ever kums inter the presence of the ole uns, especially if she’s, that is the ole uns, a female beaver, the young un ’mediately fetches his right fore paw up to his forehead, jest ‘hind the right eyebrow, an’ makes a reverintial bow of cerimony in salute.  I’se seen that ar’ oftener than you’ve put one leg ahead of t’other yit, young un.”

The trappers present all confirmed the truth of this statement by a solemn nod of assent to the query, “Ain’t that true, gentlemen?” which, at least, served to prevent unceremonious whistling.