It
was a lynx.
It was not yet quite dark when Thor came out very quietly into a clearing,
and Muskwa found himself first on the shore of a creek, and then close to a
big pond. The air was full of the breath and warmth of a new kind of life.
It was not fish, and yet it seemed to come from the pond, in the centre of
which were three or four circular masses that looked like great brush-heaps
plastered with a coating of mud.
Whenever he came into this end of the valley Thor always paid a visit to
the beaver colony, and occasionally he helped himself to a fat young beaver
for supper or breakfast. This evening he was not hungry, and he was in a
hurry. In spite of these two facts he stood for some minutes in the shadows
near the pond.
The beavers had already begun their night's work. Muskwa soon understood
the significance of the shimmering streaks that ran swiftly over the
surface of the water. At the end of each streak was always a dark, flat
head, and now he saw that most of these streaks began at the farther edge
of the pond and made directly for a long, low barrier that shut in the
water a hundred yards to the east.
This particular barrier was strange to Thor, and with his maturer
knowledge of beaver ways he knew that his engineering friends--whom he ate
only occasionally--were broadening their domain by building a new dam.
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