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Toto, the Bustling Beaver

<h2 id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI TOTO GETS HOME AGAIN</h2> Shut tightly in the cage on the deck of the houseboat, Toto looked across the water. The boat was moving slowly along. It was near the bank of the river, and some of the trees were so close that the boat brushed the branches as it moved along. Suddenly Toto heard a voice speaking to him in the beloved animal language he knew so well. “Hello there, beaver boy!” called the voice. “What are you doing on that boat?” “Oh, I don’t know what you mean by ‘boat,’” answered Toto, “but I don’t want to be on it, whatever it is. But who are you? Can’t you help me?” “No, I am sorry to say I can not,” was the answer. “Don’t you remember me? I am Slicko, the jumping squirrel, and I live in one of the trees near your beaver pond.” “Oh, Slicko, see what’s happened to me!” cried Toto, looking from his cage and seeing the squirrel frisking about in the trees on shore near the boat. “I was caught in a trap, and now I’m in a cage.” [99] “Yes, I see you are,” answered Slicko. “I wish I could help you, but I can’t. I was caught in a trap once, myself, and I lived in a funny cage with a wheel. But I got away, after I had had many adventures, and now I am back in the woods again. A man wrote a book about me, too.” “Well, I wouldn’t care how many books they wrote about me if I could only get out of this cage,” sighed Toto. “I don’t know what a book is, and I don’t much care. I heard Don and Blackie talk about them, though.” “Oh, do you know Don and Blackie?” asked Slicko, as she kept running along in the trees, chattering away to Toto and keeping up with the slowly moving houseboat. “Yes, I know them a little,” answered the beaver. “And do you know Squinty, the comical pig, and Mappo, the merry monkey?” asked Slicko. “I haven’t met them yet, but maybe I shall,” answered Toto. “But I’d rather be back at the beaver dam and hear my mother tell me to come in and get some poplar bark.” “I am sorry for you,” chattered Slicko, who had once lived near the dam. “I’m going back to the beaver pond now, and I’ll tell your father and mother what’s happened to you.” “Oh, thank you!” said Toto. “Maybe they can come and take me away.” [100] “I hope so,” said Slicko. Then the river grew wider, the boat moved out farther from shore, and Toto and the squirrel could no longer talk to one another. But Slicko waved her bushy tail at the beaver boy in the cage on the deck of the houseboat. For several days Toto was kept a prisoner in the cage on the houseboat. It was not a fast boat, and did not go very far any day. Only a mile or two would it move down the river, and then it would be tied up to the shore, while the man and his wife and Donald went walking in the woods. The man painted pictures, and he would stop at every pretty scene he came to. So, though a week had passed since Toto was caught in the trap, he really was not carried very far away from his own home at the beaver dam in Winding River. The boy who had caught the beaver in a trap was kind to Toto. He brought bits of bark, potatoes, apples and sweet water-plant roots to the little prisoner each day. At first Toto would not eat, but finally he grew so hungry that he had to. His leg was not sore any longer, and he could have waddled on the ground, or he could have paddled through the water if he could only have gotten loose. But he was kept shut up in a tin-lined wooden box with wire in front. This was his cage. [101] Slicko had kept her word. She had gone back through the woods, and, reaching the beaver pond, she had told Cuppy and the others how she had seen Toto in a cage on the houseboat. Mrs. Beaver and her husband and Sniffy wanted to go right away and rescue Toto, and they started with Cuppy and some of the others. For beavers are animals that help one another when they can. They are all like one big family. But the houseboat had gone down the river, and even Cuppy, wise old beaver that he was, could not find it. “I guess Toto is gone forever,” sighed Mother Beaver. “Well, it is sad, but it can not be helped. I hope he has a happy home.” And so, after a few days, Toto was almost forgotten by all who lived in the beaver pond. His mother and father did not forget him, though, even when they were busy gnawing down trees or working on the dam. One day, about two weeks after he had been caught in the trap and put in the cage, Toto, still on the houseboat, saw, from the deck, that they were coming to a very wide part of the river. It was a stretch of water much larger than the beaver pond. And there were not so many trees near the river now. “Are we going to stop at the big city, Dad?” asked Donald, the boy, of his father, as they stood on deck, looking around. [102] “Yes, I think we shall tie up there for a day or so,” was the answer. “I have painted some pictures of the woods, and I may sell them in the big city.” “I like the city and I like the woods,” said the boy. “They are going to have a circus here at this city. I saw the pictures on the billboards. I want to see the elephants and the lions and the tigers.” “The wild animals in the woods are better than those in a circus, my boy,” said the man. “But still if there were no circuses many people would never see a wild animal. We shall all go to the circus.” And so, a little later, the boat was tied up near the shore of the river, and Toto, looking out from his cage, could see a number of big, white objects. At first he thought they were white clouds that had come down to earth, as happens in a fog. But when he looked again he knew they were not clouds. “There are the circus tents!” cried the boy. And a little later Toto saw the boy and his father and mother leave the boat, going on shore. But while he was lying stretched out in his cage on the deck of the houseboat, being all alone, now that the man and lady and boy had gone to the circus, Toto heard voices talking, and he heard the tramp of heavy feet. [103] “Here is a good place to water the elephants,” said a man. “Come on, Tum Tum, take a drink and go in and take a bath if you want to. There is plenty of water. But don’t splash any on this houseboat. The people who own it might not like it.” Toto looked from his cage. He saw, entering the water, a number of big animals, many hundred times as large as the largest beaver. And the animals seemed to have two tails, one in front and one behind. But the one in front was larger and could be curled and twisted in a very strange way. “Take a drink, Tum Tum!” called one of the men with the big animals. Then Toto saw one of the big beasts stick his front tail down into the river, suck up a lot of water and squirt it over his back. “Is your name Tum Tum?” asked Toto of the big beast who was nearest the houseboat. “That’s what it is,” was the answer. “But who are you and why are you there?” “I am a beaver, and my name is Toto,” was the answer. “I was caught in a trap and now I am in a cage, and I wish I could get out. But what kind of animal are you? I never saw one like you before. And why have you two tails? I have only one.” “I have not two tails,” answered Tum Tum,[104] the jolly elephant. “The one in front is my trunk, or nose. But I am sorry for you if you don’t like it in your cage. I live in a circus, and some of our animals like to be in cages, while others do not. “We had a tiger named Tamba in the circus, but he isn’t with us any more. He got away, and I heard he went back to the jungle where he first lived. But Nero, our circus lion, is still in his cage, or he was when I came from the circus grounds a little while ago. Nero seems to like it in his cage.” “Well, I don’t like it here,” said Toto. “I don’t believe I’d like it in a circus, either, though I never tried that. I wish I could get away.” “Do you really want to get loose?” asked Tum Tum, the jolly elephant, coming close to the houseboat, on the open deck of which stood Toto’s cage. “Of course I want to get loose. I want to go back to the beaver dam!” “Then keep very still and I will set you free,” said Tum Tum, in what would be an animal whisper. “I can reach over, with my trunk, and tear the wire loose from the front of your cage. Then you can get out.” “Oh, thank you! Please do that!” begged Toto. So, when none of the other elephants were[105] looking, and when the circus men were busy farther down the river, Tum Tum reached his trunk over the low rail about the deck of the houseboat. On the end of Tum Tum’s trunk was a sort of finger and thumb. You have seen elephants use them in picking up peanuts. Tum Tum with his trunk now quickly tore the wire off the front of Toto’s cage. In another minute the beaver was loose and out on deck. “Oh, thank you!” he called to Tum Tum. “Now I am free!” “Yes, you may go anywhere you like,” said Tum Tum. “Don’t you want to come to the circus and see me and Nero do tricks? We are said to be quite smart, and a man who wrote about Blackie, Don, Mappo and some other animals, has written a book about me and about Nero. Better come and see us.” “No, thank you,” answered Toto. “I want to swim back to my beaver friends as soon as I can. Thank you for setting me free.” “Don’t mention it! Glad I could help you!” said Tum Tum, speaking in a rumbly voice, for his trunk was under water just then. It did not take Toto long to jump off the boat into the river. And, oh! how good it felt to him to be in water again where he had room[106] enough to swim. He knew he had come down stream, so he began to swim up, as his home was in that direction. I am sorry I have not room to tell you the many adventures Toto had as he swam up the river, and along the other streams that branched from it. How he knew his way back to the beaver dam I don’t know, but Toto did. Cats and dogs find their way back home when they have been taken many miles away, in trains or automobiles, so it is not strange that Toto could find his way back. It took him more than a week, though, and he had to be careful not to be caught again, for many times he was chased by dogs and boys. But he was pretty safe as long as he kept in the water. And at last, one day, Toto found himself back again in the very woods where he knew he lived. He swam as near to the pond as he could, and then he crawled out and waddled along through the woods, taking care not to get into any more danger. Suddenly, as Toto traveled along, stopping now and then to nibble a bit of bark, he heard some voices talking—the voices of men. By this time Toto was quite well acquainted with men’s voices. The voices of Donald and his father were kind, but the voices the beaver boy now heard were harsh and angry. [107] “Well, you hid the jewelry away, and you ought to know where you put it!” said one voice. “Yes, I put it in a hollow tree, but now I can’t find the tree,” growled another voice. “You all saw me hide it!” “Yes, but maybe you came and took it away when we didn’t know it,” said another. “Where is that jewelry?” “In the hollow tree, I tell you! But I don’t know which one. We hid it in such a hurry that I have forgotten!” Then the voices grew more harsh and angry, and Toto, looking through a bush, saw the same ragged men, one of them red-haired, that he had seen before when they robbed the home of the little girl’s grandmother. “I guess I’d better not let them see me,” thought Toto. “I don’t want to be caught again!” So he slipped around the tramps sitting in the woods, and a little later Toto came within sight of the beaver pond. He saw his brother Sniffy on top of the dam, mending a hole with some clay and grass roots. “Sniffy! Sniffy! Here I am!” called Toto. “I’m home again!” <hr class="chap" /> [108] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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