Chapter VII: At the Beaver Dam

“What did you do that for?” Holly asked, puzzled. “There wasn’t anything there.”

“I thought there was, but maybe you’re right,” Judy admitted. “I do things on impulse. Afterwards I wonder myself why I do them. Did it seem to you that Meta Hanley left us rather abruptly?”

“Yes, she did,” Holly acknowledged. “Maybe telling us that sad story made her feel bad. It just proves what I said before. It’s bad luck to love anybody.”

“For her or for you?” Judy questioned, hoping to disprove her theory.

“For _anybody_. If you haven’t found it out yet, you will,” Holly prophesied, clinging grimly to her gloomy philosophy. “She had an appointment, but nobody came. It makes me wonder if Horace and Honey will keep their appointment here at the beaver dam.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course they will. Horace intends to convince his editor that the beavers will make a good story. Peter may come, too, if he gets the message I left for him. I hope he does,” declared Judy. “There are so many things I want to ask him.”

“What sort of things?” questioned Holly.

“Oh, about rivers and stuff,” Judy replied airily, still not sure enough of what she had seen to report it. “Things could drift down with the current, you know. I mean, if the Cowanesque heads the other side of this hill it must flow past several houses including that one the matron of the orphanage was talking about. Probably it’s one of the forks of the Susquehanna, and I think this creek must be another.”

“But she said it was near the head of the Genessee,” Holly objected. “And you told me yourself that we could see three great river valleys from that watershed we crossed.”

“It was beautiful!” Judy remembered. “We could see hills and valleys for miles and miles.”

“I like open places like that,” declared Holly. “Here in the woods you get the feeling that someone is hiding and watching you.”

“Beavers, no doubt. We’re the ones who should be hiding and watching them,” Judy reminded her. “We shouldn’t be talking, either. We were told not to make a sound.”

“That’s right,” Holly agreed, lowering her voice to a whisper.

Not another word was said as they broke their way through the underbrush until they came to a fairly large tree that had been gnawed down by the beavers. The stump was right at the edge of the pond. Judy ran her hand over it to make sure it was flat enough for her camera. It surprised her to discover what experts the beavers were. Their dam was solidly constructed of mud, brushwood, and poles. But there were other things in it, too. Things that puzzled Judy more and more as she and Holly watched and waited. There was no sound of falling trees as the beavers worked. Holly asked why.

“Beavers are smart,” Judy whispered back. “They only work at night. We’ll have to wait here until after dark if we want to see them working.”

“Do we have to?” Holly asked, shivering a little at the thought of being in the woods after dark.

“It will be all right,” Judy comforted her. “Horace and Honey will be here by then. I can get sharper pictures with my flashbulb after dark. There will be no other light to interfere.”

“But going back in the dark will be terrible. We’ll get lost,” Holly interrupted.

“Oh, no, we won’t,” Judy reassured her. “I have my flashlight here in my shoulder bag.”

The shoulder bag was no longer on her shoulder. It was propped behind the stump. In it Judy had stored a number of useful things including the sweet apples the Jewell sisters had given them. Holly decided to eat her apple right away.

“I’m hungry,” she declared, taking a big bite.

Judy was surprised that the sound of anyone eating an apple could be so loud. When Holly had finished it she tossed the apple core in the pond. It hit the surface of the water with a loud plop.

“I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t scare the beavers,” Holly said.

“Sh! We weren’t going to talk,” Judy reminded her.

After that there was utter silence broken only by an occasional bird twittering and the sighing of the wind in the trees. Now and then a small _plop_ could be heard as something disappeared in the water.

“I don’t see anything, do you?” Holly whispered after what seemed an eternity of crouching among the ferns and waiting.

“Just ripples.”

Judy suspected that the beavers, swimming under water, made the ripples that kept appearing and disappearing on the surface of the pond. They looked exactly like the ripples that had appeared when Holly threw in the apple core. But nothing had fallen in so it must be something coming up from underneath the water. Judy had her camera ready, hoping one of the beavers would pop out and pose for a picture.

“I don’t believe there are any beavers in there,” Holly said at last.

Judy was beginning to agree with her. It was growing so dark she could no longer see the ripples, but she could still hear the _plops_. Once she thought she saw a beaver’s head and snapped a picture, but she couldn’t be sure she had photographed anything except an empty pond.

“Let’s go,” Holly urged when it was quite dark. “Peter didn’t get your message, and I told you Horace and Honey wouldn’t keep their appointment.”

“You told me a lot of things,” Judy retorted. “I changed my plans for the whole day because of what you told me, but I’m still hoping to prove you’re wrong about some things.”

“You mean about love? I hope you do.” Holly shivered suddenly. “Let’s go home,” she said. “These ferns are positively creepy. Snakes may be hiding in them.”

“It’s not very likely,” Judy told her.

“Well, there’s something,” Holly insisted. “Did you hear that twig snap?”

“Yes, I heard it,” Judy admitted. “I couldn’t see what it was, but I snapped a picture. It sounded near the pond. There it is again, farther back in the woods. It could be Horace and Honey coming—”

“So late?”

Judy turned on her flashlight in order to see the face of her watch. “It is late, isn’t it?” she agreed. “Maybe they aren’t coming after all.”

Now she was worried. Horace didn’t make appointments and break them. He was a fast driver, but not a reckless one. Just as she was imagining her brother’s coffee-colored convertible in an accident a light appeared, flooding the dark woods with the sudden brilliance of a searchlight.

“It’s a car!” Holly exclaimed. “It’s coming along the woods road. Horace didn’t know—”

“Holly, _look_!” Judy interrupted.

The light, moving nearer, had picked up a strange sight. There by the pond were three beavers startled into immobility. One of them was perched atop a mound of sticks, grass, and moss that protruded into the water. The other two were on the ground. One was digging with his little front paws, and the other was dragging something toward the dam. Judy reached for her camera, but before she could snap them the beavers were gone, leaving nothing but widening ripples in the water.

“We saw them!” Holly cried excitedly, jumping up from the ferns and hugging Judy. “I’m glad you made me wait. We saw the beavers, and that’s Horace and Honey in the car. Now he can take us home.”

“Wait, Holly!” The light from the oncoming car had picked out something else. The piece of wood the beaver had dropped didn’t look like a pole. It looked more like a chair rung. And in the dam, worked in among the brush and the mud, was the most unbelievable thing of all. Judy stood transfixed, staring at it.

“What is it?” asked Holly. “Why are you staring at the beaver dam? You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

“It _is_ a ghost,” declared Judy, “or about the nearest thing to it. That’s our table leg. I’d know it anywhere.”

“Your table leg?” Holly repeated, not understanding.

“I told you about it,” Judy reminded her as the light revealed the patient face she remembered so well, just below the surface of the water. “It’s a leg of the lady table. It was washed away in the Roulsville flood, and the beavers found it and used it to build their dam.”