The Tale of Brownie Beaver Part 5

"What do you mean?" Grandaddy Beaver asked. And as for Brownie--he was so frightened that he dropped his basket right in the water.

"I mean----" said Mr. Crow--"I mean that it's a very dangerous errand.

You don't seem to have understood that sign. In the first place, it was not Farmer Green, but his son Johnnie, who nailed It to the tree."

"Ah!" Brownie Beaver cried. "_That_ is why one of the words was misspelled!"

"No doubt!" Mr. Crow remarked. As a matter of fact, not being able to read he hadn't known about the word that was spelled wrong. "In the second place," he continued, "the sign doesn't mean that hunting and fis.h.i.+ng are to be stopped. It means that no one but Johnnie Green is going to hunt and fish in this neighborhood. He wants all the hunting and fis.h.i.+ng for himself. That's why he put up that sign. And instead of hunting and fis.h.i.+ng being stopped, I should say that they were going to begin to be more dangerous than ever.... They tell me," he added, "that Johnnie Green had a new gun on this birthday."

Brownie Beaver said at once that he was not going on the errand of thanks.

"I resign," he said, "and anyone that wants to go in my place is welcome to do so."

But n.o.body cared to go. And the whole village seemed greatly disappointed, until Grandaddy Beaver made a short speech.

"We've all had a good holiday, anyhow," he said. "And I should say that was something to be thankful for."

XI

BAD NEWS

"Have you heard the news?" Tired Tim asked Brownie Beaver one day.

"There's going to be a cyclone."

"A cyclone?" Brownie exclaimed. "What's that? I never heard of one."

"It's a big storm, with a terrible wind," Tired Tim explained. "The wind will blow so hard that it will snap off big trees."

"Good!" Brownie Beaver cried. "Then I won't have to cut down any more trees in order to reach the tender bark that grows in their tops."

Tired Tim laughed. "You won't think it's very 'good,'" he said, "when the cyclone strikes the village."

"Why not?" Brownie inquired.

"Because--" said Tired Tim--"because the wind will blow every house away. It will s.n.a.t.c.h up the sticks of which the houses are built and carry them over the top of Blue Mountain. Then I guess you'll wish you had taken my advice and not built that new house of yours.

"_I_ shall be safe enough," the lazy rascal continued. "All I'll have to do will be to crawl inside my house in the bank; for the wind can't very well blow the ground away."

Brownie Beaver thought that Tired Tim was just trying to scare him.

"I don't believe there's going to be any such thing!" he exclaimed.

"Don't you?" Tim grinned. "You just go and ask Grandaddy Beaver. He's the one that says there's going to be a cyclone."

At that Brownie Beaver stopped working and hurried off to find old Grandaddy Beaver. And to his great dismay, Grandaddy said that what Tired Tim had told him was the truth.

"It's a-coming!" Grandaddy Beaver declared. "I saw one once before in these parts, years before anybody else in this village was born. And when I see a cyclone a-coming I can generally tell it a long way off."

"When is it going to get here?" Brownie asked in a quavering voice.

"Next Tuesday!" Grandaddy replied.

"What makes you think it's coming?"

"Well--everything looks just the way it did before the last cyclone,"

Grandaddy Beaver explained, as he took a mouthful of willow bark. "The moon looks just the same and the sun looks just the same. I had a twinge of rheumatics in my left shoulder yesterday; and to-day the pain's in my right. It was exactly that way before the last cyclone."

Brownie Beaver did not doubt that the old gentleman knew what he was talking about. He remembered that Grandaddy Beaver had warned everyone there was going to be a freshet. And though people had laughed at the old chap, the freshet had come.

Sadly worried, Brownie went and called on all his neighbors and asked them what they were going to do. And to his surprise he found that they were laughing at Grandaddy once more. They seemed to have forgotten about the freshet.

But Brownie Beaver could not forget that dreadful night. And now he tried to think of some way to keep his new house from being blown away by the great wind, which Grandaddy Beaver said was coming on Tuesday without fail.

XII

GRANDADDY BEAVER THINKS

It was on a Friday that Brownie Beaver first heard the cyclone was coming. And after making sure that Grandaddy Beaver knew what he was talking about when he said the great wind would sweep down upon the village on the following Tuesday, Brownie spent a good deal of time wondering what he had better do.

He wanted to save his house from being blown over the top of Blue Mountain. And he wanted to save himself from being carried along at the same time.

Before Friday was gone Brownie Beaver began to heap more mud and sticks upon his house, to make it stronger. And when Tired Tim came swimming past the lazy scamp laughed harder than ever.

"I see you're afraid of the cyclone," he called. "But what you're doing won't help you any. The wind will blow away those sticks easily enough.... What you ought to do is to dig a house like mine in the bank. Then you won't have to worry about any cyclone."

So Brownie set to work and made him a house like Tired Tim's. On Monday he had finished it. But he didn't like his new home at all.

"It's no better than a rat's hole," he said. "My family have never lived in such a place and I'm not used to it. I prefer my house that's built of sticks and mud. And I'm going to see if there isn't some way I can make it safe."

So Brownie went to Grandaddy Beaver again and asked him what he ought to do.

The old gentleman said he would try to think of a plan to save Brownie's house.

"I wish you would hurry," Brownie urged him. "To-day is Monday; and tomorrow the cyclone will be here.... What are you going to do to your own house, Grandaddy?"

"My house----" said Grandaddy Beaver--"my house is very old. It has had mud and sticks piled upon it every season for over a hundred years. You can see for yourself that it's much bigger than yours. And I reckon it's strong enough to stay where it is, no matter how hard the wind blows. But your house is different.... Let me think a minute!" the old gentleman said.

Brownie waited in silence while the old gentleman thought, with his eyes shut tight. Brownie watched him for a long time. Once or twice he thought he heard something that sounded like a snore. But he knew it couldn't be that--it was only the thoughts trying to get inside Grandaddy's head.

At last Grandaddy sat up with a start.

"Have you thought of something?" Brownie inquired.