The Tale of Brownie Beaver | Page 9

to bring his tree to the ground first. And that caused some trouble, too, because some claimed that their trees were of harder wood than others--and more difficult to gnaw--while others complained that the bark of their trees tasted very bitter, and of course that made their task unpleasant.
Those six trees, falling one after another, made such a racket that old Mr. Crow heard the noise miles away and flew over to see what was happening.
After everybody crept out of his hiding-place some time afterward (everyone had to hide for a while, you know), there was Mr. Crow sitting upon one of the fallen trees.
"What's going on?" he inquired. "You're not going to cut down the whole forest, I hope."
Then they told him about the celebration. And Mr. Crow began to laugh.
"What are you going to do next?" he asked.
"We're a-going to send Brownie Beaver over to Pleasant Valley to thank Farmer Green for his kindness in putting an end to hunting and fishing," said old Grandaddy Beaver. "And he's a-going to start right away."
Mr. Crow looked around. And there was Brownie Beaver, with a lunch-basket in his hand, all ready to begin his long journey.
"Say good-by to him then," said Mr. Crow, "for you'll never see him again."
"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 fishing 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 fishing for himself. That's why he put up that sign. And instead of hunting and fishing 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 nobody 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 snatch 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