“Show me where.”
“Here.” He went to the back of the cage. Poppy, on the outside, followed him. “This one.”
Poppy looked at the twig. It was gnawed almost halfway through.
“Makes my teeth sore,” Rye said.
“If you gripped from above,” Poppy suggested, “and I held on from below, and we pulled in opposite directions, it might give.”
“We can try.”
The two mice did what Poppy suggested.
“Pull!” Rye urged. The two yanked. There was some give but not enough.
“Again,” Rye said.
The twig splintered with a sudden snap. While it did not break completely in two, it had been pulled wide enough to allow Rye to squeeze through. He popped out and gave Poppy a hug. She returned it.
“Do you want to hear the rest of the poem?” he asked.
“Let’s get out of here first.”
“Of course. How silly of me. How did you come in?”
“The vent hole and another vine. A much longer one. Come on.”
With Poppy in the lead, the two mice crept across the floor of the lodge.
As they went Poppy kept darting glances at the beavers.
Rye, following Poppy, kept thinking, “Isn’t she amazing. Isn’t she something.”
They were halfway to the vine when one of the beavers turned, looked at them, saw what had happened, and cried, “Mice on the loose!”
CHAPTER 26
The Battle of the Boulder
WHAT HAD HAPPENED to Thistle and Curleydock?
When Thistle, under attack from the beaver, lost her grip on the raft, she let herself sink below the water’s surface. A good swimmer, she had the sense to move fast and far away from the tumbled raft as well as the beaver. For as long as her lungs allowed her to, she swam underwater. Then she rose to the surface and cried out, “Curleydock! Poppy!”
There was no reply. And it was too dark to see anything.
Terribly distressed, Thistle swam about in circles, in search of her companions. She was still searching when she heard a faint splash.
“Who’s that?” she called.
“It’s me, Curleydock! Who’s that?”
“Thistle.”
“Where are you?”
“Here. Keep talking. Try to swim toward me. I’ll try to move toward you.”
The two met in the middle of the pond.
“Where’s Poppy?” was the first thing Curleydock said.
“I hoped she’d be with you.”
“I didn’t see what happened to her.”
“Do you think she’s all right?” asked Thistle.
“I don’t know.”
“Listen!”
There came what sounded like a faint cry.
“Here we are!” Thistle called back loudly.
“Shhh! A beaver might hear you.”
In any case, there was no response.
“Curleydock?”
“What?”
“Poppy said she wasn’t that good a swimmer.”
“Do . . . do you think . . .” Curleydock stammered, “do you think she . . . drowned?”
Instead of replying, Thistle said, “We’d better get back to the land.”
“Which way?”
Thistle tried to gauge their place. “I think that way is closest.” She pointed the way with her nose.
The two mice swam steadily. Neither spoke until they reached the shore. As soon as they got out they both looked back over the pond.
“Do you see anything?” Thistle said.
“No.”
“What are we going to tell Pa and Ma?”
“Better just say what happened,” Curleydock replied.
“What do you think . . . did happen?”
“She must have . . . drowned.”
Thistle shook her head.
Curleydock said, “She said she couldn’t swim. And we didn’t hear her, did we?”
“Maybe she got to the lodge anyway.”
“Thistle, even if she did, she said she needed us to get Rye out.”
“But . . . then . . . what’ll happen to Rye?”
There was no answer.
Suddenly Thistle said, “Curleydock, Ma and Pa were moving tonight. We don’t know where they went.”
“Maybe they left a note.”
The two mice ran up the hill.
There was pale light—but no sun yet—upon the eastern horizon when an exhausted Thistle and Curleydock, full of their awful news, reached the hilltop. To their complete surprise, they saw the entire family working in a frenzy. Half were laboring in the ditch before the boulder. The others were toiling about the boulder’s base, hauling away dirt as fast as they could. Most of the earth around the boulder already had been removed. To Thistle and Curleydock’s eyes the boulder appeared to be resting on absolutely nothing.
“Pa!” Curleydock called.
Valerian turned. His mouth opened with surprise. “Why . . . what are you two doing here? Did you free Rye? Where’s Poppy?”
“Pa,” Thistle said, “we were getting close to the beaver’s lodge—on a raft—when one of the beavers discovered us.”
“No!”
“Then we got whacked with a tail,” Curleydock continued. “The raft went over. But we’re . . . Thistle and I . . . we’re good swimmers.”
“You mean . . . Poppy . . . ?”
“We’re not sure, but . . . drowned, probably.”
Valerian, mouth agape, struggled to control his emotions. Turning away, he gazed at the boulder, the ditch, the pond.
“Pa,” Thistle asked, “what’s everybody doing?”
Valerian explained as best he could.
“You’re going to smash the dam?” Curleydock exclaimed when he heard the plan.
“We’re trying. But I think I’d better talk to your mother. Tell her your news.” He hurried away.
Clover, to oversee her part of the digging, had established herself—with her three youngest—just behind the large stone.
The moment Valerian appeared, she bolted up. “What is it? Something has happened. I can see it in your face.”
“It’s Thistle and Curleydock—”
Clover shut her eyes.
“They were going to the lodge on a wood chip when a beaver turned them over.”
“Valerian . . . the children . . . what happened to them?”
“Thistle and Curleydock got back. They’re good swimmers. But it’s Poppy. They don’t know what happened to her.”
“Then they never reached . . . Rye?”
“No.”
“Valerian!”
“Clover,” Valerian asked, “what do you think we should do?”
Clover dipped her head, swallowed hard, then looked up. “Valerian, you said it before: Poppy’s a clever mouse. Maybe she’s all right. Maybe she isn’t. But I still think we have to get that boulder going down the ditch like we planned. We have to do . . . something.”
“But Clover, if Rye’s still in the lodge . . . it might make things worse.”
The two mice stared at each other.
“Valerian,” Clover said in a whisper, struggling to remain dry eyed, “I still think we have to try. I do.”
“I guess you’re right,” Valerian returned grimly. “The ditch is pretty much done. How soon can we push the boulder down?”
Clover, burping one of the babies, said, “We only need to dig a little more and then—”
Whatever Clover was about to say was cut off
