"Will you ask him?"
"Naw, who cares for an old Birch tree. We'll go an' borrow it when he ain't lookin'."
Yan hesitated.
Sam took the axe. "We'll call this a war party into the enemy's country. There's sure 'nuff war that-a-way. He's one of Da's 'friends.'"
Yan followed, in doubt still as to the strict honesty of the proceeding.
Over the line they soon found a good-sized canoe Birch, and were busy whacking away to get off a long roll, when a tall man and a small boy, apparently attracted by the chopping, came in sight and made toward them. Sam called under his breath: "It's old Burns. Let's git."
There was no time to save anything but themselves and the axe. They ran for the boundary fence, while Burns contented himself with shouting out threats and denunciations. Not that he cared a straw for the Birch tree—timber had no value in that country—but [219] unfortunately Raften had quarrelled with all his immediate neighbours, therefore Burns did his best to make a fearful crime of the petty depredation.
His valiant son, a somewhat smaller boy than either Yan or Sam, came near enough to the boundary to hurl opprobrious epithets.
"Red-head—red-head! You red-headed thief! Hol' on till my paw gits hol' o' you—Raften, the Baften, the rick-strick Straften," and others equally galling and even more exquisitely refined.
"War party escaped and saved their scalps," and Sam placidly laid the axe in its usual place.