After all, this had the advantage of romance and picturesqueness, and Sam consented to “try it for awhile, anyhow.”  And now came the point of Yan’s argument.  “Injuns don’t live in shanties; they live in teepees.  Why not make a teepee instead?”

“That would be just bully,” said Sam, who had seen pictures enough to need no description, “but what are we to make it of?”

“Well,” answered Yan, promptly assuming the leadership and rejoicing in his ability to speak as an authority, “the Plains Injuns make their teepees of skins, but the wood Injuns generally use Birch bark.”

“Well, I bet you can’t find skins or Birch bark enough in this woods to make a teepee big enough for a Chipmunk to chaw nuts in.”

“We can use Elm bark.”

“That’s a heap easier,” replied Sam, “if it’ll answer, coz we cut a lot o’ Elm logs last winter and the bark’ll be about willin’ to peel now.  But first let’s plan it out.”

This was a good move, one Yan would have overlooked.  He would probably have got a lot of material together and made the plan afterward, but Sam had been taught to go about his work with method.

So Yan sketched on a smooth log his remembrance of an Indian teepee.  “It seems to me it was about this shape, with the poles sticking up like that, a hole for the smoke here and another for the door there.”

“Sounds like you hain’t never seen one,” remarked Sam, with more point than politeness, “but we kin try it.  Now ’bout how big?”

Eight feet high and eight feet across was decided to be about right.  Four poles, each ten feet long, were cut in a few minutes, Yan carrying them to a smooth place above the creek as fast as Sam cut them.

“Now, what shall we tie them with?” said Yan.

“You mean for rope?”

“Yes, only we must get everything in the woods; real rope ain’t allowed.”

“I kin fix that,” said Sam; “when Da double-staked the orchard fence, he lashed every pair of stakes at the top with Willow withes.”

“That’s so—­I quite forgot,” said Yan.  In a few minutes they were at work trying to tie the four poles together with slippery stiff Willows, but it was no easy matter.  They had to be perfectly tight or they would slip and fall in a heap each time they were raised, and it seemed at length that the boys would be forced to the impropriety of using hay wire, when they heard a low grunt, and turning, saw William Raften standing with his hands behind him as though he had watched them for hours.

The boys were no little startled.  Raften had a knack of turning up at any point when something was going on, taking in the situation fully, and then, if he disapproved, of expressing himself in a few words of blistering mockery delivered in a rich Irish brogue.  Just what view he would take of their pastime the boys had no idea, but awaited with uneasiness.  If they had been wasting time when they should have