The result seemed unsatisfactory to Doc. “It looks kind of fragile,” he complained. “If we set out to block that creek, let’s block it right!” He clambered to a cliff that overlooked the stream, thrust a stout sapling beneath a boulder, and heaved mightily. The boulder came down amid a shower of dirt and stones, and plunged in the creek with a sudden clatter. “Hi-yi!” Doc shouted. “There’s something they was never taught how to cope with in St. James’s Park! Let ’em write home and ask the London Humane Society how to get rid of that!”

His outcries suddenly ceased. When I looked around to see what ailed him, he was crouched behind a rock, his musket cocked. I moved behind a tree myself.

Doc spoke querulously to someone on the far side of the creek. “If you’re an American, come out in the open. If you ain’t, look out behind you. We got you surrounded.”

Across the creek a boy rose from behind a boulder. He may have been fourteen years old. He wore homespun breeches twice too large for him, and a torn brown shirt big enough to be an overcoat. His musket was at the ready, as if he expected a partridge to leap up before him.

“You’re a liar,” he said loudly. “There ain’t nobody behind me. I looked there fust off, soon’s I heard your axes.”

“You a scout?” Doc asked mildly.

“Yes, I be!”

“Don’t go pointing that musket at us, then,” Doc warned. “If we wasn’t friends of yours, we wouldn’t be cutting down trees, would we? Who you scouting for?”

“General Fellows. Schuyler sent him up here with eighty of us Berkshire men to chop down trees.” He picked up an axe from where he had been crouching and turned from us to signal largely toward someone unseen by us. “Come on, General!” he bawled. “There ain’t nobody here, only a couple of fellers chopping for fun!”

Doc made a sound of disgust. “Look at that! Just when we was working up a little sweat, along comes a general to pick out all the good trees for himself!”