Batten was good and mad now, and so was Bill. They kept yelling back and forth at each other, but stayed all the time behind the trees where we couldn’t hit them. That satisfied us; we weren’t out to shoot anybody with our sling-shots, and didn’t want to if they’d only quit pestering us.
“Young feller,” Batten yelled up to Mark, “put that thing down or you’ll be sorry. Don’t you go shootin’ it at me again.”
“I ain’t goin’ to shoot so long’s you s-s-stay behind that tree,” says Mark, “but if you start up here again I’ll p-p-paste you, and it won’t be in the leg, either.”
Bill took the chance to run across an open space to another tree, and got there just in time. The pebble flicked off a chunk of the bark as he got sheltered.
“They’re tryin’ to divide,” says Mark “so’s to take us on two sides. Don’t let one of ’em get onto the hill above us.”
That would make it pretty bad, for it’s hard to shoot up-hill; and, besides, a man higher than we were could make it mighty hot for us by rolling things down.
“We’ll stop Bill from comin’ any higher,” I says.
The best way to do that, I thought, was to give him something to think about besides climbing hills, so I looked careful down at the tree he was behind. The only part of him that stuck out was his hand, and that was gripping a sapling close to his tree to hold him from slipping, I expect, for the slope was pretty steep right there.
“Watch me whang his fingers,” I says, but, honest, I didn’t have much hope of hitting them. I guess it was more good luck than good judgment; but, all the same, I took careful aim, and let her fly. The stone whizzed down and banged Bill’s thumb a good one so he yelped out sharp and danced into the open, shaking his hand like he wanted to flop it off. He wasn’t exactly quiet about saying things to us, either. If he’d done to Mark and me what he said he was going to do we couldn’t have been worth carrying home.
“Always f-f-follow up your victories,” says Mark, with a grin. “I’ll give him another while he’s feeling bad.” This one took him a clip right on the hip where his pants were tight, and Bill didn’t wait around there any longer. Out where he stood was a bad place, he thought, so he turned tail and made for the trees lower on the hill.