“They’re going to charge,” says Mark. “Get ready.”
I filled my pocket with pebbles and stood, all trembly, waiting for them to begin.
All of a sudden they both let out yells and started scrambling up toward us as fast as they could. That wasn’t very fast, on account of the steepness and loose sand and stones that kept slipping back, but they came like they had made up their minds to get us in spite of everything.
Just the minute they got uncovered we began to shoot. I was surprised to see how little scared I really was when things began to happen; and Mark, why, he was as cool as a cucumber, and took careful aim every time before he let fly.
We shot pretty well, too. Of course, we didn’t hit every time, but we hit often enough, and the closer they came the oftener we hit. They didn’t say a word, and Mark and I were too busy to speak.
They got over the first twenty-five feet all right, and started in on the next twenty-five. Now they were near enough so that any fellow who could shoot at all would have hard work to miss. And we shot fast. Plunk! plunk! plunk! we would hear the stones as they struck. They kept on, though, for another fifteen or twenty feet until they were only about fifty feet away and maybe forty feet lower than we were. That gave us all the advantage, of course, for it’s hard enough to climb a steep hill without having a couple of fellows peppering at you from the top.
“I’ll shoot faster than you can talk,” says I, making a little fun of his stuttering.
We did shoot fast and hard. Every time I pulled back the rubber as far as it would stretch, and I bet those pebbles hurt some. They hurt more than Batten and Bill could stand, anyhow, for in another minute they had enough. First Bill quit and went leaping down the hill; then Batten, finding out he was all alone, gave up and retreated so fast Mark said it was a rout.
We didn’t let them go without hurrying them along, either. Just as long as they were in sight we kept on whanging at them, and I’ll make a guess that there weren’t two men in the state who had more black-and-blue spots to show than they did when they got to the bottom. We laughed so loud they could hear us when we saw them rubbing their sore places.
Batten shook his fist at us, and Bill roared something we couldn’t understand.