Mark scratched his head. “They’ve decided on somethin’,” says he, “but what it is I don’t see clear.”
Bill kept on cutting and cutting till he had a big pile of green boughs. When he had enough he sat down by them with his back toward us and began doing something to them—we couldn’t see what.
“He’s makin’ some sort of a contraption,” I says.
“I’ll bet,” says Mark, “it’s some kind of a sh-sh-sh—”
“Shield,” I finished for him.
“That’s it,” says he.
Batten walked over by Bill and commenced to work, too. They fiddled around ten or fifteen minutes, and we could hear them talking and laughing, but they were so far away we couldn’t hear what they said. I wished we could have.
Mark drew a long breath. “This,” says he, “is the end of the battle. We’re licked!”
“Maybe not.”
He just smiled sort of regretful. “We’re licked,” he says again, “but we hain’t disgraced. We kept on fightin’ as long as we could.”