It was so tiresome!
Our defeats at Bunker Hill, at Gettysburg, at Waterloo, and on countless other stricken fields recurred to us as we panted along. If we could only turn the tables in some way!
Instinctively we hurried toward the side yard of my house, climbed the fence, and tumbled over. We landed on the blue box that held the garden hose. The cowboys were approaching rapidly, with loud cries and much banging of revolvers. Already Horace Winslow was shouting that he had shot me five times, and that I must fall dead instantly. In a moment, we knew, they would be over the fence after us.
Moved by the same thought, we opened the blue box. The hose was connected with the tap at the side of the house. Ed turned the tap, while I, standing on the edge of the box and looking over the fence into the street, swept the road with a stream of cold water.
Horace stopped abruptly in his rush toward the fence, and Joe Carter, who had halted about thirty feet away to pour a volley of bullets after us, executed a swift movement to the rear.
The others paused where they were. Tomahawks, scalping-knives, spears, and revolvers—none of these would have checked the bold cowboys for a moment; but this stream of water was another matter.
It does not do for any cowboy, however desperate, to go home to his parents with his clothes soaking wet. Such events often mean an enforced retirement for a day from the field of glory.
"Whatcher doing?" screamed Peter Bailey. "That ain't fair!"
We felt that he was right. This garden hose suddenly springing out of the Western prairie was a false note. Artistically it jarred. It was like bringing a school-teacher into fairyland.