“You!—Jesse!” cried my mother. And there was more than a smacking in the way she said it.
Jed offered to clasp hands, but I shook my head.
“Run for it,” I said.
And while we hotfooted it across the sand it seemed all the rifles on Indian hill were turned loose on us. I got to the spring a little ahead, so that Jed had to wait for me to fill my pails.
“Now run for it,” he told me; and from the leisurely way he went about filling his own pails I knew he was determined to be in last.
So I crouched down, and, while I waited, watched the puffs of dust raised by the bullets. We began the return side by side and running.
“Not so fast,” I cautioned him, “or you’ll spill half the water.”
That stung him, and he slacked back perceptibly. Midway I stumbled and fell headlong. A bullet, striking directly in front of me, filled my eyes with sand. For the moment I thought I was shot.
“Done it a-purpose,” Jed sneered as I scrambled to my feet. He had stood and waited for me.
I caught his idea. He thought I had fallen deliberately in order to spill my water and go back for more. This rivalry between us was a serious matter—so serious, indeed, that I immediately took advantage of what he had imputed and raced back to the spring. And Jed Dunham, scornful of the bullets that were puffing dust all around him, stood there upright in the open and waited for me. We came in side by side, with honours even in our boys’ foolhardiness. But when we delivered the water Jed had only one pailful. A bullet had gone through the other pail close to the bottom.