"I guess we have enough," said Russ at last. "Come on now, we'll have a battle."
"Are Rose and Vi going to play?" asked Laddie.
"Nope! Girls never can be in a battle. They can be Red Cross nurses if they want to. But we won't call 'em until after the fight. They'd only holler like anything."
Rose and Violet were up in the bungalow playing jackstones, while Margy and Mun Bun had gone for a walk with their mother. So Russ and Laddie had the beach to themselves to play on.
Russ got inside the fort and crouched down in the hole he had dug. Laddie took up his position not far away, a little distance down the beach, having with him a pile of paper wads that he was to throw at his brother.
"Are you ready?" asked Laddie.
"All ready!" answered Russ. "Go ahead and fire!"
"Bang! Bang!" shouted Laddie, making believe he was shooting off a gun. The boys often played this game so they knew just how to do it. "Bang! Bang!"
Then Laddie began throwing large and small wads of paper at the sand fort behind which crouched Russ. And Russ threw wads of paper at his smaller brother.
The sand walls of the fort kept Russ from being "shot" in the battle. Laddie's "bullets" and "cannon balls" hit the sand walls of the fort more often than they struck his brother and Russ only laughed at them, at the same time he was pelting Laddie.