Mun Bun felt like bursting into tears. To see his beloved big brother, Russ, knocked down in this fashion was enough to make any small boy cry. It was almost like the time when Russ was so nearly run over by the truck.
But suddenly it came to Mun Bun that he must be brave. If Russ were badly hurt Mun Bun must do something about it—just what, of course, Mun Bun did not know. But he felt he must not cry.
So he “squeezed back” the tears, as he said later, and then he did what perhaps was not just right, but what, I think, most children would have done had the boy who started the fight been a big boy, as was the peddler lad.
Mun Bun caught up a stone and threw it at the peddler boy.
“You let my brother alone!” cried Mun Bun angrily. “I’ll throw another stone at you if you don’t. And I’ll call my father! I’ll go get my father now—and Farmer Joel and Adam! That’s what I’ll do!”
Usually Mun Bun was not a very straight shot with a stone or a baseball. Generally, when Mun Bun threw, Russ would laugh and say the safest place was right in front of the little fellow. For Mun Bun seldom hit the thing he aimed at.
However, this time, as luck would have it, the stone he threw struck the peddler boy on the shoulder. And then the peddler boy ran away, leaving Russ lying there. I think the peddler boy ran more because of what Mun Bun said about Mr. Bunker being called than because of the stone, for it was a small one and could not have hurt him much.
“There! He’s gone, Russ!” cried Mun Bun, as he ran to his brother. “You needn’t be ’fraid any more!”
“Pooh! I’m not afraid!” boasted Russ, as he arose. He had been stunned by the blow and the fall, and really was not much hurt. “I was going to get up and punch him,” went on Russ. “He hit me too sudden, or he wouldn’t have knocked me down. I was just getting up to hit him.”
“He ran away. I made him run!” cried Mun Bun. “I hit him with a stone and he ran away!”