"Not where there's any chance to run, if he wanted to bite me. You go down. The water's real nice and cool."
Not one of them wanted to go down, and the council they held around the mouth of that well used up a good deal of what was left of that morning.
"Tell you what," said Jim Chandler at last, "I'm getting hungry. Let's go for dinner, and not say a word to anybody about it, and come back with a rope. We can rope him out."
There was a unanimous vote in favor of that, for Jim was not the only member of the council who had been thinking about his dinner. There was not an ounce of listlessness among them all the way back to the village, and there was plenty of rope at the side of the old well early in the afternoon.
"Is he there yet?" said Charley, eagerly, as he came up.
"Ba-a-a-a-a! ba-a!" arose in response from the dismal depths, where the ram was awaiting his deliverance.
"Ain't his feet wet by this time? Let's get some fence rails," said Put. "Good ones, too."
"Or we may join the ram," remarked Dan Martin. "That's it, Put, make a slip-noose."
"I'm going for his horns, soon as the rails get here."
That was quickly enough, and there was no special difficulty in dropping a wide noose over the horns of that ram, and in drawing it tight.