“You're a liar,” said one of the other boys. “We ain't afraid, are we Bill?”
“Naw,” said Bill.
“Who's a liar?” said the first speaker, doubling his fists. “I'll knock your block off in about a minute.”
“Ah, come on an' do it, Rube!” taunted the other.
Old Hundred hereupon interfered. “Let's not fight, let's play,” he said. “If they don't know how, we'll teach 'em, eh Rube? Want to learn, boys?”
They looked at him for a moment with the instinctive suspicion of their class, decided in his favor, and assented. Like all men, Old Hundred was flattered by this mark of confidence from the severest critics in the world. He and Rube hunted out a large rock, and placed it on the curb. Each boy found his individual duck, Old Hundred tried to count out for It, couldn't remember the rhyme, and had to turn the job over to Rube, who delivered himself of the following:
“As I went up to Salt Lake
I met a little rattlesnake,
He'd e't so much of jelly cake,
It made his little belly ache.”
When It was thus selected, automatically and poetically, Old Hundred drew a line in the road, parallel to the curb, It put his duck on the rock, and the rest started to pitch. Suddenly one demon spotted me, a smiling by-stander. “Hi,” he called, “Old Coattails ain't playin'.”
“Quitter, quitter, quitter!” taunted Old Hundred.
I started to make some remark about the self-consciousness of a learned litterateur of forty-five, but my speech was drowned in a derisive howl from the buzz-saws. I meekly accepted the inevitable, and hunted myself out a duck.