“Come back!” mother cried out.

I looked at Jed, and found him looking at me.  I knew he was stubborn and had made up his mind to be the last one in.  So I started to advance, and at the same instant he started.

“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.

Mother took it out on me with a lecture on disobedience.  She must have known, after what I had done, that father wouldn’t let her smack me; for, while she was lecturing, father winked at me across her shoulder.  It was the first time he had ever winked at me.

Back in the rifle pit Jed and I were heroes.  The women wept and blessed us, and kissed us and mauled us.  And I confess I was proud of the demonstration, although, like Jed, I let on that I did not like all such making-over.  But Jeremy Hopkins, a great bandage about the stump of his left wrist, said we were the stuff white men were made out of—­men like Daniel Boone, like Kit Carson, and Davy Crockett.  I was prouder of that than all the rest.

The remainder of the day I seem to have been bothered principally with the pain of my right eye caused by the sand that had been kicked into it by the bullet.  The eye was bloodshot, mother said; and to me it seemed to hurt just as much whether I kept it open or closed.  I tried both ways.

Things were quieter in the rifle pit, because all had had water, though strong upon us was the problem of how the next water was to be procured.  Coupled with this was the known fact that our ammunition was almost exhausted.  A thorough overhauling of the wagons by father had resulted in finding five pounds of powder.  A very little more was in the flasks of the men.