“They won’t try that again,” I said.

“No; ’tain’t likely. But they’ll try somethin’. Don’t you ever b’lieve they’re goin’ to g-g-give up.”

“We’ve got ’em beat easy,” says I.

Mark shook his head. “I could tell ’em somethin’,” says he, “that would lick us in a minute.”

“It’s lucky we’re fightin’ against them instead of you,” says I, sarcastic-like. “How’d you go about it to capture the cave?”

“Well,” says he, “the first thing I’d do would be to make sh-sh-sh-sh—”

“Whistle,” says I.

“Shields,” he finished up with a rush.

Nothing to it, was there, except thinking of it? It would be the simplest thing in the world for Batten and Bill to come climbing right up in our faces if they were sheltered from our pebbles behind some kind of a shield. They could keep right on a-coming and laugh at us while they were doing it.

“They’ll never think of it,” says I.

“It’s only a question of time,” stuttered Mark. “What I’m wonderin’ is, will they think of it before help comes from Wicksville?”

It looked as if Batten and Bill were going to settle down to starve us out—a regular siege. They knew, of course, that we two boys couldn’t carry off the engine; but, then, they must have guessed that they couldn’t keep us bottled up very long. They had seen Sammy, and Sammy was gone. If I had been in their shoes I would have reasoned out that he was gone for help. We knew he wasn’t gone for anything but to get away from the poor-farm man, but what we knew didn’t help Batten and Bill.

We sat and watched them, and they sat and watched us. Once in a while one of them would get up and move around, but for a half-hour by Mark’s watch they didn’t make a hostile advance.

“They ain’t got as much sense as I give ’em credit for,” Mark says.

“I hope they don’t git more’n they’ve got,” says I.

“If they hain’t clean foolish,” he says, “they’ll figger it out pretty soon.”

“If it was back in the time of knights and armor and them things,” I told him, “they’d think of shields quick. But nobody civilized has used sich things for hundreds of years. Men jest stand up and git shot. That’s why they don’t git the idee. Maybe Batten and Bill ain’t educated so’s they know about armor.”

“I should think,” says Mark, deliberate-like, “they’d git educated. Nobody’d have to shoot me with pebbles more’n a dozen times before I thought of gittin’ behind somethin’ or other.”

Men are never as quick planning things as boys. And when they do scheme something out it generally isn’t as good. You take a boy and he’ll hit on more good things in an hour than a man will in a week. It doesn’t look to me as though imaginations grew up with most men; they leave them behind somewheres before they git old enough to vote.

After a while we saw Bill jump up and take a jack-knife out of his pocket. He looked around searching, and then went over to a clump of willows which he began to cut down and throw in a pile.

“What’s that for?” I wanted to know.

Mark scratched his head. “They’ve decided on somethin’,” says he, “but what it is I don’t see clear.”

Bill kept on cutting and cutting till he had a big pile of green boughs. When he had enough he sat down by them with his back toward us and began doing something to them—we couldn’t see what.

“He’s makin’ some sort of a contraption,” I says.

“I’ll bet,” says Mark, “it’s some kind of a sh-sh-sh—”

“Shield,” I finished for him.

“That’s it,” says he.

Batten walked over by Bill and commenced to work, too. They fiddled around ten or fifteen minutes, and we could hear them talking and laughing, but they were so far away we couldn’t hear what they said. I wished we could have.

Mark drew a long breath. “This,” says he, “is the end of the battle. We’re licked!”

“Maybe not.”

He just smiled sort of regretful. “We’re licked,” he says again, “but we hain’t disgraced. We kept on fightin’ as long as we could.”

“And we’ll keep on some more,” I said sharp. “They ain’t got us or the turbine yet.”

“They’ll git us,” he says, and then grinned sly-like, with that cunning look to his eyes that always comes into them when he’s got a scheme. “They’ll git us, but maybe they’ll be consid’rable disapp’inted about the t-t-t—”

“Turbine,” says I. “How so? If they git to the cave they’ll have it, won’t they?”

“It looks that way,” says he, “but you never can tell.”

I got up and looked inside. There, covered up with the sheets, was the engine, so I knew Mark was only talking to encourage me.

Batten and Bill stood up and faced around to us so we could see what they had been making.

“There!” says Mark. “What’d I tell you?”

Sure enough. They had made shelters out of those willow branches. Not shields, but just big green bundles tied together with handkerchiefs and string. They were so big that when Batten and Bill held them up nothing but their feet showed.

Right off they started up the hill. The attack commenced.

“Shoot,” says Mark, “and keep on shootin’.”

“You bet!” I whispered to myself.

The enemy looked like two walking brush-heaps. Honest, it was kind of funny to see them crawling up-hill, and then, on the other hand, it wasn’t comical at all, for there was no stopping them. The minute they stepped into range we began firing, but our pebbles spatted against the shields and didn’t do a bit of harm. Once in a while we managed to clip Batten on the leg or Bill on the arm, but that was all.

On they came, slow as snails, but getting nearer and nearer. We peppered at them as fast as we could set stones in our slings, but we might as well have been ............