Peter Bailey said: "Let's go up to Davenport's and see if the raft is there." Davenport's was a general term used to describe a field, and a pond in that field. The pond was a small affair, with no large amount of water, but a great deal of black mud. It was not without certain tremendous fascinations, however, for we believed that in one place it had no bottom. Moreover, leeches abounded. Few, if any of us, had ever seen a leech; but we were aware that if one of them attached himself to the human body, no power under Heaven could drag him off, and he would not stop his infernal work until he had drained away every drop of blood. Ed Mason and I had other reasons than the leeches for not wanting to experiment with the raft at Davenport's. Only a week before we had been capsized from that raft. We had not found the bottomless spot, nor been attacked by leeches; but we had crawled ashore in such a condition of muddiness that our reception at our respective homes had been depressing. Davenport's could get along without us for a while. Peter's suggestion fell flat. Just then Charley Carter caught sight of a spare piece of clothes-line in my side yard. He ran and seized it, shouting "Lassos!" It was a happy idea. The boundless West, the prairies, herds of buffaloes, roving Indians, cowboys--these were the visions that excited us in an instant, especially the cowboys. What a life is theirs--to gallop forever with cracking revolvers and whirling lassos; to capture the mighty buffalo, and bring down the hated Indian! Why should we not do that? Mr. Hawkins, next door, might continue to smoke his pipe to the monotonous song of the ph[oe]be. For us, the career of danger far beyond the Mississippi; the life that knows no fear on the wind-swept prairie! A lack of any more rope in my yard, and my firm refusal to have the clothes-lines cut down entire, made us depart to Bailey's stable, where desperate enterprises were set on foot. We made the lassos and drew upon our armory for wooden revolvers. These are thoroughly satisfactory weapons if you wave them in the air and shout "Bang!" at frequent intervals. But immediately Peter Bailey's genius for military organization asserted itself. He and Rob Currier, the two Carters, and Horace Winslow would be the cowboys. The hostile Indians must be impersonated, of course, by Ed Mason and myself. What was the sense of having cowboys without Indians for them to destroy? So we should have no lassos, nor yet revolvers, but only tomahawks. Right here I drew the line. Ed backed me up, and we announced our ultimatum. Indians we would be, and lassoless we would go, but to ask us to refrain from carrying revolvers was demanding too much. We stuck out for revolvers, and intimated that a refusal would cause us to withdraw from all operations that afternoon. So the concession was made.