“When I thought of Hank being thus abused, just because a cussed little dog--a kind of beast he ain’t never seen in his life before--has run him out, my fighting-blood began to run quick all around my veins and arteries, and I thinks to myself, ‘Oh, you gol-darn potato-bug assassin! You slayer of squ’sh bugs! Here’s where you get the thirty-third degree of Free and Accepted Masonry with all its tips, spurs, right-angles and variations--so mote it be!’ “It wasn’t the hour for blue checks to run in my direction. I grabbed the elevator wheel and sent the stream heavenward, started her swinging, hoping to drop it right on the back of Mr. Rancher’s neck. I didn’t intend to push him into the bank and hold him there. No, I was the slickest boy handling a stream the country contained, and I thought, perhaps, I could hit him in the neck with about seven hundred assorted tons of water, and leave his hat hanging in the air. I wanted to do something real nice to him. “Well, it was _me_ that got it. I always told the Boss he didn’t load the tripod heavy enough. When I sent the stream up she teetered for fair. It was like a camel buck-jumping. There ain’t much give to three iron legs, and so, friends, I was sitting up and down times oftener than I could realize. “There wasn’t a bronc’ buster that wouldn’t have yelled, ‘He’s a rider!’ if he’d seen me stick to that machine. We crow-hopped on the rocks back and forwards, and alleman’ all. We pitched forward and back, and we did the double teeter, and as for the stream--the smack when she hit things sounded just like a little small giant baby, nine hundred feet high, clapping his hands with glee. Sometimes through the whiz and howl I could hear men’s voices asking why I done so, and they no longer sounded like the voices of comrades and friends. “I was helpless as a child; couldn’t grab lever, wheel nor nothing. Finally one leg toppled off an edge of rock and then--! Well, she shot the cook’s shanty across the stream two hundred yards first whack. It was so sudden it didn’t even put the fire out. The boys took their solemn oaths the kitchen stove went across, smoking as calm and peaceful as anything, just like it had decided to take a little fly. Nothing to interrupt business, but just the kind of exercise you would think a cook-stove would take. Yet they was astonished that I should shoot a cook-stove across the stream. “While they was standing there astonished, the old nozzle bucked ’way back, and plowed a well in a bank ten feet away. I bet you that stream could shoot a hole right up Niagara Falls, and when she mixed it with the mess of dirt and rock in that bank, kicking it backwards at me, old Napoleon at Waterloo was a dum poor effigy for Hy Smith. I couldn’t see how it was ever going to be possible for me to breathe again, and the awful roar and swatting and smashing makes it queer how I ever got to hear or think again.