Page:Baseball Joe on the School Nine.djvu/44

 afraid. He was debating in his mind whether it would not be better to rush to the ground below, where he would have a better chance if it came to an out-and-out-fight. Yet Joe had a certain advantage on top of the snow wall, for he could easily push Hiram down. Yet this was not his idea of a contest of that kind.

"I'll fix you, Matson!" muttered the bully. "I'll teach you to push me down! You might have broken my arm or leg," he added in an injured tone.

"I didn't push you!" retorted our hero. "You tried to hit me and missed. Then you fell."

"That's right!" chimed in Peaches, amid a silence, for the general snowball fight had ceased in anticipation of another kind of an encounter.

Hiram balanced himself half way up the white wall.

"What did you smash me in the face with a snowball for?" he demanded. "We made it up that no one was to aim at another fellow's face at close range, and you know it."

"Of course I know it," answered Joe. "But that rule applied to hard balls, and I didn't use one. I threw a soft ball at you, and you know why I did it, too. I'll let Luke Fodick have one, too, if he does it again."