"I'll help you make the bullets," Russ offered.

There were plenty of old papers at the bungalow, and soon Russ and
Laddie were tearing them up on the beach near their fort and wadding and
rolling them up into "bullets" and "cannon balls."

"I guess we have enough," said Russ at last. "Come on now, we'll have a
battle."

"Are Rose and Vi going to play?" asked Laddie.

"Nope! Girls never can be in a battle. They can be Red Cross nurses if
they want to. But we won't call 'em until after the fight. They'd only
holler like anything."

Rose and Violet were up in the bungalow playing jackstones, while Margy
and Mun Bun had gone for a walk with their mother. So Russ and Laddie
had the beach to themselves to play on.

Russ got inside the fort and crouched down in the hole he had dug.
Laddie took up his position not far away, a little distance down the
beach, having with him a pile of paper wads that he was to throw at his
brother.

"Are you ready?" asked Laddie.

"All ready!" answered Russ. "Go ahead and fire!"

"Bang! Bang!" shouted Laddie, making believe he was shooting off a gun.
The boys often played this game so they knew just how to do it. "Bang!
Bang!"

Then Laddie began throwing large and small wads of paper at the sand
fort behind which crouched Russ. And Russ threw wads of paper at his
smaller brother.

The sand walls of the fort kept Russ from being "shot" in the battle.
Laddie's "bullets" and "cannon balls" hit the sand walls of the fort
more often than they struck his brother and Russ only laughed at them,
at the same time he was pelting Laddie.

"Oh, say! this is no fun," complained the smaller boy after a bit. "I'm
getting hit all the while and you don't get any at all."

"I do so! I got hit twice!"

"Well, that was when I threw cannon balls up in the air and they came
down on your head like rain."

"Well, you shoot me a few more times and then I'll let you come into the
fort," agreed Russ. "I'll pull down the flag and surrender. Go on, shoot
me some more!"

So Laddie got together more paper "bullets" and "cannon balls" and threw
them at his brother. But hardly any of them hit Russ. The fort was a
good protection and with the flag floating from the top of the hill made
a fine place for him to stay.

"This is the last time I'm going to shoot!" cried Laddie, and he took
good aim with a large wad of paper which he called a "double cannon
ball."

He threw it at Russ and then, from some point