A vignette from my childhood.

One day Johnny, Geary, and I went up Barger Hill to play in the woods. We swung on a grapevine for a while, and went into a cave we knew about up there, and then decided to follow the railroad tracks around the side of the hill and explore new territory. It was hot and dusty walking the tracks, and after a while we headed into the woods again at a place we’d never been. In a few minutes we looked down the hill and saw a little farmstead with a big garden, including a whole row of watermelons. Geary said, “I’m thirsty. I’m going to go down there and get a watermelon.” Johnny and I just looked at each other and stayed where we were. We weren’t too sure about this kind of adventure.
So Geary goes sneaking down the hill through the woods and up to the back side of the garden. Then, on his hands and knees so he won’t be seen, he goes up the watermelon row to pick a good one. About that time Johnny and I see the farmer coming out his back door with a shotgun (loaded with birdshot I’m sure). We couldn’t yell to Geary without giving away our position, and we didn’t have much time to think about it anyway.
All of a sudden “BLAM!” Geary comes flying up the hill toward us and we all take off over the ridge with another shot echoing off the hills. We were running so hard down the other side of the hill that we couldn’t have stopped if we’d wanted to. By this time Geary had passed me and Johnny (it’s wonderful what an inspiration to running a gunshot can be), and we careened down the hill to a sudden rocky drop-off. As I said, we were running way too fast to stop, so Geary grabs a little tree at the edge of the rock and uses his momentum to swing back around onto the hillside and keep running. Johnny and I had no choice but to do the same thing.
Anyway, no one was hurt, but we did have to settle for getting a drink from the creek instead of a nice fresh watermelon.