This story was an entry to Young Authors’ Competition 2020, and won the runners up prize in the under-9 category. In the competition, a picture was provided and the story had to be written around it, with a word limit of 500. Presented below is both the picture and the prize-winning story, Watering Cowboys.
The Watering Cowboys
Avyaya Iyer
London, UK
On a dusty windy day in Wisconsin summer, Jolly and Slick were riding horses. Jolly and Slick were cowboys from neighbouring villages in Wisconsin. They had met a few weeks back, hit it off and decided to take a horse ride all the way from Wisconsin to Nebraska. They expected the 500 mile ride to take a fortnight each way and they had already rode half way to Cedar river. The entire ride so far had been beautiful and scenic and they expected the rest of the way to be likewise.
Jolly and Slick met at a common friend’s birthday party and got along well. At Cedar Rapids, a quaint town in Iowa, they found a small hotel run by a friendly couple, Mr and Mrs Jones and they decided to stay overnight.
The hotel had a nice garden in the backyard full of roses, daisies, daffodils, sunflowers and bluebells. Both Jolly and Slick had a common love of plants and flowers, which was very unlike most cowboys. Instead of carrying guns with bullets, they in fact liked carrying water guns so they can water plants when they got a chance. They were too tired to do anything now, but they talked about how they would spend time in the garden the next morning.
Next morning, both Jolly and Slick went to the dining hall eager to enjoy a whole variety of breakfast items - cornflakes, sandwiches, eggs, bread and juice.
“Hmmm. This breakfast is amazing!” said Jolly.
“We love it! Yeah! Yeah!” cheered Slick.
After breakfast, they walked to the gardening yard in the hotel looking forward to relaxing with some gardening before their next day of riding their horses. Soon, Jolly decided to water the roses, but then Slick also wanted to water the roses. Then, both of them started to argue.
“I said I water the roses first.” complained Jolly.
“No, I did.” shouted Slick, getting greedy to water some beautiful pink and red roses.
After a while, both Jolly and Slick got really mad, cross and angry with each other.
They both wanted to water the beautiful fresh looking roses.
Eventually, they both took out their water guns, pointed it at each other and stuck their thumbs to the trigger ready to make the water come out. After a blink of the eye, they began to shoot!
First, Jolly shot a tiny droplet of water like a dew.
Then, Slick shot a whole stream of water like someone sliding down the most watery water slide in the whole universe!
They were shouting at each other causing a racket. Mrs. Jones heard this and came out.
She asked “Why are you arguing?”
“Because we both want to water the roses.” replied Jolly.
“But I am watering them. You both can help.” she said.
“Hooray!” Jolly and Slick yelled and decided to water the plants together.
The two cowboy friends made up and never, ever fought again.
