Page:Traffics and Discoveries.djvu/18

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6
TRAFFICS AND DISCOVERIES


tell of the Laughton-Zigler automatic two-inch field-gun, with self- feeding hopper, single oil- cylinder recoil, and ball-bearing gear throughout? Or Laughtite, the new explosive? Absolutely uniform in effect, and one-ninth the bulk of any present effete charge—flake, cannonite, cordite, troisdorf, cellulose, cocoa, cord, or prism—I don't care what it is. Laughtite's immense; so's the Zigler automatic. It's me. It's fifteen years of me. You are not a gun-sharp ? I am sorry. I could have surprised you. Apart from my gun, my tale don't amount to much of anything. I thank you, but I don't use any tobacco you'd be likely to carry... Bull Durham? Bull Durham! I take it all back—every last word. Bull Durham—here! If ever you strike Akron, Ohio, when this fool - war's over, remember you've Laughton O. Zigler in your vest pocket. Including the city of Akron. We've a little club there. . . Hell ! What's the sense of talking Akron with no pants?

My gun?. . . For two cents I'd have shipped her to our Filipeens. 'Came mighty near it too; but from what I'd read in the papers, you can't trust Aguinaldo's crowd on scientific matters. Why don't I offer it to our army ? Well, you've an effete aristocracy running yours, and we've a crowd of politicians. The results are practically identical. I am not taking any U.S. Army in mine.

I went to Amsterdam with her—to this Dutch junta that supposes it's bossing the war. I wasn't brought up to love the British for one thing, and for another I knew that if she got in her fine work