“I couldn’t be hired to fire off that thing,” said the latter. “I should think the recoil would break one’s shoulder all to pieces.”
“You surely don’t imagine that this cannon is fired like an ordinary gun, do you?” exclaimed the former. “Why, man alive, it takes a quarter of a pound of powder and a pound and a half of shot to load it. More than that, it weighs seventy-five pounds.”
“It’s the biggest thing in the shape of a gun I ever saw,” said Jones.
“And yet it is a toy when compared with one the detectives, who were sent down from Baltimore, seized last year,” answered Enoch. “That one was ten feet long, weighed a hundred and sixty pounds, and cost a small fortune to men who have to make their living the way Barr does. These big guns bring them in their bread and butter, and you can imagine how friendly they feel toward such fellows as Gus Egan, who interfere with their business. These wild fowl belong to nobody, and I say that a man has the right to get as many of them as he can, and in any way he can.”
If Enoch had taken the trouble to interview Gus Egan on this subject, he would have found, to his great surprise, no doubt, that he did not know what he was talking about. The ex-sergeant could have told him that all wild game is the property of the State, and that the people at large, and not single individuals, are the ones who have the right to say when and how it shall be killed or captured.
“Them’s my sentiments,” said Barr, “and I ain’t going to let no sportsmen’s clubs who live up north come down here and tell me what I shall and what I shan’t do. They want fun, but I want grub.”
“And you ought to have it,” said Lester. “What would Gus Egan’s father say if you should go over to his house and tell him that he must stop raising cattle and horses for the Philadelphia markets?”
“I reckon he’d kick me off’n the place, if he was big enough,” answered Barr, “and the law wouldn’t tech him for it; but if he should come over to my shanty and tell me that I must quit shooting ducks, and I should take him by the collar and show him the way down the beach to his boat, he’d have me arrested for ’sault and battery. I don’t see no sense in such laws.”
“There’s no justice in them, certainly,” Jones remarked. “Now how do you shoot this thing?”