Barr’s Big Gun Found.
So saying, the duck-shooter led the way down a well-beaten path, which ran from his door, through the clearing into the woods behind the cabin. He followed a zig-zag course through the thick bushes for the distance of a quarter of a mile or more, and finally stopped beside a fallen log, which lay about a stone’s throw from the path. The log was hollow, and the big gun was snugly hidden on the inside. With much tugging and panting Barr pulled it out, and raised it to a perpendicular, so that his visitors could have a fair view of it. After that, to show them how big it was, he stood his heavy duck-gun up beside it. The contrast made Jones and Lester open their eyes.
“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.”
Enoch and Barr laughed loudly.
“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?”