"Aw, does it make any difference to these here guys what you reelize, or what you don't? I ask you, Doc?"
He spat disgustedly upon the sand, rolled his quid into the other cheek, wiped his thin lips with the back of his right hand, then his fingers mechanically sought the trigger guard[pg 139] again and he cast a perfunctory squint up at the parapet.
"Believe me," he said, "a guy can veeve himself into any kind of trouble if he yells loud enough. I'm getting mine."
"Well, Duck," I said, "it's a good game——"
"Aw," he retorted angrily, "it ain't my graft an' you know it. What do I care who veeves over here?—An' the 50th Ward goin' to hell an' all!"
I strove to readjust my mind to understand what he had said. I was, you know, that year, the Citizen's Anti-Graft leader in the 50th Ward.... I am, still, if I live; and if I ever can get anything into my head except the stupendous din of this war and the cataclysmic problems depending upon its outcome.... Well, it was odd to remember that petty political conflict as I stood there in the trenches under the gigantic shadow of world-wide disaster—to find myself there, talking with this sallow, wiry, shifty ward leader—this corrupt little local tyrant whom I had opposed in the 50th Ward—this ex-lightweight bruiser, ex-gunman—this dirty little political procurer who[pg 140] had been and was everything brutal, stealthy, and corrupt.
I looked at him curiously; turned and glanced along the line where, presently, I recognized his two familiars, Heinie Baum and Pick-em-up Joe Brady with whom he had started off to "Parus" on a month's summer junket, and with whom he had stumbled so ludicrously into the riff-raff ranks of the 3rd Foreign Legion. Doubtless the 1st and 2nd Legions couldn't stand him and his two friends, although in one company there were many Americans serving.
Thinking of these things, the thunder of the cannonade shaking sand from the parapet, I became conscious that the rat eyes of Duck Werner were furtively watching me.
"You can do me dirt, now, can't you, Doc?" he said with a leer.
"How do you mean?"