"

"Let's see. Who owns this place?"

"I do."

Old Man Hatton's face broke into a sunburst of laugh-wrinkles. He threw
back his head and went the scale from roar to chuckle. "One on me.
Pretty good. Have to tell Angie that one."

Chug walked to the street with him. "Your daughter, she's got a lot of
nerve, all right. And that girl with her--Weld. Say, not a whimper out
of her and the blood running down her face. She all right?"

"Cut her head a little. They're both all right. Angie wouldn't even stay
in bed. Well, as I say, if there's anything--?"

Chug flushed a little. "Tell you what, Mr. Hatton. I'm working on a
thing that'll take the whine out of the Daker."

Old Man Hatton owned the Daker Motor plant among other things. The Daker
is the best car for the money in the world. Not much for looks but
everything in the engine. And everyone who has ever owned one knows that
its only fault is the way its engine moans. Daker owners hate that moan.
When you're going right it sounds a pass between a peanut roaster and a
banshee with bronchitis. Every engineer in the Daker plant had worked
over it.

"Can't be done," said Old Man Hatton.

"Another three months and I'll show you."

"Hope you do, son. Hope you do."

But in another three months Chug Scaritt was one of a million boys
destined to take off a pink-striped shirt, a nobby belted suit, and a
long-visored cap to don a rather bob-tailed brown outfit. It was some
eighteen months later before he resumed the chromatic clothes with an
ardour out of all proportion to their style and cut. But in the interval
between doffing pink-striped shirt and donning pink-striped shirt....

No need to describe Camp Sibley, two miles outside Chippewa, and the way
it grew miraculously, overnight, into a khaki city. No going into detail
concerning the effective combination formed by Chug and a machine gun.
These things were important and interesting. But perhaps not more
interesting than the seemingly unimportant fact that in July following
that April Chug was dancing blithely and rhythmically with Elizabeth
Weld, and saying, "Angie Hatton's a smooth little dancer, all right; but
she isn't in it with you."

For Chippewa, somehow, had fused. Chippewa had forgotten sets, sections,
cliques, factions, and parties, and formed a community. It had,
figuratively, wiped out the railroad tracks, together with all
artificial social boundaries. Chug Scaritt, in uniform, must be kept
happy.