n under the stimulus of things he had
been seeing, "I suppose our gun will kill 'bout forty thousand million
folks--won't it, father?"

"Why no, son, I hope it's not going to be such a beastly gun as that,"
laughed Captain Jones.

"Yes, but, father, isn't a good gun a gun that kills folks? What's the
use making a gun at all if it isn't going to kill folks?"

His father looked at him strangely. "Sonny," he said, "you're hitting
home rather hard."

"Your reasoning is poor, Worth," said Katie; "fact is we make guns to
keep folks from getting killed. If we didn't have the guns everybody
would get killed. Now don't say 'why.'"

"'Cause you don't know why," calmly remarked Worth, adding: "I'll ask
Watts, and if he don't know I'll ask the man that mends the boats."

"Do," said Katie.

Having, to his own satisfaction, exterminated some forty thousand million
members of the human family, Worth opened attack on the puppies. He was
an Indian and they were poor white settlers and he was going to kill
them. No poor white settlers had ever received an Indian so joyously.

But he seemed to have left those forty thousand million souls on his
father's hands. Wayne was looking very serious. He did not respond
to--did not appear to have heard--Katie's remark about Worth needing some
new clothes.

Katie wondered what he was thinking about; she supposed some new kind of
barrel steel. She took it for granted that nothing short of steel could
produce _that_ look.

She was proud of the things that look had done, proud of the distinction
her brother had already won in the army, proud, in advance, of the things
she was confident he would do.

Captain Jones was at the Arsenal on special detail. An invention of his
pertaining to the rifle was being manufactured for tests. There was keen
interest in it and its final adoption seemed assured. It was of
sufficient importance to make his name one of those conspicuous in army
affairs. He had already several lesser things--devices pertaining to
equipment--to his credit and was looked upon as one of the most promising
of the army's men of invention.

And aside from her pride in him, Katie's affection for her brother was
deep, intensified because of their being alone. Their father had died
when Katie was sixteen, died as a result of wounds received long before
in frontier skirmishes, where he had been one of those many brave men to
serve fearlessly and faithfully, men who gave more to their