"A gun fighter lets hisself git stiff," he winningly began; "then, first thing he knows, some fine day--crack! Like that! All his own fault, too, 'cause he ain't kep' in trim." He jauntily twirled one of the heavy revolvers on a forefinger. "Not me, though, pard! Keep m'self up and comin', you bet! Ketch me not ready to fan the old forty-four! I guess not! Some has thought they could. Oh, yes; plenty has thought they could. Crack! Like that!" He wheeled, this time fatally intercepting the foe as he treacherously crept round a corner of the bunk house. "Buryin' ground for you, mister! That's all--bury-in' ground!" The desperado replaced one of the weapons and patted the other with grisly affection. In the excess of my admiration I made bold to reach for it. He relinquished it to me with a mother's yearning. And all too legible in the polished butt of the thing were notches! Nine sinister notches I counted--not fresh notches, but emphatic, eloquent, chilling. I thrust the bloody record back on its gladdened owner. "Never think it to look at me?" said he as our eyes hung above that grim bit of bookkeeping. "Never!" I warmly admitted. "Me--I always been one of them quiet, mild-mannered ones that you wouldn't think butter would melt in their mouth--jest up to a certain point. Lots of 'em fooled that way about me--jest up to a certain point, mind you--then, crack! Buryin' ground--that's all! Never go huntin' trouble--understand? But when it's put on me--say!" He lovingly replaced the weapon--with its mortuary statistics--doffed the broad-brimmed hat with its snake-skin garniture, and placed a forefinger athwart an area of his shining scalp which is said by a certain pseudoscience to shield several of man's more spiritual attributes. The finger traced an ancient but still evil looking scar. "One creased me there," he confessed--"a depity marshal--that time they had a reward out for me, dead or alive." I was for details. "What did you do?" Jimmie Time stayed laconic. "Left him there--that's all!" It was arid, yet somehow informing. It conveyed to me that a marshal had been cleverly put to needing a new deputy. "Burying ground?" I guessed. "That's all!" He laughed venomously--a short, dry, restrained laugh. "They give me a nickname," said he. "They called me Little Sure Shot. No wonder they did! Ho! I should think they would of called me something like that." He lifted his voice. "Hey! Boogles!"