"I’m loco," admitted Tex. "What I want is some center-fire .38 shorts. Couple of boxes will be enough." Williams flashed a look at the walnut handle of the heavy Colt at his customer’s thigh. He could see that it was no .38. Suspicion prompted him and he wondered if his companion was a two-gun man, with only one of them being openly worn. Such a combination was not a rarity. A gun in a shoulder holster or a derringer on an elastic up a sleeve might well use such a cartridge. This would be well to speak to Bud Haines about. "You would ’a’ saved yore valuable time, an’ mine, if you’d said so when you first come in," ironically replied Williams. "Got plenty of .45’s, quite some .44’s, less .41’s, and a few .38’s in th’ long cat’ridges. I ain’t got no .38 shorts, nor .32’s, nor .22’s, nor no putty for putty blowers. Folks around these diggin’s as totes guns mostly wants ’em man-size." "I reckon so," agreed Tex pleasantly. "Don’t blame ’em. Failin’ in th’ other qualifications they’d naturally do th’ best they could to make up for them they lacked. I’m shore sorry you ain’t got ’em because my rifle cat’ridges are runnin’ low. That’s what comes of havin’ to buy a gun that don’t eat regulation food. It was th’ only one he had, an’ I had to take it quick, bein’ pressed hard at th’ time. Time, tide, an’ posses wait for no man. Yo’re dead shore you ain’t got ’em, huh?" "Well, lemme see," cogitated the proprietor, scratching his head. "I did have some--they sent me some shorts by mistake an’ I never took th’ time to send ’em back. You wait till I look." "Then you’ve got ’em now," said Tex. "You never could sell ’em in these diggin’s, where folks as totes guns mostly wants ’em man-size. I’ll wait till you see." He idly watched the scowling proprietor as he went behind the counter and dropped to one knee, his back to his customer. As he started to pull boxes from against the wall Tex silently sat on the counter as if better to watch him. Williams was talking more to himself than to Tex, intent on trying to remember what he had done with the shorts, and save himself a protracted search. "Kept ’em with th’ rest of th’ cat’ridges till I got mad from nearly allus takin’ ’em down for longs. I think mebby I put ’em about here." Tex leaned swiftly backward, his hand leaping to one of the wide-mouthed bottles on the shelf. "They shore are a nuisance," he said in deep sympathy. "I allus have more or less trouble gettin’ ’em," he admitted, his hands working silently and swiftly with the cork. "Didn’t hardly hope to get ’em here," he confessed as he swung back and replaced the depleted bottle. He assumed an erect position again, one hand resting in a coat pocket. "Shore sorry to put you to all this trouble," he apologized; "but if you got ’em you are lucky to git rid of ’em, in this town."