Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/200

 "Hum-m-m," said Jim, moving the shells around with his finger like a farmer looking over a sample of seed-corn, "Well, if these is them, how did old Gus come to slip one rim-fire in his gun?" Jim held up a shell, a look of stern accusation in his eyes.

"Why, I don't know," Hall replied, a feeling over him far different from the curiosity he attempted to feign. "Did he?"

"No, he never!" Jim declared. "Counted the shots! You never counted no shots. I saw Gus slippin' shells in his gun a minute before he took that crack at Nance—pity he didn't hit him, too!"

"What's the difference?" Hall inquired, taking the shell in question from Jim, looking at it with interest wholly genuine, no pretense in that phase of it at all.

Jim ignored the foolish question, the answer to it being plain to anybody who had the sense of touch.

"It might 'a' went off, I guess it could 'a' went off," speculatively, "but I wouldn't like to risk a rim-fire goin' off in a center-fire gun if I was out a gunnin' for somebody, and I'll nearly bet four bits Gus Sandiver wouldn't, either."

"But what's the difference?" Hall insisted, plainly honest in his perplexity over this technical nicety in ammunition.

Jim looked at him with his big eyebrows drawn threateningly, his face a fighting red above the snowfield of his big white shirt.

"Are you ignorant, or just a darn fool?" he asked. "Center-fire ca'tridges's got a cap in the end—look a-here."