Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/203

 of Dr. Hall what he had poured on the sponge, that he appeared abrupt almost to displeasure. He hurried off with an excuse about dinner, repeating over and over the name of the potent thing that went into a man's eye or ear and drove him mad.

Dr. Hall stood a little while, contemplating the empty cartridges in his hand. Presently he opened the closet door and took out Old Doc Ross's gun, slipped the rim-fire cartridge that had brought confusion on him into an empty chamber, tossed the weapon back again, wise in the humiliating discovery that something more than length and diameter is wanting to make pistol cartridges alike.

Foolish of him, he thought. In his great concern to hold himself free of obligation to anybody in Damascus, in case last night's unkown champion should prove to be one of the boys, as Burnett had said, he had only succeeded in giving them another laugh at his expense. For Elizabeth's eyes he had another cartridge, one that matched in every way the others from Gus Sandiver's gun, except for a plug of gray lead in the end. It was the one that had been under Gus Sandiver's hammer when the unknown shooter's bullet stung the old horse-thief in the wrist.