“Tomorrow, Kid, while we have plenty of coin, I want you to get a couple of guns. Thirty-eights,” and he named a certain standard make. “No other kind, remember. You heard what Soldier Johnnie said, and he knew what he was doing. I suppose you’ll go to the first hardware store for them, eh?” he said rather severely.

Those were the good, or bad, old days when any wild-eyed maniac could rush into a hardware store or pawnshop with money enough and buy a gun, guaranteed to kill a man a block away. They would take the number of it, to be sure, in order to get witness fees if the gun worked properly. Today it’s a little more difficult to buy a gun in California. The better stores will not sell them unless the purchaser has a permit. The other stores, and they are quite numerous, take your money today for the gun, and tomorrow you go to the store and get it.

“Oh, I don’t know, I might look around a bit,” I said. “How about getting them in a hockshop?”