Ok, I figured out what was happening
1st -- the value of 0 shows up as a space when you print it! I wasn't aware of this "feature" before. So you are right, the second value was a zero... but you are wrong that I initialized it that way.
2nd -- I should have included the above code. The code was txt = "0 12". However, I was using a function which modified the buffer.
Here is where it gets interesting. Once I modified the buffer of a constant character array... very few of the character arrays after it would work! This was happening even if I reset the pointer to "0 14" or something similar -- that second value would be always taken as 0.
I think there is something funny in the compiler (probably to save space) where you absolutely should not modify a constant character array -- once you do, you can never again know what ANY constant character arrays do!
Thanks for your help guys.