The Last Showdown — Max Brand

AT TWELVE I WA A MAN, AT TWENTY-ONE I WAS A GUNFIGHTER.

I didn't know that people in town thought of me as a gunman, since it was my job to protect Chandler's store and the only way I knew how was with a rifle. But everyone in Bostwick knew how many men I'd killed, and that most of those men had been in a drunken heat while I was stone cold sober and steady of nerve. Now they were calling me the lowest name they knew: safety killer, a man who only draws when he's sure he can win.

When Marshal Shane O'Rourke came into town and said, “Cross, you're nothing but a murderer,” I finally saw myself for what I was, and I didn't like it. I told O'Rourke I would leave Bostwick and try to make a new life, become a decent man. I knew I was as strong as I was fast, and that a clenched fist is often as good as a gun in knocking a man to the ground. I swore then to make my way without a gun.

But I soon found that the world outside of Bostwick was tough and mean, and when a man has once been a killer, it's not easy for him to turn away when a fellow calls him a coward