Gunshots

It is amazing how something that is not alive, that is smaller than a large insect, and isn't even sharp can alter lives so quickly. There is a bang. A body may fall. A life may be cut. Another life may change.

And once this change has occurred, it is irrevocable.

There's no going back.

You can't take back a bullet.

If you put your finger to the trigger, you'd better mean it. Because when you pull the trigger, it is out of your control.

Billy the Kid knew this. He'd learned it the hard way.

The first shot changed his life forever.

Looking back now, it was stupid. He shouldn't have let it get to him. Windy Cahill had been just another bully. He'd always dealt with his type before.

Cahill had annoyed him, with his cruel jokes, and "playful" combat. Shoving him around, ruffling his hair like he was three. He'd laughed it off. At first. Then it had gotten worse. The joking edge vanished. Combat quit being "funny".

Then one day, it became fatal.

He'd walked into Atkin's catina exhausted. He hadn't been thinking much. He'd staggered in there, plunked himself down at a table, and tried to regain some sense of anything. Today life had been cruel. People generally didn't give him a hard time, but it still happened. Mainly when it hit home that no matter how hard he tried, he was still just a skinny seventeen year-old. And a horse thief.

Mama would've been so proud. he thought, wryly. Seventeen years old, and almost nothing to my name, nothing to back me up but talk. This job at Camp Grant hadn't been easy to get ahold of. The words of the hirer still stung a bit.

"You're what, son, fourteen, fifteen?" "I'm seventeen. I work hard sir. I know it doesn't look like it, but I'm up to any job you can give me." The man had shaken his head, marvelling a bit at his audacity. "Well you know what? Since you can handle anything, kid, we'll see how you do as a teamster. you start today."

It could have been worse. Anything to leave behind stealing horses and selling stolen saddles. He wouldn't have made it much longer at that. He was too recognizable. He didn't want to hang.

A crash of the door into the catina shook him out of his daze. Oh lord. It was Windy Cahill. Billy ducked his head lower, trying not to be...darnit, too late. Cahill was headed his way.

Windy Cahill swaggered up to the bar, and ordered a drink. Swirling it in his hand, he swaggered towards Billy. The Kid could practically feel the tormenting already. He broke a rule of his. He raised his head and gave Cahill a glare. Cahill felt the challenge in his gaze, acknowledged the threat.

"What are you looking at pimp?"

That one word was the pebble that started the avalanche.

"Your ugly face, you son of a bitch." The words were out of his mouth before he could rethink them. He could see at once that it had been a stupid stupid stupid terrible idea to say that.

Cahill's face darkened. "No where near as ugly as I'm gonna make yours."

Billy saw it coming. Another day he might have avoided it, but not today.

Cahill grabbed him by the shoulders, and flung him on the floor. He then kicked him hard in the ribs and dropped his knees onto Billy's chest, grabbed his throat with one hand and slugged him in the face.

Cahill obviously meant buisiness. A second, then a third blow landed on his face. He struggled, but Cahill outweighed him by close to 200 lbs and he had no chance. Billy tasted blood. Nobody was intervening.

He was going to die. Windy Cahill was gonna beat him into bloody pulp, then throw his corpse to the dogs.

In a panic, his free hand began worming towards his belt, where he had a .45 pistol.

In a frenzy, he managed to drag it from his belt, and cock the gun, before pressing it against Cahill's side, and pulling the trigger.

A gunshot tore the world apart, and left his ears ringing.

Windy Cahill fell backwards off of him, trailing blood onto the floor. Billy scrambled back from him, and before anybody could react, he ran for it.

The cantina's patrons stared after him. Cahill was gasping on the floor. A horse bolted by outside. For a minute no one moved, then people started running outside to see where the Kid was headed, hurrying towards Windy Cahill and calling halfheartedly for a doctor. As much as the man was disliked, the camp needed its blacksmith.

Their calls didn't accomplish much. Doctor, or no doctor, the blacksmith died the next day. Windy Cahill had been just another bully. Now he was a dead bully.

Billy rode for a day, before he finally nearly fell off of the horse. As he slid awkardly to the ground, he noticed the blood on his shirt, that had spurted after he'd...the realization of what he'd done suddenly hit him.

He'd killed a man.

The Kid lost it then. He threw up. He cried. And the thing that sickened him the most, was how easy it had been. A finger to the trigger. A man dead. All his fault.

He'd broken a sacred rule of wielding a gun.

Before you draw your gun, be certain that you mean it.

That first shot changed everything. A second shot nearly ended it.