Kid Curry stood calmly in the middle of the street, still poised in his gunman's stance with his legs slightly apart and parallel to his shoulders, and his eyes still fixed on his challenger. The only post-draw change of his posture was that his arms now hung at his sides, and the gun in his right hand still smoldered from the single spent bullet.

Twenty feet in front of him Curry's defeated challenger was on his knees, his butt resting on the heels of his boots, and his left hand clutching his right wrist as a crowd began to gather around him.

Kid took a long, deep inhalation of air, held it tight in his chest until his lungs began to protest. Then he slowly exhaled through slightly parted lips as he began the process of emerging from his self induced trance of the gunfighter. He heard the quick slap of leather as he slipped his gun back into his holster. Finally, he turned his head to the left to see his partner watching him from the boardwalk, giving him the customary nod of affirmation and the brief appreciative smile. Kid shook his head slightly, acknowledging his partner's safety, then turned and walked away.

Hannibal Heyes knew the post shootout routine. He knew Kid now required time alone to put the gunfighter to rest, time to decompress, time to come to terms with what Kid often referred to as the hollow victory.

What Heyes didn't know was how long this decompression process actually took, so he always gave Kid at least an hour to separate Kid the gunfighter from Kid, the man.

Kid walked into their hotel room, unstrapped his hardware, and slung his holster on the bedpost. He sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, the fingers of his left hand massaging the fingers of his right. His eyes found and focused on a knot in the grain of the wood floor. There he sat, motionless, while the shootist retreated to the recesses of his mind.

Heyes returned to the room an hour later. Kid had moved to a chair at the table near the window and he absently watched the street two stories below.

"You alright, Kid?" Heyes asked, initiating the final phase of putting the incident to rest.

Kid nodded once, but didn't look at his partner. He sighed heavily.

"All the time I was learning to be a fast draw with a good aim... All the hours I spent adjusting the weight of my gun, determining the exact spot my holster should hang, all the time...I mean from the time I was just a boy, I would picture myself standing in some street, facing down some opponent, outdrawing him with split second precision... I never pictured it beyond the draw of my gun... That was always enough to end the confrontation... In my head, I never had to fire the gun," Kid said slowly...sadly.

Heyes had had this conversation, or something similar with Kid after every street fight. He always chose his words carefully, tempering his words based on how reflective Kid seemed to be. Some of these conversations were short and simple. Others were... like this, and Heyes struggled to find the right words.

"Kid...What if you weren't the fastest gun? What if you hadn't spent all those hours practicing and honing that skill?"

Kid's eyes dropped to an unfocused stare. "You mean what if I was...like you?" he asked reflectively with no hint of sarcasm.

"Yea, what if you shot like me?"

"I suppose I wouldn't ever be called out, at least not more than once."

"But if you weren't fast, if you couldn't protect me... What would become of you?"

Kid took pause and looked at Heyes. The hint of a smile teased at the corners of his mouth. "I suppose I'd still be running with Wheat and Kyle"

"Uh-uh. A good, but still second hand outlaw. Do you think where you are now is better than that?"

Kid nodded. "Yea."

"So is it worth dwelling on all these what ifs? I mean all the reflection in the world ain't going to change what you are, Kid, or who you are, Kid."

"I don't like hurting someone, Heyes. Every time I do that, I feel something in me...whither up...something in me... dies."

"You ever think something in you gets born?"

"What do you mean?"

"Every time you get called out, you never take someone's life... So what is it you do take from em?"

"Maybe their pride."

"What else?"

"Well, maybe their ability to do something like that again, at least for a while?"

"Anything else?

Kid thought hard. "Arrogance," he concluded.

"And when a man loses his pride, his arrogance, maybe his ability, don't that give him time to think about what he done? Maybe time to realize that calling someone out might have ...unfortunate consequences?"

Kid couldn't help but smile. "So you're trying to tell me that shooting someone is for their own good?"

Heyes smiled, knowing Kid's decompression time was finally coming to a close.

"Maybe..." Heyes replied.

Heyes, I know half of what you said is just a bunch of malarkey, but the other half was good. You still got a silver tongue...Thanks."

"Ready for a beer, Kid?"

"Yea, I'm ready."

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The author would like to extend a thank you to Penski for the idea of "what if Kid hadn't become a fast gun." This conversation between Kid and Heyes ended up taking a bit of a side track (the boys often do that to me), but it was that original idea that prompted this reflection.