KID'S REFLECTION ON BEING THE FASTEST GUN IN THE WEST
I know if you was to ask Heyes, he would say Danny Billson was my most troubling shootout. But I wasn't troubled about killing Danny. After all, Danny killed Seth. When Danny took our gold and left Heyes and Seth and me to cross the desert with no food, no water (that he knew of), no horses, Danny hoped it would kill Heyes and me. But he knew he was killing Seth, an over weight old timer. Even if Danny hadn't been near as good as me with a gun, I still would have killed him. No Danny deserved to die and being the one to kill him has never played on my conscience.
All them men that called me or Heyes out for cheating at cards (something neither of us ever done), don't bother me none either. None of those men were calling out Kid Curry. They all thought they were wronged. They all at least had a real reason to challenge me and I can't fault them for standing up to right what they felt was a wrong..
What has always tugged at me and will continue to tug at me until the day I die, is all the young ones that called me out over the years for the simple purpose of besting The Kid, besting the fastest gun in the west, like it's some kind of honor to be the fastest gun. Every last one of them was fast and I always figured one day, one of them would beat me. Over the years there were so many of them. Today I close my eyes and I can't see any one person in particular. All those faces just meld into one, featureless face. Not one of them has a face that is etched into my memory. Some Dime Novelist described Kid Curry as the fastest gun in the west and the title somehow stuck to me like a fly on glue paper. Even now, years after amnesty, years after hanging up my gun, people still tell me how impressed they are of my fast gun. I ain't fired a shot in more than a dozen years, and people are still impressed. Kid Curry somehow became some kind of folk legend and he will always be The Fastest Gun in the West.
I can't say I regret becoming such a fast draw. That ability (it should never be called a talent), kept Heyes and me alive on more than one occasion. But I wonder what our paths would have been if I wasn't such a fast shot, if I couldn't protect us. Would we have taken the same risks? Would we still have become outlaws? Was it my fast draw that enticed us to the wrong side of the law? Did my gun turn us into outlaws? Did Jedadiah Curry corrupt Hannibal Heyes?"
So you see, it ain't my fast draw, or killing Danny, or wounding so many men that bothers me most.
It's the what ifs, or rather... one in particular "what if."
What if I hadn't become the fastest gun in the west?