“The Fastest Gun” by Will Bryant

[A change of pace as we highlight what may be my favorite "fictional" incident of gunplay in a lifetime of reading.]

Brother Bill wasn't like me--he was a real lawman. You could tell. He looked lop-sided without his gun and he had a bullet-notched ear. He had a way of coming into a room and closing the door with his foot, like he didn't want his hands full of doorknob at the wrong time. And he would stand there and size everybody up. There was some good marshals there in those days, like Heck Thomas and Bud Ledbetter and Bill Tilghman. Brother Bill was cut from the same hide.

They was all good with a gun. Fast? Well, fast enough. You didn't hear much about a man being fast with a gun. Folks would say that so-and-so was good with a gun. There's a difference. Being fast was a part of it, all right. But being slow is something, too.

That is from the 1961 story, “The Fastest Gun” by Will Bryant. Bryant asserts that although cast in fictional form it is based on something witnessed by his grandfather, Mince Bryant.

The story’s details all drip with authenticity, from weapons to the history, to the ammunition--the centerfire cartridge revolver that still used black powder at the time meaning that the details of sighting and firing through stinging smoke ring true.

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