in half.

So this time, when I was riding along through the Pass, I saw Buck
upslope from me under the trees, and I just grinned and didn't pay too
much attention.

He stood facing an old elm tree, and I could see he'd tacked a playing
card about four feet up the trunk, about where a man's heart would
be.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him go into his gunman's crouch. He
was about sixty feet away from me, and, like I said, I wasn't paying
much mind to him.

I heard the shot, flat down the rocky slope that separated us. I
grinned again, picturing that fumbly draw of his, the wild slap at
leather, the gun coming out drunklike, maybe even him dropping it--I'd
seen him do that once or twice.

It got me to thinking about him, as I rode closer.

* * * * *

He was a bad one. Nobody said any different than that. Just bad. He
was a bony runt of about eighteen, with bulging eyes and a wide mouth
that was always turned down at the corners. He got his nickname Buck
because he had buck teeth, not because he was heap man. He was some
handy with his fists, and he liked to pick ruckuses with kids he was
sure he could lick. But the tipoff on Buck is that he'd bleat like a
two-day calf to get out of mixing with somebody he was scared
of--which meant somebody his own size or bigger. He'd jaw his way out
of it, or just turn and slink away with his tail along his belly. His
dad had died a couple years before, and he lived with his ma on a
small ranch out near the Pass. The place was falling to pieces,
because Buck wouldn't lift a hand to do any work around--his ma just
couldn't handle him at all. Fences were down, and the yard was all
weedgrown, and the house needed some repairs--but all Buck ever did
was hang around town, trying to rub up against some of the tough
customers who drank in the Once Again Saloon, or else he'd ride up and
lie around under the trees along the top of the Pass and just
think--or, like he was today, he'd practise drawing and throwing down
on trees and rocks.

Guess he always wanted to be tough. Really tough. He tried to walk
with tough men, and, as we found out later, just about all he ever
thought about while he was lying around was how he could be tougher
than the next two guys. Maybe you've known characters like that--for
some damfool reason they just got to be able to whup anybody who comes
along, and they feel low and mean when they can't, as if the size of a
man'