"And you're a son of a bitch," he said. I stiffened and shoved out my jaw. "Watch that, runt, or I'll get off and put my foot in your mouth and pull you on like a boot!" "Will you now," he said nastily, "you son of a bitch?" And he drew on me ... and I goddam near fell backwards off my saddle! I swear, I hadn't even seen his hand move, he'd drawn so fast! That gun just practically _appeared_ in his hand! "Will you now?" he said again, and the bore of his gun looked like a greased gate to hell. I sat in my saddle scared spitless, wondering if this was when I was going to die. I moved my hands out away from my body, and tried to look friendlylike--actually, I'd never tangled with Buck, just razzed him a little now and then like everybody did; and I couldn't see much reason why he'd want to kill me. But the expression on his face was full of gloating, full of wildness, full of damn-you recklessness--exactly the expression you'd look to find on a kid like Buck who suddenly found out he was the deadliest gunman alive. And that's just what he was, believe me. Once I saw Bat Masterson draw--and he was right up there with the very best. Could draw and shoot accurately in maybe half a second or so--you could hardly see his hand move; you just heard the slap of hand on gunbutt, and a split-second later the shot. It takes a lot of practise to be able to get a gun out and on target in that space of time, and that's what makes gunmen. Practise, and a knack to begin with. And, I guess, the yen to be a gunman, like Buck Tarrant'd always had. When I saw Masterson draw against Jeff Steward in Abilene, it was that way--slap, crash, and Steward was three-eyed. Just a blur of motion. But when Buck Tarrant drew on me, right now in the Pass, I didn't see any motion _atall_. He just crouched, and then his gun was on me. Must have done it in a millionth of a second, if a second has millionths. It was the fastest draw I'd ever seen. It was, I reckoned, the fastest draw anybody's ever seen. It was an impossibly fast draw--a man's hand just couldn't move to his holster that fast, and grab and drag a heavy Peacemaker up in a two foot arc that fast. It was plain damn impossible--but there it was. And there I was. * * * * * I didn't say a word. I just sat and thought about things, and my horse wandered a little farther up the slope and then stopped to chomp grass. All the time, Buck Tarrant was standing there, poised, that wild gloating look in his eyes, knowing he could kill me anytime and knowing I knew it. When he spoke, his voice was shaky--it sounded like he wanted to bust out laughing, and not a nice laugh either. "Nothing to say, Doolin?" he said. "Pretty fast, huh?" I said, "Yeah, Buck. Pretty fast." And my voice was shaky too, but not because I felt like laughing any. He spat, eying me arrogantly. The ground rose to where he stood, and our heads were about on a level. But I felt he was looking down.