The Long Chance — Max Brand

At twelve I was a man, at twenty-one I was a gunfighter... I didn't know that the people in town thought of me as a gunman, since it was my job to protect Chandler's store and the only way I knew how many men I'd killed, and that most of those men had been in a drunken heat while I was stone cold sober and steady of nerve.

When Marshal Shane O'Rourke came into town and said, 'Cross, you're nothing but a murderer,' I finally saw myself for what I was, and I didn't like it. I told O'Rourke I would leave Bostwick and try to make a new life, without a gun.
But it's not easy for a man to turn away when a fellow calls him a coward...