Grit.

It's something you learn as a kid. Every time you fall down while you're playing and scrape your knee. When you're fresh into a new year at the schoolhouse and Bobby Watson from the next farm over wants to start a fight, shoving you to the ground from behind. When you are learning to ride a horse for the first time, and jerk the reins too hard from nervousness even though you were warned not to and the beast throws you off.

Each time you pick yourself back up off the ground, dust yourself off, and try it again. Soon enough you'll be playing harder, running faster, and riding your horse in circles around Bobby, who learned fast it would take a heck of a lot more than just a couple of cheap shots and a split lip to keep you down. Grit is something you get by earning it. It is made from the sweat and tears of your hardships, mixed with gravely determination to reach your goal. It's a pillar you support yourself with as you grow older and life's challenges become more difficult. It is something you make for yourself that no man can take away from you.

And it's the only reason I'm still alive, barely as I am, laying face down in the dirt with a double barrel of buckshot in my back while the son of a bitch who's to blame for it rides off on my horse with all my belongings. The only comfort of my current situation being that yellow-bellied coward Bobby got blasted right after unloading his shotgun into me from behind. Fool threw down his guns and surrendered, trying to join the blaggards that ambushed us during our escort mission. Instead the only thing he joined was his maker in the afterlife, dead before he even hit the ground.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I'm not sure quite how long I laid there bleeding. Long enough for the blood to puddle around me and mix the hard, dark red dirt around me into muddy clay. After a while the bleeding finally stopped and my health started to slowly regenerate, thanking my stars I followed my gut instincts and Pappy's advise not to simply dump all my points into Dexterity like the other typical Gunslingers. 'A few extra points of Toughness and a strong coat will help you live more and die less than just getting an extra couple shots in' my Pappy would always say. Looks like he was right on that account, though even laying still as I was I could tell my cattleman's duster was toasted. The last of its durability was shredded when the shotgun rounds hit me, curtesy of the late Mr. Watson. As I continued to lay there the mud slowly baked back dry under the heat of the burning sun as it made its way through the sky. Plenty of time to think about how I found myself into this mess while waiting on my health to regenerate enough to move.