Like my father, I'd been West Point, and I was good at soldiering. But soldiering didn't...

Everett Hitch: [narrating] Like my father, I'd been West Point, and I was good at soldiering. But soldiering didn't allow for much expansion of the soul. So after the War Between the States and a year of fighting Indians, I turned in my commission and rode away to see how much I could expand it. First time I met Virgil Cole was when I and my eight-gauge backed him up in a showdown he was having with some drunken mountain men. Virgil asked me right there on the spot if I'd care to partner up with him and his peacekeeping business. Which is why I was with him now, and why I still carry the eight-gauge. We'd been keeping the peace together for the last dozen years or so. And as we looked down on a town called Appaloosa, I had no reason to doubt we'd be doing just that for the foreseeable future. Everett Hitch: But life has a way of making the foreseeable that which never happens, and the unforeseeable that which your life becomes.