His name is L. B. Taylor, but everyone in Burnt Rock, Texas, calls him Pound. They also call him the town drunk. Pound used to be a schoolteacher, but he traded in his job and his self-respect for a bottle a long time ago. All that s changing today. Today Pound made a new friend, a stranger in town named Zeb Stone, and Zeb is about to take Pound under his wing, pull him out of the gutter, and teach him a new career. Zeb is a shootist, a hired gun, who s looking for a partner. Pound is going to learn to live without booze, to ride, and to shoot. But he ll also learn the hard way that riding with a shootist is more dangerous than drowning in a bottle ever was "