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Show page 40 addressed Byron Warren Westbrook III as The Sundown Kid. I am sure I was the last to do so, the morning he left, using the old nickname to say goodbye. I have seen The Sundown Kid one time since, at Fort 3enning. He was a full colonel, bucking for a general's star. Mrs. Westbrook, nee Fleming, was as charming and as beautiful a hostess as one would ever hope to meet. "We made it through Basic splendidly," she related. "Then we went on to school after school and promotion after promotion and responsibility after responsibility." "I had one moment of frivolity," he added, "there on the drill field after graduation from Basic. I x?as harder of muscle and hard of determination by then. I faced east, toward our old school, at stiff attention, and shouted, 'Damn you, Tomlin, your theories leave me cold! Damn you, Tomlin, you provocative chessplayer of the human race!* Of course, I meant no disrepect." That moment of frivolity must have been the last renunciatory expression of The Sundown Kid as we knew him in our town. That moment had class, too, within my definition; it was a goodbye to all of us as he rode off into the sunset. |