. . .

Test

It was a dark and lonely morning. A crow cawed harshly in the distance. The two gunslingers stood, staring at each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move. They had been waiting a long time.

The two figures had been standing, waiting, for as long as anyone could remember. None dared step between them, and after so long watching them had become dull. After the 17th year, when the town council was comfortable enough with them to mock the pair (not to their faces, of course), the area in which they fought had been declared a national park. Benches had been erected around them, grass planted. The dusty road had become a short stretch of dusty turf surrounded by green parkway on which laughing children played. A man, in an attempt to prove his bravery to a woman he desperately wanted to impress, stuck a daisy in the hatbrim of one of the two. When there was no reaction, both figures were quickly covered in random parephenalia - silly hats, signs, pins, and the like. One young lady had spent many hours carefully painting "I risked my life battling my fellow man and all I got was this lousy leather vest" on the backs of each of their vests, decorated with smiley faces and woodland creatures. The figures were mockeries for a time, and eventually ignored.

Suddenly - a bang! One figure jerked and fell to the ground. The other - bent, grizzled - looked creakily at the shocked faces surrounding him. He nodded, touched his hat, and rode off into the sunset.

He was killed three days later while robbing a bank in Fresno.