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"Step outside, Grix......"

"There's not enough room in this forum for the two of us." FM slammed his emptied whisky glass down on the wooden counter. "Step outside, Grix......"

Grix eyed FM carefully. They'd known each other for a long time, but things had been gettin' a little strained lately."

"What's this about, FM," he demanded, making his way through the packed but hushed saloon and pushing the swinging doors outwards as he stepped onto the dusty ground outside.

"Well," replied FM, pushing open the doors again and following Grix outside into the hot, dry air, "You've bushwhacked one of my topics just one time too many. It's time we had this out. Mano a Mano. Poster to Poster."

Grix paused in his stride to think of a witty retort about FM's last comment, then decided that now was probably not the time.

"So, what's it to be? 10 paces, turn and fire?" asked Grix, making sure his gunbelt was fastened properly.

"You know me better than that, Grix. 30 paces." FM checked his gunbelt. The Smith and Wesson 6-shot revolver hung loosely at his right hip.

They stood back to back under the glare of the midday sun, and started to count.....

1....2....3....

The occupants of the saloon were packing the windows trying to get a glimpse of the showdown outside. This was unheard of. The last shootout in the town of Last Chance Reserve had been quite a time ago, when the Er-no posse had cleaned out the Desperate Dans, but this was different. Two equally matched opponents were about to face off.

Insane Bartender was going even more nuts behind the saloon's counter because he was losing good sales whilst all this was going on.

Outside, the count was at 25.... as FM glanced to his right and saw PB on the roof of the Red Splat Hotel and Boarding House, shotgun at hand. PB nodded with a knowing look. FM nodded back.

The count was 26.... as Grix looked across to the SR Saddlery, where he spied Sniper with his trusty Winchester Rifle. Grix gave a brief nod. Sniper returned it.

27....28...29..

Dust whirled up as both men spun to face each other. The blast of PB's shotgun firing both barrels broke the deafening silence that preceeded it, and a cloud of sand flew up at Grix's feet as the buckshot ploughed into the ground.

Grix drew his gun and took aim, FM was still drawing his because he was left handed and his belt was on the wrong way, Sniper fired his rifle, and there was a sharp report, then a clatter as PB dropped his shotgun and swandived off the roof of the hotel and landed in a horse trough.

FM grappled with his pistol, it had snagged in the holster, and he reminded himself to be more careful where he left his chewing gum.

Grix took pity. (No he didn't). Grix fired his gun. Fortunately, FM and done his research and Grix's eyesight wasn't as good as it should have been, and at 30 paces it was like trying to read a Wanted Poster through a mirage. Grix's first bullet flew out of town faster than a newbie Gameaday winner. He wasn't sure if he had hit FM or not, but then he heard FM pull back the hammer of his Smith and Wesson with a

*click*

Just outside of the town a wagon rolled through the plains. The driver, a preacher, looked up at the clear sky. Suddenly the sky went dark and the clouds closed in. Without warning, thunder roared and a bolt of lightning struck the wagon and the ground around it, leaving a gapping hole in it's wake. Then, just as suddenly as it started, everything was still again.

Something crept from the hole. Something not quite human, and yet vaguely familiar. It stretched and slowly morphed into the figure of the preacher. Dusting down it's newly found clothes, it started to walk towards the town.

The topic fought it's way to the top of the pile...

"REPLY TO ME!!!" It screamed... "REPLY TO ME!"

The head of the posse cursed. FM and Grix were nowhere to be seen.

He then heard a rumbling sound. he turned around.

Heading straight towards them was a goods wagon, apparently out of control with it's driver screaming and flailing his arms aroun wildly. The posse saw the wagon just in time to dive out of its way. The wagon rattled onwards and flew off the edge, accompanied by a strange scream of "NOOOO, NOT AGAIN!"

A few seconds later the posse started to pick themselves up off the ground.

"What in tarnation was that?" asked the bearded one in the ten gallon hat.

"Some kinda goods wagon by the looks of things." another replied

"yeah." said another "It said on the side, 'Sniper's dried foods'"

"Poor guy"

"Shut your darn faces, dagnabbit!" the leader of the posse growled.
"and can anyone tell me where the hell those two got to?"

----------

Meanwhile, back in town the stranger led pb, venombyte and sheepy to a run down cattle farm on the outskirts. The stranger walked up to the door and knocked, twice. No reply. He knocked again. Still no reply. He drew his pistol and fired a round into the door. The shot rang out, and some of the cattle started trotting towards the far end of their field.

"Darn" said the stranger "He's not in."

"Who are we looking for?" asked venombyte

"An old.....'associate' of mine" came the reply. "He's a tracker, and if I know Grix, then we're going to this guy to track him"

"So what now?" asked pb

"We find him." the stranger replied. He twirled his silver pistol on his finger with dazzling speed, before slotting it neatly back into his holster in one smooth movement.

Grix and FantasyMeister looked over the drop... the 90 degree cliff, they called it...

And it was quite far down, too...

"You realise we may have to jump off this."

FantasyMeister looked behind... the rabble were close now.

"Yes. I did realise that."

The silence was kept away by the sound of the wind smashing agaisnt the cliff... breaking away bits of rock, which tumbled down the cliff, splitting into pieces, and landing with a plop, in the water below.

Grix pulled the hover hoss into reverse... the hoss nearly touching the ground to the wait of the money.

The men drew closer...

Grix held his breath... FantasyMeister closed his eyes.

Grix put the machine into full throttle, and closed his eyes.

The hoss, moving at 2 miles per hour, inched towards the cliff edge... nearly getting stuck on a small rock, on the way.

It reached the edge... and the hoss plummeted straight off the cliff... and headed down... down... down...

The posse stopped at the cliff... and peered over. Nothing.

"Where are they! I saw them jump off!!"

----

Grix opened his eyes... to darkness.

Was he dead? He was in a lot of pain... his face felt... well, it hurt.

He tried to speak.

"Mhhmmm mhh muuhhh muhh muhhmmm mhhm."

FantasyMeister pulled the hoss off Grix. "What was that?"

"I said..." Grix looked out. He certainly wasn't dead...

FantasyMeister looked down the cliff face. "I thought we were dead... but the wind took us, and we blew into this cave..."

"Wow..." Grix looked around... a perfectly smoothed cave... in the middle of a cliff face...

Didn't that at least, seem odd?

The gold lay... untouched.

"We're safe... but I haven't got a clue how to get down..."

FantasyMeister was right. They were still stuck halfway up the cliff... but at least nobody could find them...

At least, not everybody.

Ant and his posse crawled in through the cave entrance. It seemed not everybody wasn't capable of walking up sheer cliff faces.

"Ah... I thought I could smell sugar." Ant said.

FantasyMeister looked back down the emmense drop... and felt in his pocket. A table spoon of sugar lay in his pocket. He offered it to Ant.

"Thanks."

Mouldy cheese sat in his moon-based base, getting bored, watching the fiasco below.

"Dont do drugs", he said.

Ant and his colony sat around, eating sugar.

Ant #1 said, "Aren't we meant to be helping FM and Grix tonight??"

Ant realized his mistake. He spat out the sugar he was eating, and shouted, "GO GO GO!!" As the colony ran, Ant thought for a moment. He then picked the sugar he'd spat out, and put it in his mouth.

Ant smiled as he tasted its sweet goodness. "Ahhh- the sweet, gorgeous taste of Anthill sugar, only sold in special Anthill retailers."

Meanwhile, back in town the stranger walked over to Sheepy's Gunsmiths and looked through the dusty window.

"Hm. No one here." He said to himself. He spotted a message hastily posted on the window.

S H E E P Y
Your Friendly Local Gunsmiths
Closed due to being stuck in
a jail cell

Back Soon

The stranger turned on his horse and headed back to the sheriff's office. He knew there was something big coming, something that this town had never seen the likes of before and when it arrived, the townsfolk would never see anything like it again, or, for that matter, anything again.

He passed a dusty looking man holding a cloth to his bullet wound.

"Hey." said the stranger. "You seen these two?" he pointed to a tatty wanted poster with a picture of Grix and FM on it.

"Yeah, them were the guys that robbed the bank. They shot me in the arm too." he showed the stranger the bullet wound to emphasise the point. "They headed out west, something about robbing a bullion train."

The stranger nodded his appreciation and continued towards the jail. He could now here loud voices eminating from that spot.

"Look, I just served them. OK?" said an angry voice. "They held me at gunpoint. What else could I do?"

"So let me get this straight." said another voice, "You own a gunshop and you managed to get held up at gunpoint? And they wanted to BUY some guns from you?"

Sheepy looked taken aback that his word wasn't taken as gospel. He started to think up some other alibi, but just as he was about to speak a shadow covered the doorway.

"It's okay, sheriff meka_dragon." The stranger said as he shot the sheriff a piercing glance. "I'll pay the bail and you can let this man go."

"Now hold on..." started meka, until he saw the look in the stranger's eyes. "Well, I guess he wasn't gonna talk anyway." he said in a low voice as he undid the cell door.

Sheepy led the stranger back to the saloon as he felt his wrists for the rope burn. Once inside he pointed to two other men sitting at a table, drinking tequila and keeping a low profile. The stranger went over to the table.

"Can I get you a refill, gentlemen?" he asked.

"Hey. Your that strange guy that's been asking all them questions, aint ya?" said the first guy. "My name's Venombyte and this here is pb. What is it you want around these parts?"

"I'm looking for men to help me in my task. But I need to know if you're up to the job." said the stranger as he pulled two shining silver pistols from his belt at lightning speed. The Barman, used to seeing trouble straight away, hid behind the bar and motioned to the dancing girls to do the same. The stranger pulled one of the girls towards him as she tried to reach the safety of the bar. "It's ok. Here, hold this." He placed an apple on her head and tossed the guns to pb and venombyte.

pb went first. He gulped as he felt the metal of the gun in his hand and tried to hold a steady aim. He pulled the trigger and fired. The girl screemed but stayed standing while the apple flew off of her head. The stranger produced another apple and again placed it on the girl's head. "Now, shoot." he said to venombyte, who took the gun, did a turn, covered his eyes and shot.

The apple stayed where it was while the girl fainted and fell to the floor. The bullet had lodged against the wall behind where the girl was standing and had stuck the apple there too.

"Good. good." said the stranger as he took the guns back and all three followed him back out into the daylight.

"Now to show you the real reason why I need to catch these two..." he said, pointing to the poster on a nearby wall.

The posse had given them 2 mins to run and then they would follow after them.

Snipers head rolled past and that was FMs and Grix's cue to go, they saddled up and galloped away but only went as far as the top of the hill and went past the dead cow on the barb wire and got themselves ready for battle, they wanted the loot which they had had to leave with the posse....

Meanwhile not too far away SNIPER tended to his cattle.

"That'll keep them rootin' tootin' rustlers out. Dagnabbit!" He muttered to himself, looking at his newly erected barbed wire fence.

From a distance, a gun shot was heard. This alarmed the cattle, and they begun to stampede. They were heading straigt for SNIPER! Surely he would be killed!

At the last second SNIPER took a dive to his left. Unfortunately, this was right into the barbed wire!

The cattle seemed to calm down down, so SNIPER tried to pick himself up, unfortunately, he had his trousers caught.

SNIPER looked at the problem, surely if he pulled his body under the first row of barbed wire, then stepped over the top, he'd be free.

So he carefully moved his body between the bottom two pieces of wire.

Once through he realise his mistake.

Unfortunately, his trousers were not very forgiving of the situation, and they tore off.

SNIPER Was at least glad to be free, but as he turned his foot hit a rock, and he fell, knocking his head.

When SNIPER awoke he was surrounded by darkness, and it was starting to get cold. He'd have to set off for home in the dark.

Luckily he'd made this journey a thousand times, but in his haste to get home, he'd forgotten about the barbed wire. He walked straight into it. In the darkness Sniper could not free himself without pulling all of his clothes off, he didn't really fancy that so tried to wriggle free.

Unfortunately another gun shot was fired, and the cattle were woken, and scared.

A rather large cow came heading for SNIPER!

Somehow it missed him, and headed straight into the barbed wire. This broke the fence, and the top row of barbed wire snapped and wrapped itself around SNIPER's neck!

Such was the sharpness of the barbed wire, with every turn of SNIPER's head it cut in more deeply, until it could cut in no deeper, and SNIPER's head was rolling slowly downhill.

'Hello' said a groupy of the posse,
he was wearing a scarf that covered most of his head and you could only see his twitching eyes in the crack between the scarf and hat.
'um' said FM
'wha'you doin with the packs on your cattle' said the posse leader.
'what do we do' Grix whispered to FM....