Tex appears like a ghost from the mirage, the wind tossing hair over his weathered forehead. His right hand hangs beside the gun at his hip; fingers twitching.

Maximo watches him approach. Bunched up in his left hand is a shirt, and languishing in that shirt is the Pinkertons man, the barrel of Maximo's six-shooter pressed viciously into his ear. "Any closer, Tex, and I'll send this man to--"

Tex's hand flashes and the dessert fills with thunder. Maximo looks down. The Pinkertons man is dead. "You damn rattlesnake!" Maximo's gun is now trained on Tex. In their heads they play out the battle. Each of them would stumble off into the dunes, a bullet rotting in their chest. "What're we gonna do now? Ain't enough bullets in this world to kill me dead without me killin' you first." Tex says nothing. "Hell, I wonder what makes men like us, willin' to kill men like this one here," he gestures at the bleeding man at his feet, "just to get at each other."

Tex's voice creaks like dry leather: "Shiva. The god of death. From our pistols spring the headwater of the Ganges, the water bearing the dead unto the heavens."

"Is that so? Well what in tarnation are we doin' shootin' at each other? Hell, there's a whole town down there, folks just waitin' to be sent to heaven."

Tex and Maximo bust into the Sick Dog Saloon, fire spitting from their guns. They lay waste to the sherrif and his posse. Tex picks up a spent shell. "The vessels of the herem."

"Huh?"

"In the time of Joshua the Lord spoke unto the nation of Israel, commanding them to consecrate the promised land, to annihilate the Midianites, the Amalekites, the children of Jericho."

"I ain't killin' no children."

"Suit yourself."

Tex and Maximo blaze a trail of blood from Ticonderoga to the rainforests of Tikal. Deep beneath the Mayan ruins Tex's dagger unearths a golden vial. He drinks half, hands the rest to Maximo. "Drink up. If we're the flood that cleanses the earth anew, we'll need to live forever."

With liquid gold coursing through their immortal veins, Tex and Maximo ride horses and railcars and camels and elephants, all manner of beast and mechanical conveyance into the hearts of civilization. In Washington their Gatling guns perforate the timber frames of the White House. As a single drop of rain alights upon the cenotaph of the Taj Mahal, Tex and Maximo slay the princes of Agra. Their cannon balls crash through the yellow glazed tiles of the Forbidden City, the whizzing round of a .22 silences the last emperor of China.

In England, in Russia, in France, in Spain; no army holds them back, no words win purchase on their hearts. They are as inexorable as the setting sun, death blossoms as red lilies on the chests of all men. The women and children have taken to boats, and all are lost at sea. At long last only Tex and Maximo remain, teeth blackened by gun powder, hands arthritic from the pulling of triggers.

Tex and Maximo rest alone upon the earth, sheltering beneath a bower of marsh, cradled between the Tigris and Euphrates. "Whew boy! That was some mighty fine shootin' Tex." Tex grins. Says nothing. "Say, why do they call you Tex anyhow?"

Tex removes his hat, wipes the sweat from his brow. "I suppose because I was born in Shreveport, Texas."

"Shreveport? Hell, Tex, that ain't in Texas! Well I'll be a suck-egg mule, I reckon that makes you Louise!"

Louise's eyes grow wide, she looks down, and for the first time notices breasts beneath her red gingham shirt. She unbuckles her holster, lies back against her salt marsh bed. "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."

Maximo smiles.