The temperature rises,
The midday sun blazes;
Two men have come from such a long ways away,
Each following a map that he traces.
Charlie is a big man,
He sports a full beard;
His messiah is the divinity of riches,
Only in his rival, is his greed mirrored.
Jack is a thin man,
With a long, pointed nose;
Coming to the desert trailing a lustful beckon,
His instability grows.
Charlie and Jack have crossed paths before,
They have used fists, guns and knives;
Blood has flown, each have scars,
It is a miracle they have escaped with their lives.
Charlie is following a dry river bed,
Jack is on an old cattle trail;
Moving slowly through the arid wasteland,
Each secretly fears that he will fail.
As Jack and Charlie approach the spot,
Clearly marked with an X;
Standing thirty yards from one another,
The men crumple their maps, and feel hexed.
Standing silent, their mutual anger rises,
As if in slow-motion, Charlie and Jack both pull their gun;
Simultaneous shots are fired, as they leap for cover,
Neither can see the other, fighting in the blinding sun.
Charlie cries out, taking the lead in the thigh,
Jack moans as his head strikes the ground;
Swearing vengeance, feeling the adrenaline flow,
The men race at each other, their heartbeats the only sound.
Grasping hair, tearing flesh,
Jack and Charlie thrash about the ground, intertwined;
Biting, clawing, cursing loudly,
Acquiring the treasure alone is all that is on their mind.
Rolling many yards in their death grip,
The men bump into a mound of sand;
Releasing their foe, they know they have found the riches,
Digging wildly, forgetting the other, they search with their bare hands.
Several feet down, Charlie is the first to unearth a skull,
Jack sucks in breath, feeling dismal-black;
A skeleton? Jack snarled, pulling his weapon,
Firing it into Charlie's back.
Jack felt woozy, staring at his dead enemy,
He is quite dehydrated, with no water on Earth or in the sky;
Realizing he is going to die as well,
He put the muzzle to his eye.
As he fires the bullet into his brain,
The wind blows sand away from a large, flat stone;
On it is inscribed in a Native American tongue,
A message with a warning tone.
It reads: Greed is the road to damnation,
Revealed when the wind had blown;
Reversing its course, almost mystical in nature,
The sand again covered the bones.
