Dusty

The trigger was the word 'dusty.'

An old gunslinger wandered his usual path across the wastelands. He'd become well acquainted with a few saloons over the long years. He'd made a few friends and a few more enemies. After the Great War he'd set out to see the world.

 

His job during the war was to fight to keep people free. He felt like he hadn't done a good enough job so he vowed to keep people free wherever he went. Sure enough just about everywhere he'd go, someone was trying to control the little people. Whether it be by keeping food and water from them or just being plain nasty, you could bet that if the gunslinger was in town it wouldn't be long before you lived in peace.

 

The gunslinger had become a real legend and tales of him spread faster than wildfire. He was the hero of the wastelands and rightfully so. Until one fateful day that would turn him from a hero into a ghost.

 

A man who went by the name Devil-Eye Jones. you may have heard of him, had declared himself king of a small town. The gunslinger worked hard to topple his rule, using all the tactics he'd learned in the war and even took out most of his men in a single night.

 

The gunslinger thought he had won, but Devil-Eye Jones wasn't your average wasteland outlaw. He had been in the Great War too. He and the last of his men rounded up all the citizens of the town and yelled for the gunslinger to surrender or they would kill them all.

 

The gunslinger refused but was knocked out and when he came to, he was greeted by the sight of a pile of corpses and failure. Since then he's just been a dusty old wandering man.

Author's Note

I used to write a lot on typetrigger.com

They would put out a new trigger, which was a word or a couple words, every 8 hours. You would then write something that was inspired by it in 300 words or less.

I cracked open my old account to bring you all my lovely creations.

The trigger for this was the word 'dusty.'

Anyone who has followed my progress on Dust/Ash probably recognizes this as being the inspiration for it.