The town of Gold Gulch sat alone and deserted in the middle of sandy nowhere, abandoned long ago after a plague wiped out half the population in under a week.
Still, for being a ghost town, it sure was active come sundown when all the ghosts of those dead townsfolk went about their usual business, blissfully unaware they had ever died.
In fact, by the time El Papagayo and his gang came thundering in after midnight, the place looked like a good old fashioned boomtown.
El Papagayo and his men whooped and yelled and shot off their guns as they rode around the town square, driving the locals into a panic.
"What's going on?" asked the town's ex-preacher as he came running out of his decrepit old church.
"Bandits!" screamed Miss Winslow, the schoolmarm, as she tried to shield some ghostly children from seeing the spectacle.
Finally, El Papagayo slowed his horse down to a trot and began to address the nearest crowd of frightened people.
"I am El Papagayo," he announced. "The most famous bandito in the west, and this town is now under my control. So eef you are smart you will submit now and hand over your money and jewelry to me and my men and we just might, just might, leave all you in one piece."
His men began to ride around with sacks open as the townspeople dropped their valuables inside.
"Ah, now that's the smart theeng to be doing," El Papagayo said and he began to stroke his greasy mustache.
"Bawk! Bleed 'em dry!" squawked Pepito, El Papagayo's parrot.
El Papagayo laughed menacingly and his men joined in as their victims around them cowered and shook.
Finally, after what felt like ten minutes, the madness suddenly stopped when a lone, dark figure appeared at the end of Gold Gulch's main street. Her legs were spread like a gunfighter's as she approached her adversary.
"El Papagayo," Death shouted, "I'm calling you out, hombre."
Everyone turned to see her there, then they all turned to see El Papagayo's reaction. He just smirked.
"You're wasting your time, chica," said El Papagayo. "It would be better spent pursuing those who want you. Me and this town are none of your concern."
"No town concerns me more than this one," said Death, "And no soul should leave this Earth more than you right now."
El Papagyo squinted his already beady eyes.
"Make me," he said defiantly.
Death squinted her eyes right back at him, trying, and failing, to look anything but compassionate.
"I can't," she said finally. "I can't make anyone."
"Then be gone with you," El Papagayo said, laughing at her ineffectualness and anti-climactic response.
"And what, you'll just stay here and torment these poor people?" asked Death.
El Papagayo nodded. "Til the end of time," he said.
Death gave him a look of pity and then gave the same look to the townspeople of Gold Gulch and the men that made up El Papagayo's gang and even Pepito and the horse, Hermosa.
"This is my last attempt to reason with you," she said, solemnly to El Papagayo. "You'd be far better off in the afterlife. Believe me. You see, the trouble with being an ghost is that you're never the only one, and one day you may meet another far scarier and more powerful than yourself and no one on this Earth will be able to help you then."
For the first time in his death the cocky smile on El Papagayo's face slipped, but still he said to Death, "I am staying."
She shrugged and then without ceremony she disappeared quietly into the darkness of the night.
There was a weird quiet as everyone waited to see what would happen next. Then the silence was broken by El Papagayo firing his gun into the air and giving a loud yell. His men followed suit and the people of Gold Gulch commenced running and hiding from the criminals attacking their town.
And so this same scenario played out again, and again, and again. Night, after night, after night, for over a hundred years until one day when an alien, a bounty hunter, and a photographer came to town.
But that too is another story.
The End