Late Afternoon, April 11th, 1879. The outskirts of Blackthorn. Good Friday.

The miles pass swiftly as Carl and John ride. Carl moves like a man possessed, driven. John can barely keep pace.

The town grows as they near...they pass the few houses on the outskirts without incident...


Until they pass Robertson's Laundry. As they speed down the road, a man waving a shotgun hails them. "Help!" he cries at the pair of riders. "Please, god, help!"

Carl slows early and stops right beside the waving man - halting on a dime might be impressive, but it did your beast no good if you had riding to do - catching John's eye in the likely event he's slowed too and pointing to the barely-glimpsed peak of the church belltower. Carl could deal with local trouble faster, and John would be less able to help with the rest of his errand anyway, but someone had to raise the alarm over them damn Comanches, warn the town.

He'll point until he thinks John has got the idea/is moving off, then turn a little, shifting his shotgun, so that Pa Robertson can address him more easily. "?"

For a moment John thinks Carl meant for him to help the man with the gun but realized before he slowed down too much that he was supposed to go on. He nodded simply and kicked his horse forward towards the church. Should nothing stop him he'd simply walk in and ring that bell. Otherwise he figured the word "Comanche's" would keep any obstacle from blocking his way. He could return to Carl once the town had been proper warned.

"It...it was a mountain lion!" Joel gasps at Carl. "I-it got Sally...she...it came out of nowhere...I swear I saw foam 'round it's lips...I shot the damn thing, but it ran away..."

Carl frowns fiercely and turns a hand upward. Privately, he suspects the chances of the girl still being alive are low and diminishing by the second, but though he knows the local hinterland like the back of his hand he can't do jack shit unless he's told which way to ride after the rogue cat. "?"

Joel points towards town. Perfect. The thing is stalking through Blackthorn. A normal, healthy cougar wouldn't go anywhere near a settlement Blackthorn's size. A rabid, undead one, though...if it found somewhere to lurk, such as one of the town's many abandoned buildings, it could be hell itself to dislodge.

And with the panic and general disorder that John's alarm was about to raise, well...the results wouldn't be pretty.

John rides through the town. There's a knot of people standing by the Undertaker's office for some reason. There's a few people with covered wagons heading the other way.

Up the street to the church, John sees that Bounty Hunter, the one he escorted off Ward's property. He's following another man, one John doesn't recognize.

The bounty hunter seems to have recognized him as well.

"You!" He grumbles. "Fine day for unwanted faces. What are you doing here?"

Carl starts Hoss moving as soon as the direction's pointed out. If a rabid cougar - or a dead one frothing with rot, or a dead walking cougar that died of rabies - paid as little mind to the dictates of nature as a rabid dog there was a fair chance it'd just dragged the girl down a sidestreet and dropped her to attack the next thing that moved.

A quick scan of the surroundings shows no obvious cats in the middle of streets, but the pain is stabbing into his ribs and lungs, distracting him. Carl keeps most of his attention on Hoss, who'll smell the critter before he sees it anyhow. He figures he'd hear screams if it'd got into a house. Damn, but if only he could round up Dave and a couple of the others now...


[[Notice: 2  Have fun!]]

((OOC: If you want to attempt a Tracking roll in place of Notice, feel free...if you get into a place where an ambush is possible, then I'll roll for Hoss, but you have to find the thing first.

This will be considered a Dramatic Task. If you can get 5 Successes (counting Raises) in 5 actions, then you might be able to find Harrow Kitty before it strikes again. Please post after each roll so i can update you on the surroundings))

Carl scans the ground as they slow from a trot to Hoss' easy pacing gait in the hopes that drag marks, pawprints etc. might be preserved on the less compacted ground at the sides of the streets. Another man might have been heartened by the lack of gouts of blood, but Carl had seen cougars take young calves with barely a splatter, crushing the throat with the great fangs blocking the wounds.

[[Haha, sure, why not?
20:43, Today: Carl rolled -1,4 using d4-3,d6-3, rerolling max with rolls of 2,(6+1)7. Trackin'.]]

((OOC: Current Tally: 1 round, 1 success. 4 rounds remaining))

The buildings close in around Carl and Hoss. There's a chill in the air that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the coming storm.

There's paw prints, no drag marks. If it's still carrying the girl, it's not dragging her along. Though Joel didn't say anything about the cougar taking her anywhere...just that it attacked, and he shot at it.

These alleyways are empty...most folk are out doing what little work there is that don't involve the ranch. The general direction seems to be northwest...towards the barber shop and the undertaker's place.

((OOC: Reading the Dramatic Task rules...you should be drawing an initiative card as well, as that determines whether complications that make your task harder pop up, or you get a break through. Please draw a card before you take your next action on this task))
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:08, Mon 17 Oct 2011.