Sheriff Fletcher bursts into the clearing, “We got trouble! Them Ross boys are armed and ready to burn Steaming Rock to the ground unless someone's swinging by sundown!”

Cody promises to take up Peyton’s trail and bring him to justice, he may not have done it but he was involved. Dutch volunteers to go back to town with Fletcher.

The others follow Peyton, he’s up on a ridge, Diago struggles to keep Boots, his horse, moving and almost falls. The others eat up the distance to Peyton, spotting him coming down on the other side of the ridge they follow. Diago reaches the ridge and plunges over the other side, a dangerous path but he's got a chance to cut off Peyton.

Peyton heads down the trail into the valley, he’s a good rider and makes progress, leaving Cody and Danny behind.

Peyton charges his horse across the valley floor, just as Diago bursts from the woods, firing at Peyton's horse. The horse collapses, Peyton jumps off and seeks cover behind the downed animal.

Diago, Cody and Danny surrounded Peyton but he’s not giving in. He tells them a lie about what happened, said he shot Ross in self-defence they don't buy it. Cody tells him that Rockcliffe ratted him out. Peyton’s voice quivers, knows that he's a dead man if he goes back to town.

Peyton says he’ll tell the whole truth if they let him go. He goes on to explain that Rockcliffe and Ross were vying for the position of Clarence King’s man in Steaming Rock. Rockcliffe told him to go and kill Ross, Stinky beat Ross to death and threw him down the mine. Peyton just wanted to give Ross a chance to run out of town, in the melee, Peyton was shot. On returning to Rockcliffe, Rockcliffe told him to hideout in the mountains whilst he sorted things out with the law.

Cody tells Peyton to leave and they’ll not shoot, Peyton wants them to leave first. Cody pushes it, says Peyton doesn’t have an option any more and Peyton snaps, comes charging at them firing his pistol.

Danny cowers behind Cody. Diago shoots Peyton but he keeps on coming, Cody is shot in the leg - arterial blood pumping out, his face white and frightened. Danny rolls up his sleeves, searches for the bullet in Cody’s leg, his hands covered in Cody's blood.

Meanwhile, Peyton fires on Diago and Diago fires back, hitting Peyton in the knee and gut, with a groan, Peyton collapses to the ground, unconscious.

Cody is breathing in shallow gasps, Danny holds up a bullet between tweezers, grinning at Diago, “Guess Steaming Rock can cancel that job advert for a deputy.”

Cody is patched up and with Peyton restrained, they saddle up and head back to town, it's dusk, hopefully they'll have enough time before the Ross boys do too much damage.

TTTRPG Thoughts:

We were two players down but still an excellent session. I joked about hearing how another TotOW had almost had a TPK when they got into a gung ho firefight. A certain amount of foreshadowing!

The party were really trying their best to force Peyton to give up and return to town. They let slip that Rockcliffe had betrayed Peyton and further Performance rolls removed all his Cunning, leading to him explode violently and attack. As per the rules I decided to let these social combat rolls increase vexes, etc rather than let Peyton give up, given the desperate situation he was in.

There was some shooting from a horse, I need to look this up, I was searching for penalties but I suspect this is an animal handling roll.

One of the players got a pretty nasty critical, fatal in two rounds. I was reading the healing, I think I'm right in saying that would be three Doctorin’ rolls - 1. Stabilise 2. Remove Broken 3. Avoid lost leg during healing. They have four days for that. Luckily, our one person with Doctorin' was on hand to save the day.