Dane Coleman left the slightly run-down ranch house and headed to a section of fence that had looked odd to him as he had approached the property earlier with Matt. Both Matt Sievert (the son of the widow who owned the ranch) and Joshua Wilson (her only remaining ranch hand) headed out with him.

  “How many animals do you have here?’ Dane asked as they walked.

  “Two riding horses, one draft horse, two dozen cows, one bull, roughly three barn cats and God only knows how many chickens,” Joshua replied.

  “You don’t have a good coop for the birds?”

  “Burned down just after Walt - the te Mister Sievert - left on his st cattle drive. So, we let them just run around for the most part. Keep meaning to rebuild it but repairing what we do have and tending to the beeves takes all my time.”

  “Ah. Did that fire happen shortly after someone made an offer to buy the pce?” Dane asked, recalling several movies and TV shows from his youth.

  “Same day.”

  “Ah,” Dane replied. Seemed Tumbleweeds, the setting he had been reborn into after his execution, liked the old cliches. Then he remembered that the word favored back when he was alive was “tropes” not “cliches,” and then he shook his head - this musing was pointless. “It should be one of these sections,” he said, suddenly stopping and pointing out several lengths of fence.

  The two men and the boy began examining the lengths of the fence. Everything seemed fine, until, frustrated with the fruitless examination, Matt Sievert leaned up against one of the rails and it promptly rolled right off of the fence and out towards the road!

  Dane and Joshua ran over there as quickly as they could. While Joshua hurdled the remaining section and caught the runaway piece, Dane helped the boy to his feet, asking if he was OK.

  “I’m fine, Mister Coleman, just shaken up a bit,” the boy said.

  Joshua returned and examined the fence while they talked: “Some of the nails have been removed,” his deep voice rumbled.

  Dane nodded. “Bet a few were pounded back in to make handles while the rest sort of wandered off?”

  Joshua gave him an odd gnce then looked at the remaining fence and said “Yeah, I see handles on this one. Would have missed them if I hadn’t been looking. How did you know?”

  Dane hesitated - back in his former life, before his dishonorable discharge for hitting a superior officer who was abusing a local woman, he had been a sniper attached to a Marine counter-terrorism squad and they had used a stunt like this to infiltrate suspected terror cells; using modern equipment it had taken the team of five men mere minutes to do - and only slightly longer to repair the one time they found the suspects to be innocent. But he could not really expin that: “Let us just say there are some things in my past that I am not particurly proud of and…. How long were the hands who left yesterday here for?”

  “Zack was working off a bad run at the Faro table from three weeks ago and Jebediah and Chris showed up looking for work three days ter.”

  “Just enough time to do this quietly and without leaving any tell-tale signs. Suspect they’ll be back tonight or tomorrow to do some sort of mischief. Probably stealing cattle,” Dane mused aloud.

  “You may be right at that. Any thoughts on what we should do?” Joshua replied, both a little impressed and a little skeptical about his new assistant.

  Dane smiled “Yes - first we fix this fence but try to make it look like we never discovered the tampering. Then we set up a watch… Matt, do you have any rifles in the house?”

  “Dad had one. Taught me how to use it even.”

  Dane nodded. “You ever use a gun, Joshua?”

  “Only for hunting,” he replied. “But I do have a shotgun I keep loaded with rock salt.”

  Dane’s mind fshed back to his childhood; some friends had dared him to take apples from the orchard of a particurly grouchy old man. As the old man’s car had been gone from his garage, Dane figured he was out and that the coast would be clear. Unfortunately, the man’s wife had gone out shopping without her husband so, as Dane slipped the fifth apple into his bag, the old man came bellowing out of his house, brandishing a shotgun. Dane had leapt from the tree and started running, but was not fast enough to evade the spray of rock salt the old man shot him with. While it was not the most painful experience he had ever had, it was on the list of top ten things he never wanted to feel again.

  “That will help,” he replied, then gnced around the area and asked: “How stable is that barn roof?”

  Joshua looked over at the barn and shrugged. “I would trust the loft with my life but not that roof.”

  Dane looked at the barn again: “No openings on this side. May have to poke a few holes in that wall. Set up shifts to watch for them coming along and, well, discourage them with rifle fire.”

  “We should get to work on the fence first,” Joshua replied, “and then go talk to Missus Sievert about the rifle and if she’ll let Matt help us stand watch.”

  Dane acknowledged that this was a good pn and hurdled the damaged section of fence. It took them almost two hours to get the repairs stable but still looking like they were not; just as they were almost finished, Dane heard [Ding. Two milestones completed - repair fence and pn defense against night raid. One attribute point awarded. May be converted to five skill points.]

  “Think I will need some more carpentry and animal handling skills - oh is there a card pying skill of some sort?”

  [Gambling/Bluffing and Games both cover elements of card py.]

  “One rank in Animal Handling, two in Carpentry and two in Gambling I think”

  [Ding. Upgrades complete.]

  “Anything wrong Mister Coleman? You seemed gone for a moment?” Joshua asked.

  “What? No, I am fine, just had some ideas starting to form. Nothing important yet but probably soon,” Dane replied enigmatically. “Oh, and please just call me Dane.”

  “Sure thing Mister, ah, Dane,” came the reply, with a broad grin.

  The repairs finished, the trio headed back to the ranch house to discuss the situation with Missus Seivert. She seemed skeptical about a raid but brought her husband’s rifle out for them to use.

  Dane examined it first - it was far more primitive than the rifles he was familiar with but still the same basic thing. It needed cleaning and some care but that was a minor issue, easily rectified. Joshua knew where the rags and gun oil were kept so helped Dane deal with this simple task, and then went off to tend the animals while Dane and Matt examined the loft to set up a good watching post. They decided that Matt would watch for the first three hours while Dane slept in the loft, then Dane would watch for a few hours until Joshua came up to take over until morning.

  After the evening meal, which was far better than the noon one and been, Matt headed up to the loft for his shift while Joshua showed Dane the staff bunkhouse, the one intact structure he had not been inside of at that point. It was modest but comfortable. A small area was set up for chamber pots so that midnight trips to the outhouse were not needed; beyond that and a undry area, the building only had two real rooms - a rge room with a dozen bunk beds and Joshua’s room, a tiny bedchamber that at least had privacy. A curtained off area just outside the building held showers. Dane decided that he'd probably be more comfortable in the loft, and said so.

  ***

  After making sure that Matt understood the gun well enough and had an ample supply of ammo, Dane y down on the straw and was almost instantly asleep.

  When Matt woke him up, he had been in the middle of a bizarre dream that included a man he never saw clearly but who was dressed in a business suit talking to what seemed to be a green skinned man with pointed ears. He’d been unable to understand anything they said but it had still left him with a feeling of unease.

  “Nothing going on?” He asked groggily.

  “All quiet so far Mist - Dane,” came the reply

  “Good. Now go get some rest. We should have a lot to do in the morning even if nothing happens tonight.”

  Mat nodded and headed out of the loft as Dane assumed the watch point. The moon was nearly full and the sky cloudless, so maybe they would not try anything tonight, but Dane wanted to make sure. He watched Matt cross to the ranch house and let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in as the boy went inside.

  An hour passed quietly, and Dane began to rex. He still had a vague feeling of unease, made worse by the bizarre dream, so did not let his guard down but he began to suspect that they would have a quiet night.

  And then he saw it: five men leading horses slowly down the road. Maybe they were just unusually considerate travelers being quiet at night to not wake up anyone in the houses they passed, but he was pretty sure they weren’t. He eased into a firing position and kept the gun trained on the section of fence they had repaired earlier.

  Sure enough, the men stopped right there. One of them took the reins of all five horses while the other four went over to take down the fence sts.

  Dane trained the gun on the man holding the horses, hoping they’d trigger a bit of extra chaos if they panicked.

  As he drew a bead on his target, his view suddenly shifted: everything seemed to be in sharper relief, and it felt as if he was only a few feet away from his target, instead of about sixty yards distant

  [Marksman: Sniper talent activated,] VICC’s voice chimed in his head. He smiled - not as good as night vision and a high end scope, but still very useful.

  [Night Vision talent requires Master Rank One or higher with any firearm and the Night Fighting talent,] VICC informed him in response to his thoughts. He filed that away for future consideration.

  A lone gunshot pierced the night air, just as the men at the fence discovered the sts were not coming down as easily as they expected.

  Their curses turned to cries of panic as the shoulder of the man who had been holding the horses erupted into a fountain of blood and gore. The man went down screaming, as much in shock as in pain. Two of the horses reared up just as a light came on in the bunkhouse and Dane quickly loaded a second cartridge

  One of the men made a run for a horse that was trying to flee; he had just jumped on when Dane managed a clear shot at him; the bullet struck the man in the neck at the base of his skull, sending him forward and to one side as the horse reared up. Dane did not see what happened next but knew that man would never get up again.

  As he calmly loaded another cartridge, he heard a shotgun go off and heard screams from the remaining men. Joshua had arrived with his weapon loaded with rock salt and Dane was pretty sure the spray had hit at least one of the men. Perhaps one of the horses too - three of the animals were already in full flight while the one that had lost its temporary rider kept rearing up and moving in panicked circles, confused by all the activity. Two men were running away very quickly as well. He’d lost sight of the fifth one until he saw him try to help the first man he’d shot to his feet. Briefly Dane considered shooting that man but decided it would be more humane to relieve him of his burden, and shot his third shell into the back of the wounded man instead. The guy who had been trying to help his buddy was dragged to the ground as the man Dane shot stumbled forward and fell, never to rise again. The would-be Samaritan did an impressive side roll, sprung to his feet and made an angry gesture towards the barn, before joining his partners in full retreat.

  A dark figure hurled itself over the fence and jumped up on the back of the horse that seemed to have been driven mad by the frenzied activity and somehow quickly calmed it down.

  Dane hurried down from the loft and sprinted as fast as he could to the fence. When he got there, he saw Joshua had the reins of two horses and was leading them toward the ranch house. Dane could see the fifth horse was walking off after a short dash away from the chaos, and figured he might as well let it go

  “Need any help, Joshua?”

  “Just get the gate open, Dane. We now have four riding horses.”

  “Should we do anything with the bodies?” Dane asked.

  “‘Less you want to bury them there, just get some bnkets out of the bunkhouse, cover them, weigh the bnkets down with rocks and we can take them to the funeral home in town come morning.”

  Dane helped Joshua get the two horses inside and then sprinted for the bunkhouse.

  Returning with bnkets, he covered one body, thinking he had seen that face the day before. The other body was a mess. “Might need a bucket for that one,” he mused aloud as he did what he could with the bnket and then headed back to the barn.

  Joshua had just finished getting the horses into vacant stalls as he entered.

  “I will keep watch for another hour in case they come back and then call it a night. We should be safe for the rest of the night, but best to be sure,” Dane told him.

  Joshua agreed with this pn and bade him a good night. Dane gnced up at the ranch house; he was sure he had seen a light come on during the shooting, but it was dark now. He assumed that was a good thing and resumed his watch post until the adrenaline wore off. He welcomed sleep when it came, and if any dreams visited him before he awoke at sunrise, they did not linger in his memory.