Lily/Sunia's horse trotted slowly down the dusty street away from the smith's shop, with no one at the reins. Strangely, it's rider was being dragged beneath and behind the beast, a foot caught in the stirrup or saddle blanket somehow.
The horse trotted up to the ladies, to its owner, Sunia where it stopped and grunted.
No, that wasn't the horse grunting, it was the man on the ground...
It was Buddy Reno, unconscious and dragged at the mercy of the freshly-shod horse!!
The Vaquero charged his horse thru town, deputies hot on his trail. Buddy and the ladies looked on as the Sheriff rode up from the blacksmith, on horseback but not in pursuit of the Vaquero (only deputies went on the chase, the Sheriff maintains the peace in town), surrounded by children and other various townsfolk.
"There! That's the person who was outside the smith's shop!" a few of the kids screamed, pointing down the street.
Buddy recovered slowly, and looked down the street toward the fleeing bandito and nodded, shrugging more dust and dirt from his shoulders. "I knew it... not all, but most..."
Unfortunately, when he turned back to the ladies and their horses, the crowd and the Sheriff had converged on their location, and the kids and Johnny Law were all glaring directly at HIM!'
~gulp!~
Luis looked behind him. He had outrun the three deputies, and it looked like they had stopped to help Buddy anyways. He brought his horse down to a slow trot and wheeled him around. When they got back to his camp, Luis packed it up and put it in his saddlebags. He proceeded to move around the edge of the town at an easy lope, until he was a quarter of a mile or so to the other side. There was a slope at a 45 degree angle going down thirty or forty feet to a stream. He got off Pancho and set up camp on the bank. As long as he could do without a fire, they wouldn't see him here.
Buddy found himself squeezing the little brown-skinned Indian girl's hand, nervous and afraid, as the red-faced glares, accusations, and questions washed over him from the crowd.
"I'm not sure I'll ever be ok again, after this..." he smiled at the kind, considerate questions, considering the nature of the other questions being fired at him like bullets in the mid-day heat. The deputies returned from the chase, shrugging and shaking their heads at the Sheriff...
Buddy looked at Catori, she looked at him, they both looked at each other... and Hell broke loose and swallowed up poor pitiful Buckshot Buddy Reno.
"They call you that because you're some kinda crackshot with a rifle, aint that right, boy?" the Sheriff snorted.
Buddy gulped and sighed, noticing the mortician and coffin maker loitering uncomfortably close by.
"What's your connection to the Blues Brother posse? How do you know Luis Pasilla? and what's your beef with the blacksmith?!"
Buddy slumped in confused surrender. He had no answers...
Luis was just beginning to feel safe in his hiding place when he felt somebody's presence at the top of the shallow ravine. "Freeze, criminal!" Luis instinctively reached for his gun. It was empty. Two more men appeared. They practically tackled him. One of them tied a rope around his midsection and dragged him back to town.