Don't Tamper with Horses

...Continuing.

Moss sat quietly, enduring June's torture as she gently dabbed every cut and scrape on his face with witch hazel. It burned in his open cuts, which made him wince, which pulled on all the other wounds on his face.

"What can we do, Edward?" June asked while she re-soaked the cloth with witch hazel. "I'm afraid all we can do now is try to escape."

Denny frowned. "You mean run away? We can't do that Junie."

Moss grinned lopsidedly. "Running away is better than dying, Den, but I don't think that's a good option either. There's nothing to run to for more than a hundred miles. No, we've got to fight him if we want to come out of this alive." He winced as June treated more wounds.

She was less gentle this time, her irritation showing in both her brisk movements and her sharpened voice. "We are only three, Edward, and the rest of the town is just as demoralized and scared. They won't fight."

Reaching up and catching the hand that held the witch hazel rag, Moss sighed. "Lots of folks will fight if they have hope. I'm not talking about fighting them all at once. We need to find a way to whittle them down, get them apart from each other."

Denny rubbed his hands together. "What about cutting their cinches? So they all get dumped in the street!"

"That's good if you want to make them mad, Den," Moss said. "But if they keep riding in a pack, then you'll just have a pack of incensed outlaws to deal with. We can't count on them getting hurt falling. We've got to take them out of the fight without losing our own folks." He watched as June corked the bottle of witch hazel and placed it in the medicine cabinet, pushing aside a bottle of ipecac. Moss's eyes glowed with inspiration and he turned to Denny. "Can you tell folks to meet in the stable, Den? Get everybody who will come, and be sure the barkeep from the saloon gets the word. We'll need him." To be continued...