"We want to be so bad that people can't get a posse against us. That's the rep we want."

They decide to split the party three ways. Robert and Cady are going to head into town to contact the Rangers, Tobey and Joseph are going to try to trace the dead men who attacked the ranch, and Dr. Vorpwhistle is going to sit about and try not to root.

Tobey and Joseph's day is informative and generally harmless. Using his past vision, Elder Tanner is able to trace the attackers to a little campsite to the northwest of the ranch, where one of them killed and spored the others. After a little more work with holy powers, he learns that the first attacker was killed by a jackalope when he nearly stepped on it, and then a drifting spore in the air landed on him. There seems to be no deeper origin to the whole thing. Tobey and Joseph get back to the Circle B late in the afternoon.

Meanwhile, Robert refuses to be disguised to go back into town, but is willing to scrub up and change. Unfortunately, he is recognized by a deputy on the way in to town, and the poor man nervously tells them to put their hands up. Cady responds by filibustering the deputy, and Robert flees to the Rangers. The deputy, already excited by the whole thing, finds the spell too stressful and dies of a heart attack. Cady slips away in the ensuing confusion.

"Have any trouble with the deputy?"
"Nope."

Robert finds the Ranger office staffed with a familiar face - Longhorn George Rampant, from the banshee incident. He tells Robert that officially the Rangers are hunting the Black River gang, but unofficially not so much. Robert fills him in about the terrible zombies, and he agrees that the Rangers can deal with that (except for the Bayou Vermilion ones, which will be mostly left to the railroad). Robert escapes out the back afterwards.

That night, they are attacked by the astrally-projecting Jerome, but Tobey dispels his magic before he can really get going. Either he tells the Marshall where they are, or the Marshall figures it out, because they are awakened in the pre-dawn by a gunshot (one of the Rangers, in the posse, having an accident before the Marshall can really ambush the party). They flee.

They're better horsed - with Cady's recovery of their extra horses from town, they have fifteen horses to five riders - and after a long pursuit they are able to out distance the law and flee to Mexico, where they don't think they will be followed too long. This tactic works, and they decide to travel through Mexico for a while and reenter the CSA somewhere near Tombstone, if they can find it.

Luckily, that's basically West. A couple days later they come upon a little Mexican village that mistakes them for banditos and tries to get them to go away. Upon revealing that they are not banditos and that there are only five of them, the posse is able to find out that the village expects to be raided by El Escorpion and his sixty men any day now. They didn't want other bandits to take their food, because then El Escorpion would have been very angry with them.

Our heroes decide that they can protect a little village from mere mortals, and attempt to persuade the villagers. However, there are only five of them, two of whom are women and one of whom is a one-armed preacher. Tobey tries to demonstrate her rifle skill, but muffs it and demonstrates only that she is twitchy but inaccurate. Trying again, she demonstrates that she can shoot a coin out of the air, but the villagers are unconvinced. Finally, the posse tries to get the villagers to sic El Escorpion on the rich gringos, so they can then massacre him and get the village's food back, but the villagers don't want to do that - it would be wrong to help crazy people kill themselves.

Finally, the party decides to ride off and hide nearby, and save the village from El Escorpion whether they like it or not.