BESM - Palomino: The Quick and the Mech

Unfortunately for posterity I did not do a write up of the final adventure for these heroes. Over the course of the next adventure the heroes learned that Fochenflick had been responsible for Granger’s woes, setting the man up for bankruptcy so he Fochenflick could legally steal the land, the last major bit of range. This included not just the overcharged and mal-wared security system but also the dosing of the Granger watershed with a military neurotoxin to kill the cattle. 

Granger had discovered the neurotoxin and went to Sherriff Garner about it, not realizing that Garner was in Folchenflick’s pocket. The Sherriff went to the Granger land and shot all of them, calmly and quietly, planning to come back later with his men and remove all the bodies, leaving the farm abandoned. Random bad luck had Se-Wa-No-Te arrive that night, and be spotted by Fochenflick’s men Harris, Jeb, and Simon. When the whole situation became too messy with Se-Wa-No-Te having useful character references, Garner shot Harris, made up the affair between Harris and Molly Granger, and pinned everything on the dead guy. 

The third arc involved Fochenflick’s continued attempts to seduce Kate into her permanent employ with money and comfort, the deputies nursing their grudge against Se-Na-Wo-Te just because they were bigoted jerks, and Jake unraveling the connection between what he found in the orphanage’s water filters, what Se-Na-Wo-Te had found in the Granger land waters, and Job & Simon’s placing pf parcels across the Granger watershed that were leaking in the neurotoxin

That this neurotoxin was also crippling the kids in Mama Cass’s orphanage due to Cass’s inconsistent changing the water filters completely turned Jake against his erstwhile employer. When he informs Kate and Se-Na-Wo-Te his friends are equally incensed. 

“He’s poisoning orphans for gracing land?!?” Kate shrieks. "Yup" Jake answers. "He dies," Kate declares. Se-Na-Wo-Te nods. "Big step," Jake ponders. "I'm feeling lucky," Kate states, and the argument is over.

There are a series of showdowns that involve Se-Na-Wo-Te luring the deputies and Fochenflick’s men into the desert to pick them off, Jake rescuing Mama Cass and the orphans from Sherriff Garner (who is coming to claim the water filter evidence) before killing him  and his mech with a jury-rigged remote controlled missile strike, and Kate facing off against Fochenflick and his “shoots through mecha” railgun pistol, whom she defeats by terraforming his manor house over him. 

At the end, Jake has been made the new Sherriff of Grace, with the support of Mama Cass and much of the rest of the residents, and Travers is reaching out to Kate to discuss business ventures as she is the last surviving partner of Fochenflick. The greater evil may still lurk in that company town canyon....