For a control freak he’s certainly let this situation get out of control…  and when’s he going to realize that he’s outnumbered, gun or no gun?  That the gig was up the minute we entered into the Trail-zone?

Yea… I don’t like it when people get all chummy, see?  Reminds me of my own miserable life where I haven’t known a single friend and only get what I want by threatening and beating people…

But let’s look at this again… they are riding off onto the plain with saddlebags stuffed with money and not camera equipment- why?  Baldy could have been taken out days (weeks) ago… why not?!  We supposedly have local law enforcement and the FBI on the case… Oh please can we wrap this up?!

…for a short drink of water.  Ha, ha.  I get it.  Very funny…

So much going on!  Raptors! Prey! Prairie Dogs!  Not a single Ferret, though… and isn’t that why we are in the Badlands to begin with??  And Baldy and Blondie are closing in…  What’s next??  Mark you had better share your master plan with Johnny or else it’s all improv…

And don’t forget Mark, your lack of action has left you in hostage mode too…

But are you telling me you had this plan all figured out as you were renting the car?  Over a month ago?   You assumed that you would drive all the way to Jimmy and Sarita’s house, all of you would get on horseback and then you could stage your daring escape from the one taking hostages?  By engaging in a little trick riding?  Uh, OK…  I guess.

Thank you Mr. Film!  It takes a while, but Johnny Lone Elk finally cuts to the chase and calls out the obvious…

But to the point made yesterday, Mr. “Egghead” can see the two of them talking, so it’s only a matter of time (weeks?) before he’ll call an end to the discussion/ plotting, threaten to “shoot the girl” and we’ll be back where we started, only now on horseback heading toward a ghost town with a twister bearing down on them…  oh the suspense…

You are not in charge here any more, this is not your domain.  It’s still a wonder why you are engaging in the kind of getaway that doesn’t get you away, and you’ll have to live with the consequences of that decision…

But wait- is that a Prairie Dog in panel two?  Ah… so what…

Gang, I gotta be honest here… this is just becoming a chore.  And if it ain’t fun, then why do it?  It’s been a decent ride these last few years, but these postings will start becoming a little more dispersed, like when something really happens or the muse strikes…

…they were referring to Johnny and not Jimmy!  You’d think that with the pace this story is going I would be able to keep up with the conversation…  So now that we have that sorted out…

Yea, you can always shoot the girl, if that’s what you really want to do anyway, and if you think that would help…  I remind us, tough, that Baldy is thoroughly outnumbered and Mark and Johnny could probably have him lassoed and hog-tied before  you could say Mark Trail…

And we’re back…  hoping that another installment might shed some light on where this is all going.  Yeah.  Right.

When we last heard from Jimmy and Sarita, they were hemming and hawing over what they should be doing, but agreeing that staying put was their best option…

Meanwhile Baldy isn’t “liking” the fact that there is a “gap” building between him and Jimmy.  Again, I say, if he is an expert in “getting away” he really doesn’t understand the first thing about it!  He is collecting witnesses at a rate that would make a Kardashian blush…

With more non-sequitur comments and inane plot devices piling up, we are left to wonder whether Jimmy owns a truck, or if they took all the horses, or what the hell he means by his comments today…

Besides, who asked you to go after them, Jimmy?  I thought you were waiting for the Sheriff to arrive?  And ask if you can borrow his cell phone.  Whatever.

I was about to blow off today’s installment, given that it’s another do-nothing, go-nowhere piece, but then I noticed the little mountain lion cub getting all frisky in the lower right, lashing out and the “JAMES ALLEN” Orb.  Something I think we all would like to do…

And it’s now clear that Jimmy and Sarita need to join the 21st Century (Hell, Mark has…) and get themselves a cell phone…  and that the lines went out in South Dakota, not necessarily Lost Forest.  One has to also wonder how Cherry’s conversation with the FBI went!

This long story arc is starting to enter a return trip?

No comment on yesterday’s installment, the inane dialogue, the lack of continuity…

But today we are offered hope!  The return of Dirty Dyer!  To Lost Forest!  Or is it?  Did Jimmy & Sarita’s line go dead?  Or did the phone get ripped out of the wall at Lost Forest?  Did both lines go dead simultaneously?  And don’t be too quick on the draw, Sarita, I’m guessing the cell coverage out in your neck of the woods is pretty sketchy!

I would think that it’s more and more difficult today to do anything without laying down tracks… Electronic ones, anyway…  The Surveillance State has been well established and one need not be of the tinfoil-hat-brigade or reading a Tom Clancy novel to acknowledge that we are being watched, or at least have the opportunity to be watched at any given moment… Such is the case with our current story line.  There are so many breadcrumbs, you’d almost have to try NOT to see what’s going on here.  Although the motives of the bad guy remain an absolute mystery.  Almost like he wants to get caught!

But what the heck did the Sheriff have to say??  Does he know about the robbery?  Did he agree that there might be a connection?  There is no connection between the first and subsequent panels in today’s installment, but then there’s nothing new about that!!

Now that Baldy has made it so incredibly easy to follow his trail, we have to wonder whether Mark has done anything at all to help his own cause…  Baldy just keeps leaving bread crumbs, starting with revealing his face and getting tagged by the Facial Recognition Software to hooking up with Mark and his rental car… now he’s been very careless in not keeping his folding money stowed…  and as a result, Cherry is now going to get a second call, this time from Sarita (her twin sister) after having also been contacted by the FBI, for crying out loud!

Sheriff Don!!  Oh boy!  I can’t wait to meet him!! And witness the inevitable fight over jurisdictional prominence…

Let’s hope not… otherwise they will have to Jimmy (ha! get it??) their way into the car and probably set off the alarm…

And so while Jimmy worries about a little rain, Sarita looks about as determined as a person can be…  taking inventory of what she sees… to what end I wonder?  What clues could he have left them?  Never mind the fact that between Mark and Johnny they now outnumber the bad guys, and assuming that Blondie wouldn’t get in the way of an insurrection, they could have this all wrapped up in less time than it takes to put on their ponchos…

And good point, andysowner, Storm’s a-brewin’… like on Tatooine…  And we have to wonder whether Baldy and Blondie have ever mounted a horse in their lives… I mean, this isn’t Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid we are talking about here…

So as they all ride off for the Ghost Town, with bags packed with money (I’m thinking) and not camera equipment, I am still wondering what Baldy’s end-game is here…  Looking for logic and reason, and finding none.  But in the words of one Ulysses Everett  McGill,  it’s a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart…

…while Rome is burning, figuratively speaking…  Maybe by Independence Day we’ll know what Mark has on his mind, up his sleeve,as it were…

I have to admit I didn’t catch the “If Mark is determined” when I read it the first time- only after I read today’s installment did I catch the fact that Mark ordered up the horses…

…which brings me back to the original (and I know, friends, tired) premise that Mr. Baldy Getaway doesn’t know crap about “getting away.”  How on earth does any of this further his objective of eluding the FBI?

Now that everyone is mad at Mark, even Jimmy, judging by the look on his face in panel three, Sarita is making the gross assumption that everyone is going to the Ghost town as planned, even though nothing has gone to plan ever since Mark showed up with his  new “friends…”

And what the heck s going on with Sarita in panel three?  Is she so mad that her Cherry mask is going to fall off?  Maybe that’s part of the game that they like to play when Mark comes over.  Sarita dresses up like Cherry, and well, who knows…  More than I want to think about!

Should I stay or should I go… ba da da DA DA da.  Should I stay or should I go now?  If I go there will be trouble… If I stay it will be double…

WHY DID YOU YOU GO TO THE RANCH IN THE FIRST PLACE??? Why do I care?  You know, this used to be more fun!  See you all on Monday.

Look who’s getting the dig in now!  Sarita is being accused of harboring a fear or prejudice against bald people, and she fires back against the mullet of the new age- the man-bun…

I meant to mention this yesterday… that Jimmy Ryan sort of reminds me of an old Mark Trail character Johnny Mallotte…

Johnny owns a fishing camp has has produced about 17 children… now there’s a man’s man!!  What’s crazy is that the child nearest him, stage left, bears a striking resemblance to Rusty, but in fact is not… hmmmm… speaking of which, I wonder what’s going on back at Lost Forest…

And what exactly does a “Professional Camera Crew” look like?  Do they have little black berets and pencil-thin mustaches?  And speaking of not looking like something we’d expect, what’s with Johnny Lone Elk?  Long hair, unshaven, prize-fighter’s nose, scowl… He has every marker of a bad guy in the Trailverse… why he looks like he’s even done hard time!

I am still totally befuddled how any of this advances the “get-away” objectives of Baldy.  Now he has three more people who can easily make him, that he will have to ice…

And look at Johnny Lone Elk in Panel two.  He’s gone and got his feelings hurt…  “But, but… Mark said I was going to be his Camera Crew!  How am I ever going to get my film career off the ground if people keep horning in on my projects??”

And sorry to have assumed, but with a name like JLE, I sort of assumed that Johnny would be Native American??  Maybe he Identifies as one?  Sort of like Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man?  I guess anything is possible these days…