Certainly, Rebus has had her in that barn many times. I get the impression that this is a normal progression through the loop if there is no guest involved in the ranch attack, or if the guest declines to take advantage of her. We know the hosts run their loops even without guest interaction.

But I don't think Dolores has shot Rebus numerous times; I feel this is a once-off incident. Mainly because we have to note that this must have occurred after Teddy tries to teach Dolores to shoot a gun, which she could not do at that scene. I am fairly sure that desert scene with Teddy was a little bit of a flashback, but I don't think too far, so the incident of Dolores shooting Rebus would have to be fairly new/recent.

And for that, I think I will go back to my initial feeling that the gun does belong to Rebus, and she grabbed it in the struggle. She may have grabbed it in many loops, but I think there is only one where she is able to fire it. And, in line with your cleaning up comments, I have to assume it was then missed because the gun seems to be crossing loops now.

I think where we are at now, at the end of ep3, is that she was dragged off by Rebus, got the gun as she likely often did, but since this particular loop has happened after the MiB scene, which she remembers when looking at Rebus, this makes her fire the gun. She runs out and gets shot by the other guest, at which point she remembers the times when she fled. And so the episode then continues to show what happened in one of those previous early loops, in which she runs to William (either as a memory or a flashback). We will likely pick up ep4 in a flashback to that timeframe. I think this will end up being a pivotal moment in Dolores' story (she has changed and fired a weapon now), so before moving further ahead with her rebuild/repair after dying this time, the show will spend much more time on past events for now. Hopefully some answers on Sunday.

I would also make an argument that "fleeing" was never supposed to happen, and the incident in which we see her remember doing so was an aberrant one, quite possibly a breaking of her loop that leads to the events of the critical failure, which we could now get more info about since we are now watching the flashback to meeting William. I don't think she shot Rebus in that old loop, how she evades him remains unclear (perhaps she is stumbling out of the barn after being raped?).

Essentially, her fleeing almost HAS to be a loop breaking. There is no story/loop for events after such an attack on the ranch; her father is dead, she has likely been raped, etc etc, any storyline after this would be extremely difficult and unlikely. It pretty much MUST end at that point, and for that to happen, Dolores must be killed and reset. I think this is something rather important to consider.

This in turn made me examine another issue: How long is each "Loop"?

Looking at the Dolores loop, it seems to be mostly single day (wake - town - paint/flirt - home - attack). Her loop flowchart on the website does allow an uneventful day, ending in sleep and waking up again, but I don't think that happens too often, or for too many consecutive times. She would need regular "rebooting". Same would apply for Teddy's loops, and probably Walter (since he "always buys it").

In "The Stray", Elsie says the guys at the campsite were due in town for the cattle drive "two days ago". So some loops are much longer. But we also have Sizemore saying he "massaged events to bring Hector's visit to town forward a week". That means there is a storyboard covering quite a few weeks going on.

So what happens when Dolores or Teddy etc are killed? If this is happening on a daily or near-daily basis, how do the other hosts, who are still progressing through their own much longer loops, reconcile seeing them alive again? Or for that matter the guests, who would see repairs and ressurected hosts.

With regard to scenery/props, such as the gun Dolores has, there is a great impracticality of having so many and someone "cleaning up". Consider all the stray bullet holes in walls, the broken windows, blood splatters, broken railings & posts in town, etc. The problem then becomes that they must be repaired with regard to the hosts experiencing short loops, such as Dolores/Teddy, but such repairs would be disruptive to the longer loops of hosts like Hector, Maeve, etc.

But I don't think we can rationalise this; more to the point, I don't think we should try. This is one of those things that should be covered by "suspension of disbelief" in watching; in order to have a good fictional/fantasy story, some little things have to be just forgotten about. I'll defer to Abernathy's quote: "I had a question, a question you're not supposed to ask, which gave me an answer you're not supposed to know"

And to allow me to continue enjoying the show, I think I must also say that in this case, looking at the problems and practicalities of it all.... "It doesn't look like anything to me"