Kit nodded understanding of what Adair had left unspoken.

Introductions completed, Dr. Rubenstein stepped forward immediately, shaking Kit's hand, then Malcolm's. "Gentlemen, it's an honor, believe me. You, sir, are known everywhere," this to Kit, "and you, Dr. Moore are a lucky man. Damned lucky. You both trained this young lady? She's a bit blunt," he said with a smile, rubbing his chin, "but she knows what she's talking about. Very, very well. And her, mmm, `forceful' suggestions have all, been to the point and excellently stated." This time, Samuel Rubenstein smiled at her. "I can see, now, where your excellent education comes from."

Perversely, she was peeved. Not good enough on my own, but the minute Kit Carson strolls in, I'm a sensation. Buddy, you ain't seen nuthin' yet. Outwardly, she said a bit breezily, "Oh, well, there certainly is that, and believe me, their tutoring is profoundly educational"-she could feel the snort Kit held in "but there's a lot of bookwork too. A whole lot. So much, you never stop learning. Do you, Grandpa?"

It was the first time she'd ever called him that. He stiffened momentarily, speechless, while he stared down at her.

"That's right," he managed. "Even though I'm retired, I'm still learning, just in case. I've recently tackled an ancient Chinese dialect and Croatian stripped of all Serbian influences, vocabulary, and so on, to add to my other languages, and I've been reading and taking notes from a complete history of the Croatian people, both of which I'll have to transfer to memory sufficiently for instant recall if I ever decide to risk going down that new gate at TT-16. Not a tourist gate, not at all; but the research potential is said to be fabulous." His eyes actually glittered with intense interest.

The paleontologists were clearly impressed.

Kit just ruffled his granddaughter's hair, saying everything he wanted to say with that touch and the look in his eyes.

Margo cleared her throat, wishing desperately for once that they were alone and someplace private where they could just talk. She needed to tell him what had really happened to her mother, Kit's lost daughter the one he hadn't known he possessed until Margo told him about her, the little she'd been able to tell him, except her name and that she was dead. Margo cringed at the memory of that talk by the fishpond on Commons. She'd been so inexperienced, so uneasy, so afraid of him, she literally hadn't been able to tell him what his eyes had begged to know.

This time, she wouldn't be such a coward. And she'd hold him while he cried over her mother's brutal murder, robbing him of a child he'd never met.

Whoops, getting too maudlin, Margo. You have a job to do and you can't do it snuffling goddamned tears, of all things.

So she said to her somewhat abashed students, "Oh, by the way, all of you should stop by Connie Logan's Clothes and Stuff, not just for period-appropriate clothing-she's got the best and you can rent it for much less than buying it but also be sure to buy a good Old West dictionary, so you won't sound quite so green.

Old Western speech is nearly unintelligible to anybody else from anywhere else. To Old Westerners, anybody who can't speak it is a greenhorn. Learn the language you'll need to know"

She'd picked up a little at school, but she'd have to study it like mad before she and Malcolm went to Denver.

"But," Adair MacKinnon asked, swallowing hard and sweating, "isn't it just a dialect of English?"

"No," Malcolm said quietly. "Unless you can tell me the exact Old West meanings and pronunciations, without having to think about them-of churn-twister, cienaga, a Jerusalem undertaker, the word `jewelry' or the phrase `jewelry chest,' then you'd better hit the library and find yourself a good Old West-English/ English-Old West dictionary and start memorizing it. You're going to need it for three months in rough country, away from the more `civilized' vicinity around Denver."

Adair stuck to his guns. "I can understand the need to speak like a native, but why so adamant about it? So-called dudes from the East wouldn't have spoken it, after all. And just exactly what do `Jerusalem undertaker' or a perfectly normal word like `jewely really mean?"

"Yes," Malcolm replied, "dudes don't speak Old West when they arrive. They're lost in an alien culture, trying to survive and blend in gradually with what they find. In short, they're intrusive greenhorns, and greenhorns are considered fair game."

"Very fair game," Kit added solemnly. "The range wars weren't quite as bad as depicted in the movies, although they were bad enough, and Dodge City had a lower per capita murder rate than, say, New York or Washington, D.C. during, oh, the mid 1990s. But attacks on dudes by a single, experienced man, or a gang of them, were very common. Even swindlers could make a killing, saying one thing that meant another altogether, which the dude would find out too late, once his money or land or horse or whatever he'd risked was long out of his possession. And having made a legal contract, there was absolutely nothing the poor sop could do about it. Except maybe hire himself a gun-hand-if he had enough money left to hunt down the rat and kill him."

Margo took Kit's hand again, more carefully this time, realizing she was squeezing it so tightly, his fingernails were turning purple. "Grandpa pushed the Wild West Gate," she put in, eyes aglow as she gazed up at Kit.

He harrumphed and muttered, "Lots of time scouts pushed lots of gates. Nothing heroic in walking through the Wild West Gate, of that I may assure you. There were other gates that were much harder to step through."

A subtle reminder of Margo's disastrous mission into Southern Africa. She flushed, but held tight to his hand.

Dr. Rubenstein nodded. `The Roman Gate, I expect, was an extremely difficult one."

Kit laughed. "Oh, it was easy to get in. Getting out again proved a rather interesting test of wit and skill."

And that was how he dismissed one of the most dangerous, nearly lethal adventures he'd ever encountered. His involuntary fight in the Circus Maximus was legend the world over.

"well," Margo muttered, "I, uh, guess I'd better get on with my own practice and let you take over the class, Ann."

The diminutive firearms instructor nodded gracious thanks for helping break the class the way a horsebreaker might soften up and civilize a particularly unruly horse.

Kit said very softly, "We'll wait on the benches until you're finished."

She nodded, holding in another sigh. Another bleeding test ...

But this time she put up no arguments, no protests, no childish tantrums. She simply put on her safety.

Ann, called out, "Line's going hot!" so everyone else donned safety gear-including Kit and Malcolm-and got busy finishing the other two boxes of .44-40's, scoring well in toward the center of the black despite her nervousness; then she switched to the heavier Centennial and did herself proud with three boxes of almost perfect nines and tens. She did throw a couple of rounds here and there from sweating palms and aching arms and eyes that burned and wouldn't focus properly, but even though she was out of practice, her scores were good and she knew it.

"Well?" she asked as she handed over the targets.

The two most important people in her life put their heads together, poring over the targets, marking each shot outside the nine ring. Finally they looked up again.

"Well, frankly," Kit began, "you could use some more practice and work on your upper arm strength, but pretty damned good for a first try after several dry months."

Margo let go her tense fear and abruptly felt like she was floating on fizzy bubbles that tickled her all the way to the ceiling.

"Hey," Malcolm called, "come down out of the clouds, will you?"