"All I ask," Goldie muttered, blowing her nose miserably again, "is a chance to tell that miserable, thieving, no-good cheat that I'm sorry-to his face."

A tiny whisper at the back of her mind warned her to be wary of what one asked the gods for, lest they grant it.

Just where was Skeeter Jackson? And what the living hell was he doing down there in ancient Rome? Playing hero? Or playing the cad? She hoped she'd have the chance to find out which.

Goldie sniffed one last time and wadded up the exquisite handkerchief until her hand hurt.

"Come back, damn you!"

Only the chill of her glass cases, filled with cold, rare coins, cool, smooth miniature sculptures in precious stones, and the frozen glitter of a few scattered jewels on shivering velvet heard.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

For the remainder of their stay in Denver, the man calling himself Chuck Farley spent his time visiting one cathouse after another. Margo wrinkled her nose as they watched quietly in the darkness while he entered yet another establishment of ill repute.

"I hope he catches something really nasty!"

"He might, at that," Malcolm muttered. "He's doubtless been inoculated, because smallpox is still rampant in these parts, but he might catch a social disease and be put into quarantine. Dr. Eisenstein could either heal it or recommend permanent quarantine. Uptime, too; Rachel Eisenstein takes her job very seriously, she does. She wants to ensure diseases like that don't get passed on to anyone in the real world." A bitter chuckle issued near her ear. "He would certainly deserve it. But it's more likely he's gathering additional inventory.

"To make up for the pieces that didn't come through the gate with him?"

"Exactly."

Margo flounced as only Margo could do while standing perfectly still. Her dress rustled like wind through aspens at her movement. "He's disgusting," she muttered under her breath. "And he doesn't look or act rich enough to keep those for himself. Wonder who his uptime buyer is?"

Malcolm stared at her with considerable surprise. He hadn't expected her to pick up on that part of it so fast. But there were uptime billionaires who paid agents to loot the past for their collections. A tiny number of the agents moving downtime then uptime again had been caught, their stolen antiquities confiscated and turned over to IFARTS for evaluation and return downtime. Disgusting was far too mild a word for the kind of man who'd pay others to take the risks, do the legwork-the dirty, often lethal work. The payoff from the actual client would, of course, be only a fraction of what the antiquities were worth, but enough to keep them busily moving back and forth time and again, to steal even more artwork.

Malcolm realized from Margo's look, she'd like to do murder when Farley exited the house. And with the gun concealed in her fur muff, she probably could have drilled him through whichever eye she chose. As though following his thoughts, she glared at the cathouse Farley had entered. He half expected a Margo-style explosion or an outright attack murderous with pent-up emotion, but all she said was, "Creeps."

The deep silence of the late Denver night was shattered abruptly by the rumbling, squeaking, and groaning Conestoga wagons-along line of them, which began forming up nose-to-tail on a long, dirt road that led southeastward out of town. "Malcolm," she whispered, "is that what I think it is? A real, honest-to-goodness wagon train?"

With the ease of long practice, Malcolm shifted into his Denver persona.

"Yeah, I s'pect so, ma'am. Lots of prairie schooners in that train."

Malcolm's uncanny ability to mimic local languages, even dialects, always amazed Margo. It was his way of reminding Margo that she, too, would have to master the knack.

"But I thought all the wagon trains were a thing of the past? I mean, I read somewhere that the whole continent had been settled by 1885 or so."

Malcolm shook his head. "Nope. With book learnin' you has to go deep to ferret out truth. Lemme 'splain somethin', ma'am. This here city o' Denver weren't nothin' more'n paper plans, laid out nice and neat, back in '59. Then along comes the Pikes Peak rush, over what?'

Margo's brow furrowed delightfully Then her whole face lit with an incandescent glow. "Gold! The 59 Gold Rush."

Malcolm chuckled. "Very good. 'Cept nobody could find any. Miners called it the biggest humbug in all history, they did, and left in disgust. But the experienced men, now, the ones who'd sluiced and dug out the big Georgia and California motherlode, they stayed on. Saw the same signs, they did, same as the signs they'd noticed before. So they stayed on and come late '59 and into '60, made the really big strikes. Caused another rush, of course," he chuckle.

"Yes, but what's that got to do with that?" She pointed toward the wagons.

"W-e-e-l-l-l, that's another story, now, ain't it? There's still odd bits and pieces o' land rattling around this big country, pieces that're still unclaimed for homesteadin'." He lowered his voice to a nearly inaudible murmur. He whispered into her ear, "In fact, four times as many acres were homesteaded after 1890 than before it, but you'd never guess it from period attitudes about land. It borders on sacredness." Then at a slightly higher volume and a more discreet distance, he said, "Take careful note 'o what those wagons is carryin'. And what they ain't."

Another lesson, even during the very serious duty of watching for sluglike Farley? Malcolm Moore was always so sure of himself, yet so gentle compared to the men in her old life. She studied each wagon in turn, trying to ignore weird shadows thrown against the canvas tops as those departing checked over their equipment. She saw the usual rifles and pistols, bandoliers and boxes of ammunition to hunt game for the table, dozens of tools whose use Margo could only guess at, and a few rough-hewn bits of furniture.

"No women's things," Margo said abruptly. "No trunks for clothing or quilts, no butter churns, no barrels of padded china from back East. And no children. Those men aren't married. No farming equipment either, and no livestock except the oxen and horses pulling those wagons. Not even a single laying hen-and you can hear them clucking a fair distance away. And believe me, they cluck loud when they're upset. Do you hear any chickens?"

Malcolm shook his head solemnly.

"No, me neither."

"Very nice, indeed," Malcolm purred. "You've a good eye-and ear-for detail. Now just keep up with the bookwork and you'll make one damned fine time scout."

Margo's fierce blush was, thank God, hidden by the dark night.

"Those," Malcolm continued very quietly, "are hardened frontiersmen, always on the move. They follow the remnants of the buffalo herds for their hides, which are commanding good prices again, now that there are so few buffalo left. They follow hints and whispers of gold found on this creek or that. Or they work for hire as ranch hands, even drovers, although that profession is just about as extinct as the poor buffalo. Now that bunch," he turned Margo's head toward the front wagon in the caravan, "is bound for the Indian Territory, or my name isn't Malcolm Moore."

"Indian Territory?" Margo echoed.

"Later renamed several things, but Oklahoma was generally mixed in there somewhere. Right now men are streaming in by the hundreds to support David Payne, a cutthroat frontiersman leading a band of even more violent frontiersman in a war against the Indians given that land, even against the Federal Government."

"Your accent's slipping,"

"Right you are, ma'am, and thank you it is for the reminder."

"So," Margo concentrated, her brow deeply furrowed as she thought it through, "these men are going to stir up Indian tribes by taking part of their land illegally?"