They straggled along in a stretched-out line, rounding enormous mounds of broken rock and silt left to bake in the hot sun, and came at length to a ridge above a ramshackle town. The mining camp sprawled between piles of tailings, sluice flumes, open-pit mine works, boarded-over mine shafts, and the meanders of a sparkling river which caught the hot sun in diamond flashes. Water rippled and spilled its glittering way over and around immense boulders which had been blasted down from the surrounding mountainsides.
A sharp report cracked on the still air, prompting Skeeter's pony to shift under his thighs. He controlled the uneasy animal with his legs, settling it down to blow restively and champ its bit. A long, dry wooden flume teetered its way a good three-hundred feet down a barren hillside to the valley floor. Down beside it, a cloud of blue-grey smoke puffed out onto the hot afternoon air. The smoke hung above the flume's broken sides for a moment before gradually dissipating. A hundred feet away, another puff of smoke appeared as a second shot was fired from the vicinity of a ramshackle livery stable.
Then a galloping horse burst out of the stable and shot across a broad stretch of open ground at a dead run. The rider, leaning low over his horse's neck, drew smoothly from a right-handed hip holster and fired at the side of the flume. Smoke bellied out and hung on the still air. Dust swirled up from thundering hooves as the rider holstered his six-gun, then reached across to his left hip and pulled a second enormous pistol from a cross-draw. He fired again as the galloping horse shot past the flume. He reholstered at full gallop and raced down to a shack at the edge of the clearing.
The sweating rider pulled up hard on the reins and hauled his mount to a slithering stop. Then he drew from his right-hand holster again and twisted around, firing a shot at the flume over his shoulder. Kicking his horse into motion, he reholstered once more as the animal swept around the shed and galloped back toward the rickety wooden watercourse. Another cross-draw shot from the left-hand hip and the horse raced past the flume to the livery stable. A sharp whistle sounded as the horse galloped back inside, hidden by a cloud of dust.
"Time!" a man's voice rang out from one of the abandoned houses. Then, "Reset! And... Next shooter up!"
This time, Skeeter saw a man crouched behind the flume, positioned several yards uphill from the mounted rider's target. The guy at the flume ran downhill and yanked targets from either side of the dilapidated wooden structure, hastily tacking up new ones for the next contestant. He ran back uphill and jumped into a pit which protected him from flying lead. He then drew a revolver and fired into the air. At that signal, another shot rang out from the livery stable.
This time Skeeter saw the puff of dust fly up from the dry, brittle wood as lead struck a target. Then a second galloping horse shot out into the open, the second rider also leaning low. This contestant wore his six-guns butt forward. The rider fired both shots at the flume as his horse, a big paint with brown splotches down its flanks, raced past. Again, the rider galloped to the shed, where he pulled up hard, his single-leather reins hooking down under his belt buckle as he snugged his horse's head back for the sliding stop. He fired the over-the-shoulder shot and reholstered, then urged his mount forward, letting the reins slide forward.
The single leather strap hooked itself under his second, butt-forward pistol, and dragged it out of the holster neat as anything. The gun flipped midair and landed in the dust with a disastrous thunk. The rider froze in dismay for a long, penalizing second. Then he scrambled out of the saddle and retrieved his piece, lunged back into the saddle again with a one-footed dancing hop, and urged his mount around the shed. He had to circle it again, to give himself time to reholster his gun and draw it correctly for the shot on the return gallop.
Skeeter chuckled. "I'll bet that guy's cussing a streak by the time he gets back to the livery stable."
Kit glanced around. "Yes. And if that was a real shootout, down there, he'd probably be an embarrassed corpse right about now."
Skeeter sobered. "Point taken."
The judge in the abandoned house called, "Time!" and Kurt Meinrad put hands to lips and gave out a loud, drawn-out whistle. Then he yelled, "Halluuuu!" For a moment, all was still in the abandoned mining town; then doors were flung open and abruptly the place swarmed with life. Men in faded, dusty denim work pants and checked shirts or fringed buckskins came out of hiding from a dozen buildings. Women, too, some clad in buckskins like the men, others in long prairie skirts and frontier-rugged dresses, with wide-brimmed bonnets to shade their faces from the fierce sun, came running excitedly from seemingly abandoned structures. Down beside the disused ore flume, the target changer waved up at them and returned Meinrad's vigorous greeting.
"Move out," Meinrad called.
Kit Carson's thump of heels to his pony's sides was almost as weary as Skeeter's own. The retired scout hadn't been in a saddle any more recently than Skeeter had—and while Kit was as lean and tough as old belt leather left too long in the sun, he wasn't getting any younger. The sight of the toughest man Skeeter knew, just as whacked out as he was, cheered Skeeter a little. They rode silently into "town" while the re-enactment shooters assembled in front of the ramshackle livery stable. Someone had refurbished the stalls and corral sufficiently to house several dozen horses, but only a dozen or so were in sight. He spotted drifts of smoke from the chimneys of several tumble-down houses, their windows long since broken out by storms and wild animals.
A thickset man in his thirties, holding a Spencer repeater propped easily across one shoulder, blinked up at their guide. Skeeter recognized the man vaguely as one of Time Tours' Denver guides, who spent most of his career down time. The guide was staring at them in open puzzlement. "Kurt Meinrad! I didn't figure they'd send you out here! Weren't you supposed to be on vacation by now? Not that I'm sorry to see you. I told that courier we needed the best help there was. You must've been sitting in the Denver gate house, to get here this fast."
Skeeter swung himself out of the saddle as Meinrad and Kit, the latter all but unrecognizable under gritty dust, dismounted. The ground was hard under Skeeter's boot soles, baked dry by the blazing summer sun. The town smelt of woodsmoke, sulphurous gun powder, hot sunlight on dust, and human sweat. Skeeter reeked of overheated horse.
"Courier?" Kit asked sharply. "What courier? We're not here because of any courier."
The Time Tours guide with the Spencer glanced at Kit, then did a classic double-take. "Good God! Kit Carson? No, they certainly wouldn't have sent you to answer my call for help. What in God's name are you doing here?"
Kit shook his head. "Never mind that now. Why'd you send out a courier? What kind of trouble did you need help with?"
"Two murders, is what," the man grunted, spitting tobacco juice to one side with a brown splat. "Two stinking murders and four disappearing tourists." When Skeeter groaned under his breath, the man glanced from Kit to Skeeter to Sid Kaederman and shot a worried look at Kurt Meinrad, then held out a meaty hand to Kit. "Orson Travers. Let's get you settled in before I give you the details. It's hot as blazes out here and you men look to need a good, cold drink before we start poking into this mess."