Ripping Time by Robert Asprin & Linda Evans

By the next day, when the Wild West Gate cycled into Denver’s, summer of 1885, tempers amongst the security squads were running ragged. Ianira’s up-time acolytes—many of them injured during the rioting—were staging protests that threatened to bring commerce in Little Agora to a screeching halt. And Kit Carson—who’d spent a fair percentage of his night working with search teams, combing the rocky bowels of the station for some trace of the missing down-timers—needed a drink as badly as a dehydrated cactus needed a desert rainstorm in the spring.

Unshaven and tired, with a lonely ache in his chest, Kit found himself wandering into Frontier Town during the pre-gate ruckus, looking for company and something wet to drown his sorrows. He couldn’t even rely on Malcolm to jolly him out of his mood—Malcolm was down the Britannia with Margo, lucky stiff. A sardonic smile twisted Kit’s mouth. Why he’d ever thought retirement would be any fun was beyond him. Nothing but massive doses of boredom mingled with thieving tourists who stripped the Neo Edo’s rooms of everything from towels to plumbing fixtures, and endless gossip about who was doing what, with or to whom, and why. Maybe I ought to start guiding, just for something to do? Something that didn’t involve filling out the endless government paperwork required for running a time-terminal hotel . . .

“Hey, Kit!” a familiar voice jolted him out of his gloomy maunderings. “You look sorrier than a wet cat that’s just lost a dogfight.”

Robert Li, station antiquarian and good friend, was seated at a cafe table outside Bronco Billy’s, next to the Arabian Nights contruction crew foreman. Li’s dark eyes glinted with sympathetic good humor as he waved Kit over.