“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.