Neilson grinned. “Well, ain’t that somethin’? Somebody who looks like me and has the same name, too! And you say you met him in England?”
‘Yes, that’s right. He was a soldier.”
“I’ll be, No wonder you seemed all mixed-up. You thought I was him.”
I was certain of it.”
“If that don’t beat all. I’d sure like to meet this fella. But I don’t know as I’ll ever get to England. Sure is a long way off. This other Neilson, he a shootist, too?”
“Yes, he is. A remarkably good one.”
“Is that right? Boy, ain’t that somethin’?”
“Yes, it’s an amazing coincidence.” said Lucas. “Astonishing, in fact.”
“I guess it is, at that. I never heard of such a thing.”
“You ever hear of three men named Summers, McEnery and Billings’?” Lucas asked.
Neilson chuckled. “Hell, this other fella must really look a lot like me,” he said. “You still don’t believe it, do you? I’m tellin’ you, mister, I ain’t him. I never heard of those people. They’re friends of his. I take it.”
“Fellow soldiers,” Lucas said.
Neilson shook his head “Well. I ain’t never been a soldier. You got my word on that. And I don’t know any of those folks you mentioned.”
“Well. I’m sorry I bothered you.” said Lucas. “I was sure that you were him.”
“No trouble.” Neilson said. “It sure has been interestin’. You still want to ask me those questions?”
“Perhaps another time.” said Lucas, getting up from the table. “This whole thing took me so much by surprise. I can’t remember a single thing that I was going to say.”
Neilson smiled. “Well. I’ll be around, you want to talk some more. And maybe you can tell me some more about this other fella. I sure am mighty curious.”
“Yeah, maybe we can have a drink later.” Lucas said.
“Anytime.”
They shook hands and Lucas went back up to his room. Delaney had left, but Andre was still there, stretched out on the bed and getting some rest.
“You get a chance to talk to Scott’?” she asked, sitting up as he came in. Then she saw the expression on his face. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Lucas shook his head, looking dazed. “We’re in a lot of trouble.” he said.
8
“Twenty-five thousand in silver bullion,” said O’Fallon. “And it slipped right through our fingers. What the hell went wrong?”
“those three idiots, Head. Leonard and Crane, went wrong.” replied Paul Za
ber. “I gave them the plan myself. I told them, soon as the stage pulls up, shoot both the driver and shotgun guard, but they blew it Leonard shot all right, but the other two hesitated and the horses bolted, so they only got Philpot. Then instead of chasing the stage down when the horses bolted, they had King holding their horses a short distance away, so the stage had a good head start on them by the time they got mounted. They still could’ve caught it, but they gave it up as a bad job and took off. Had to run from the damn posse with nothing to show for it.”
“Exactly the way it happened in the original scenario,” said O’Fallon, thoughtfully. “We seem to be swimming against the current of temporal inertia. I wouldn’t have thought something like this would have made much difference to the scheme of things, but perhaps I was wrong. This time sector may have more temporal significance than I’d imagined.”
“If that’s true, then we’re taking a big risk.” said Zaber. You think we should pull out?
“I’d hate to do that without having this operation show more of a profit.” O’Fallon replied. “Remember that none of us can depend on our agency pensions anymore, thanks to Moses Forrester. And I always intended to retire a very wealthy man, with a ludicrously expensive lifestyle. That means I’m going to have to convince the board to put me in charge of more profitable operations. They’re not going to do that if they’re not sufficiently impressed with the way I conducted this one.”
“We’ve done all right.” said Zaber.