Simon Hawke - The Six Gun Solution

“You don’t know me?” he asked, gazing at him intently.

“If we met before, Mr. Priest, I’m real sorry, but I don’t seem to recall. Where was it that we met each other?”

“You don’t remember London?”

“London? London. England?” Neilson shook his head. “I ain’t never been there. mister. I grew up in Montana Territory Spent most of my life there. Ain’t never been to England. Ain’t never even been east of the Mississippi. I’d say you’ve got me confused with someone else, only you seem to know my name. You got somethin mixed up, that’s for sure, only I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen you before in my life. Leastwise, I don’t believe so.”

Lucas was speechless.

“You okay, mister?” Neilson asked. “You been drinkin’?”

“The name Forrester mean anything to you?” asked Lucas, uncertainly.

Neilson shook his head “Can’t say as it does.”

“What about Cross? Delaney? Steiger?”

“Don’t know any of those people,” Neilson said, with a frown. “What’s this all about!”

“How long have you been in Tombstone?”

“Only a few days. Why?”

“Were you injured in any way? A knock on the head or something?”

Neilson shook his head. He seemed thoroughly confused. “Mister. I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about”

Lucas sat back in his chair, stunned. “Never mind,” he said… I guess I thought you were someone else.”

“Someone else named Neilson?”

“I guess that must be it. I knew someone else with the same name and I thought you were him.”

“Oh. I see. I take it there was a resemblance?”

“Yes. A truly remarkable resemblance. You could he his twin brother.”

“No foolin’? You mean there’s somebody in London. England who looks like me and has got the same name?”

“Yes. Hell of a coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Well. I’ll be damned. I guess that explains it. Tell you the truth. Mister. for a minute there. I thought you might be drunk or off your head or somethin’.”

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” said Lucas.

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.

“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 Zaber. “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.

“‘All right’ is not enough.” O’Fallon replied. “They’re not going to be impressed with just ‘all right.’ I went to a lot of trouble to set this operation up. I don’t intend to pack it in until we’ve pulled everything we can out of it.”

“It could be risky staying around,” Zaber said. “There’s still the question of the Montana Kid, whoever the hell he is. If he’s a temporal agent, you can be sure he won’t be alone. If he’s an advance scout for the S.O.G. we’re liable to wind up in the middle of a temporal disruption.”

That could be very bad for business, all around,” O’Fallon said.

“Hey, as far as I’m concerned, the S.O.G. isn’t my headache. Let Forrester’s people handle them. There’s no money to be made going up against commandos.”

“Perhaps not, but there is money to be lost.” said O’Fallon. “A significant disruption in this sector could affect our operations further down the timestream. The S.O.G. isn’t just a threat to Temporal Intelligence. Paul. It’s a threat to the entire timeline. And that means us, too. If the S.O.G. mounts an operation here, and the T.I.A. isn’t around to stop them, it’s going to be up to us. Don’t forget, we were Temporal Intelligence ourselves at one time.”

“Yeah, but there are only five of us.” said Zaber. “We can use Clanton’s rustlers to help us pull off operations, but sending them up against trained commandos would he ludicrous. The thing to do is get word to Forrester’s people and let them handle it. And make sure we’re long gone by the time they get around to it.”