"Yeah," she said glumly. "Too bad. Damn that girl...
Kit consoled her by ordering Goldie's favorite. She sipped disconsolately.
"How much money did you lose?" Kit asked quietly.
"Ten thousand dollars! I paid for that whole benighted expedition, not to mention that worthless piece of farmland! It's so riddled with tse-tse flies you can't even run cattle on it!"
"I feel really terrible," Kit said earnestly. "After all, I did train Margo. Her mistake is my mistake."
Goldie sniffed again. "You always were too nice for your own good, Kit. Thanks anyway. I'm still out ten thousand."
"Tell you what. I'm determined to drive home the lessons Margo's learning from this fiasco. How about I make her pay you back?
"Pay me back?" Goldie echoed. "Why?
"To teach her the value of getting her geography right."
Goldie sniffed once more, but her eyes had begun to gleam. "What did you have in mind?"
Gotcha! "Margo will be spending the next eight years or so in college. She's agreed to pay back every penny of her education out of what she earns as a scout. I'd like to tack an extra ten thousand onto the price tag. How's this? I'll buy the land. Then, every vacation Margo has, I'll go up time and make her fly, walk, and crawl every inch of that river valley until she learns how to do aerial mapping right."
Goldie hesitated, a veteran angler playing her "fish" with seasoned skill. "I don't know, Kit. That's an awfully expensive lesson."
Kit grunted. "Not half as expensive as losing your granddaughter. Which, I might add, I damn near did."
"Not to mention my life and Kit's," Malcolm added. "And that Welshman almost died on the operating table. Koot van Beek did die."
Goldie hurried to change the subject. "About this proposition of yours ... are you serious?"
"Dead serious," Kit muttered darkly. -Margo isn't setting foot across another gate until she's learned every lesson I insist she master. Getting geography right is critical. If she'd done a better job of it, Koot van Beek might still be alive."
Goldie tossed back the rest of her drink. "All right. I'm willing to help teach her a lesson. Come on, I have the paperwork down at my office."
Malcolm, God bless him, maintained an absolute poker face.
Goldie couldn't sign over the deed to the Shashe River property fast enough. Kit duly transferred ten thousand from his account into hers while Malcolm witnessed the signatures. "Goldie," Kit said, kissing her hand gallantly, "you have a grandfather's undying gratitude."
"My pleasure. Young people must learn, after all." Goldie's cheeks were faintly flushed. No one loved a scam quite as much as Goldie Morran.
Unless, of course, it was Kit Carson.
Two weeks later, Malcolm Moore's computer-mail queue beeped, letting him know he had a package from up time waiting at Customs. He signed for the box, which had been sealed by up-time ATF customs authorities. The return address was scrawled in Margo's hand. Malcolm spotted a second package like it for Kit.
He grinned, then made tracks for the Neo Edo.
"Kit around?"
"Yeah," Jimmy told him. "It's paperwork day again. You want me to buzz him?"
"Nah. I'll surprise him."
Jimmy grinned. "That man will do anything to avoid paperwork."
Malcolm laughed. "Can you blame him?"
"Hell, no."
Malcolm rapped on the office door. Kit's "Yeah, it's open" sounded vastly relieved
Malcolm slid back the door and kicked off his shoes. He held up his mail. "Package from Margo. There's one for you, too, waiting at Customs."
Kit came around the desk like a thrown basebalclass="underline" "Well, open it!"
Malcolm tore the seals and ripped open the cardboard. Inside was a metal box which he tilted carefully out. The lid slipped back to reveal a single item: a glittering diamond in the rough, nearly as big as Malcolm's thumbnail.
Kit whooped. "She did it!"
Malcolm held it up to the light, then whistled. She sure had. "That," Malcolm sighed, "is truly beautiful." And if she still felt the same way in a few months, maybe he'd even have it made into a ring ...
Well, stranger things had happened to him lately. Their parting had been enough to shake both of them to the core. Who knew? Maybe she'd even broken his notorious string of bad luck?
Now that would be a switch.
"I think," Malcolm grinned, "this calls for a celebration."
Kit broke out champagne from his private stock and poured bubbly, then handed over a glass. "How about a toast?"
Malcolm waited expectantly.
Kit lifted his glass. "To the best damn time scouts in La La Land. Partner." He slid over a signed document giving Malcolm and Margo each a third-share interest in the land Kit had bought from Goldie Morran. Malcolm just gaped.
"You earned it. We all did. Hope you don't mind paying Kynan Rhys Gower out of our joint profits?"
Malcolm's eyes misted. "Hear, hear. I'd say that's a bargain any day of the week." They touched glasses with a musical clink.
"Now, partner," Kit grinned, "about that story you were going to tell me... the one about Caligula's murder and Claudius' ascension to the Principate of Rome."
"Oh, no," Malcolm laughed. "First you have to spill the beans about what really happened when you spent the night hiding under Queen Victoria's bed."
Kit grinned. "I never compromise a lady. You first." No one, Malcolm chuckled, could bamboozle and flummox his way out of the truth like a time scout. At last, La-La Land was back to normal. Thank God. Malcolm settled back in one of Kit's chairs and started spinning the tallest tale he could concoct about that day in Rome five years previously-and two thousand years in the past-and made himself a silent promise.
If Margo could risk it, so could he. Malcolm Moore and Margo Smith, Time Scouts ...
It had a nice ring to it.