The size of the 76 caused Margo to remember Koot van Beek's rifle and that great, horrid Cape Buffalo. That was a barely scabbed over memory, too. She hastily snagged the Centennial, along with a modern cleaning kit with brushes for both rifles. Never, ever again would Margo travel down a gate without the right weapons close at hand.
Putting aside the memory, Margo carted all the items to an empty shooting bench on lane four. Ann glanced up and nodded approvingly, her goggles in one hand, her ear muffs slid down around her neck, in "lecture mode."
"Let me know when you're ready to go `hot,' Margo," she called down the line.
Margo nodded and curiously studied the beginning of the lesson as she prepared to practice. It look from here like the paleontologists were giving Ann a very difficult time.
One of them-Margo's electronic earmuffs picked up conversations from an astonishing distance demanded in a voice that would have frozen lava, "We are not renting and wearing this crap! Why would we possibly need eye and hearing protection? This is supposed"-the word dripped venom-"to be a trial run for our field work. We'll have none of this junk downtime! Will we?"
Margo continued shamelessly eavesdropping-how else did one survive in a cruel world, particularly when one was studying to become a real scout whose job was to overhear and remember just such conversations? Ann was clearly working hard not to shout obscenities in Vietnamese and Gaelic at her recalcitrant pupils.
As Margo's first, lamentable lessons had shown, while Ann could instruct willing students to a high degree of skill, she couldn't instill intelligence. Result?
Some customers refused to listen, went downtime improperly armed and/or trained, and usually came back needing a hospital-or staying downtime in a long pine box.
Time Tours, Inc., of course, liked to keep that kind of publicity to a strict minimum, but the company executives-looking for ever more gate profit-did nothing about requiring weapons or self-defense training before allowing a tourist to go downtime. Lessons with the terminal's pro's were strictly on a voluntary basis.
Maybe she ought to suggest required classes to Bull Morgan. She snorted. He'd no doubt tell her it was a tourist's business to get training, not his, and if they were stupid enough to go downtime without it, they deserved whatever they got. Besides, Bull Morgan would never have such a rule, because La-La Land was a place were folks fought, ignored, and thumbed noses at rules, rather than making new ones.
At any rate, it looked like Ann could use some help corralling this bunch of jerks into listening instead of tossing their academic credentials around like spiked morning stars. She sighed and left everything on her chosen bench, muzzles pointed downrange, then plunged in.
"Hi, guys!" Margo called, friendly-like, baiting her hook with a honeyed voice. Margo smiled sweetly, a dire warning to every person who knew her well, Ann actually winced-then she swept off shooting glasses and protective earmuffs and shook out vibrant hair.
"See these?" She held out the earmuffs, determined to give this her best effort. "These are hearing protectors. On a firing range, you wear them. Period. You can lose most of your hearing mighty fast unless you put hearing protection on before somebody starts target practice."
"How would you know?"
One man she couldn't quite see shot the question in her general direction.
She shrugged. "Because I lost part of my hearing in this ear on a deadly little street in Whitechapel one bitter cold morning in 1888."
Silence reigned.
She didn't add that Malcolm had done the shooting. But the hearing loss, slight as it was, was genuine.
She added, "I lost more when an unstable gate opened up and I fell through it right into The Battle of Orleans. Joan of Arc and some really pissed off English knights and archers and some-er French nobles were taking a beating and hating it. Orleans was a really intense battle. Damn near got myself killed-twice-before I was back safe in the station's infirmary.
"Then some more of my hearing went bye-bye in South Africa, running from sixteenth-century Portuguese traders. I got caught in the middle of a firefight. Some friends of mine who'd figured out I was in trouble had come to help and I got caught between them and a whole, unwashed mass of murderous traders who were really riled up. They'd already decided to burn my assistant and me at the stake."
Margo managed to hold back the near-instinctive shudders such memories brought-and in suppressing them, Margo understood her grandfather more than she'd ever believed possible. It was little wonder he'd turned her down so rudely in the Down Time Bar & Grill that first day.
"Believe me, black powder guns are loud. You do want to be able to hear when you get downtime?" Margo questioned sweetly.
"As for these," she wiggled the clear, wrap-around shooting glasses between two fingers, "even a novice should be able to figure out what they're for. I do take it that nobody wants to go blind?"
Nobody answered, despite an angry stirring near the back of the group. Margo shrugged. "They're your eyes and ears. You got replacements lined up for'em, go right ahead without the safety equipment. But then," she smiled sweetly again, "I'm wagering you're just the teeniest bit brighter than that. By the time you've earned a master's, never mind a Ph.D, you've supposedly learned what's irrelevant and beneath notice from what's not only correct, but essential. Right?"
Behind the paleontologists Ann had covered her lips with both hands to hold in laughter. Tears appeared in her eyes when five heads nodded like marionettes in sync.
"Thanks, Margo,, for taking your time to help out. I'm sure these folks will save their ears from the noise you're about to generate!" Ann added pointedly. The group sheepishly picked up its safety equipment and began donning it.
Margo retrieved her Winchester Model 73-the most popular rifle in the Old West-from her own shooting bench. She loaded the Model 73 and called out, "Ann, I'm going hot!" She then lined up her first shot.
BOOM!
To her right, all five paleontologists jumped, despite the dampening qualities of their hearing gear.
BOOM! A little high and right, she muttered to herself, correcting her aiming point rather than adjusting the sights, using a method called "Kentucky windage," where you simply moved the sight picture to the other side of the target the same distance you missed or until you simply "felt right." The third BOOM! put the bullet exactly where she wanted it: inside the ten ring. She finished the magazine, pleased that the only shots outside the nine ring were those two initial placement shots. Didn't throw a single round! And that, despite months without even picking up a gun. She continued with her practice, nonetheless.
After a while, Margo smiled at her latest target and put the rifle down. She was tempted to return to the group, if only to see what sort of firearms they had, but was reluctant to disturb Ann's class any more than she already had. As if divining her interest, Ann looked up and waved Margo over.
Upon her arrival, Ann motioned almost imperceptibly for Margo to hold her own inspection. Margo realized this inspection-and everything that went with it was, in fact, a lesson Ann was using to judge her improvements, her judgment. She took a good long look at the neatly arranged firearms. She confirmed at a glance what she'd suspected earlier.
"Mmmm ... they do have some nice Winchester Model 94's here, don't they, Ann? It really is too bad." She glanced over toward the paleontologists. "You're gonna have to ditch 'em, every last one. Anachronistic as he-heck. For one thing, the whole feed system on a 94's different from the Model 73 and 76."
A deep, angry voice behind the knot of grad students demand, "What does that have to do with anything? Standing right here they look just alike!"