"I hope you get Lillie Langtree to play me."

"Lillie Langtree?" repeated Buntline, surprised.

Holliday shrugged. "She's the only actor whose name I know."

Buntline chuckled. "Tell you what: if she's in New York when we're casting, I'll ask her-but don't hold your breath."

"It's been twenty years since I could hold my breath," said Holliday.

"Well, have a seat, Doc!" said Buntline, indicating a tufted leather chair.

"I'll take this one, if you don't mind," said Holliday, carrying an elegantly crafted wooden chair over from a large dining table. "I have a feeling I'd never get out of that leather one."

"Guess what this is all about, Ned?" said Edison enthusiastically.

"I don't believe in miracle cures," said Buntline. "I think our Apache friend probably had something to do with it."

Edison nodded. "It's his half of a quid pro quo."

"And Doc's half?"

"Ned, it's got to do with Cope and Marsh!"

"You mean they haven't killed each other yet?" asked Buntline with a smile.

"Who the hell are they?" demanded Holliday irritably.

"The two leading paleontologists in the United States!" said Edison.

Holliday stared at his two companions and frowned. "I've had both a classical and a scientific education-at least as pertains to medicine, dentistry, and literature-but I'll be damned if I ever heard that word before."

"No reason why you should," answered Edison. "I don't think the science had existed for more than ten or fifteen years before you graduated, and it truly wasn't worth the bother to learn about it until these two gentlemen came along."

"They're partners, are they?" asked Holliday, and Buntline laughed aloud.

"They're partners the way the Earps and the Clantons were partners," said Edison. "I doubt that there are two men anywhere in the world who hate each other more."

"Get back to paleo...paleowhatever."

"It's the study and science of dinosaurs."

"Okay," said Holliday. "What are dinosaurs?"

"Creatures, many of them huge beyond imagining, that walked the Earth long before Man arrived on the scene."

"Doesn't Mr. Darwin say that the fittest survive?" asked Holliday. "Seems to me something as big as this hotel is a lot fitter than a consumptive dentist."

"That's part of the science," said Buntline. "Learning everything we can about them, including why we're here and they're not."

"And there really were dinosaurs here?" asked Holliday dubiously.

"Yes."

"Why haven't we all heard about it before now? Hell, I not only never heard of the science, I never heard the word dinosaur."

"It's a very young field of study," answered Edison. "And it was going nowhere in this country until these two men met."

"Cope and Marsh?"

Edison nodded an affirmative. "Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh."

"What about them?" asked Holliday.

"They were both interested in the infant science," said Edison. "I gather at one point, shortly after the War Between the States, they even went on a dig together."

"A dig?" said Holliday, frowning.

"You don't see dead dinosaurs-or dead men, for that matter-laying on the ground year after year, Doc," said Buntline. "The earth covers them up. So when you go prospecting for species instead of nuggets, you call it a dig."

"And on this dig," continued Edison, "Cope found a complete dinosaur, which he called a plesiosaur. Marsh said he had the wrong head on it, or on the wrong end of the vertebrae, something like that. Cope said he didn't. They argued, nobody won, and somehow they became mortal enemies. Now, I know that doesn't seem like much to be enemies about, but they were both brilliant, they were both egocentric, and they were both independently wealthy. Marsh was associated with Yale and its museum, Cope with a museum in Pennsylvania, and they each had their museum's clout and money behind them, as well as their own fortunes. And driven on by their mutual hatred, they have managed to discover and name more than a thousand dinosaur species in the last fifteen years, whereas all American paleontology could come up with before their feud was three species."

"They're that good?" asked Holliday.

Edison nodded. "Usually it takes months, often longer, to produce a scientific paper. Cope's already produced more than a thousand of them."

"So who's winning?"

Buntline smiled. "It'll be the last one standing, and that'll be the last one to go broke. They've sued each other, written scandalous and slanderous articles about each other, challenged almost every find the other has made, even tried to get the United States Congress to pass laws against each other."

"And now they're both digging up bones in Wyoming," said Holliday, amused.

"It's not as simple as that," said Edison.

"Oh?"

"They usually set up shop not too far from one another," continued Edison. "Do you know what the third most important job on one of their digs is?"

"Beats me," said Holliday.

Edison grinned. "Chief paleontologist."

Holliday frowned and poured himself a glass from a whiskey bottle on the table next to him. "And the second?"

"Riding shotgun to hold the Indians at bay. They do most of their digs in Indian country."

Holliday put the bottle back on the table, then leaned forward. "Okay, what's the most important job?"

"I was hoping you'd ask," said Edison, still grinning.

"Well?" demanded Holliday.

"Saboteur."

Holliday stared at Edison for a moment, then lifted his bottle and took another long swig without bothering to pour it into his glass. "I can tell I'm in for a fun time," he said at last.

"What's the downside of this?" asked Buntline.

"I get killed," said Holliday.

"I mean, Geronimo's downside," said Buntline.

"If I can't stop them from digging in sacred ground, the Comanche medicine men and their allies will bring the dinosaurs to life and kill the two teams...but according to Geronimo, they can't control them once they bring them back, and they're just as likely to wander to Apache land as anywhere else and kill anyone they come across along the way."

Buntline got to his feet and began pacing back and forth across the gaudy carpet. "That's a few hundred miles of mighty barren land. What would they live on?"

"Each other," answered Edison. "What if they resurrect a couple of thousand dinosaurs, including a few hundred carnivorous ones-and after they kill the paleontologists they head south and west? They might eat a thousand prey dinosaurs along the way, but sooner or later they'll run out, and then they'll kill and eat whatever's available."

"I agree," said Buntline, leaning against an empty bookcase. "I hadn't thought of that."

"What does one of these things actually look like?" asked Holliday.

"Ned, you're the artist," said Edison.

Buntline got a pen and a pad of paper and began sketching a carnosaur baring its teeth. When he was done he handed it to Holliday.

"Mean-looking critter," opined the dentist. "How big is he?"

"Oh, probably eight to ten times larger than a horse."

"Suddenly that sanitarium is looking a lot better to me," said Holliday.

HOLLIDAY WAS NOT HAPPY. The Bunt Line, the horseless coach created by Ned Buntline, terminated at Fort Collins, and he'd had to buy and ride a horse the rest of the way to Cheyenne. He was not fond of horses; he didn't like their smell, he didn't enjoy riding them, and he had a sneaking suspicion that most of them were just waiting for him to fall off so they could trample him.

He passed out of a sparse forest onto flat, almost barren land, and saw a sign posted that he was three miles from Cheyenne. At least then he could sell the horse and hunt up a horse-drawn stagecoach that would take him to the two paleontologists' camps. First, though, he planned to stop at a saloon and slake his seemingly endless thirst. He had a canteen, of course, but he figured that water was for bathing, whiskey was for drinking, and only a fool mixed the two up.

As he entered town he sought out the main street, rode up to the first saloon he could find, thankfully climbed down off his horse, and entered the place. The interior had the usual wooden tables and chairs, a faro game in the back that no one seemed interested in, and spittoons not just lining the bar but spread through the saloon. There was a huge picture of a shirtless man with his fists doubled up, hanging behind the bar, covering part of a long mirror, and Holliday studied it as he waited for the bartender to approach him.

"What do you think of him?" asked a man who was standing next to him.

"I prefer paintings of naked ladies," answered Holliday.

"That's our local champion, Bill Smiley," said the man proudly. "He's the one who's going to knock the great John L. down for the count this afternoon."

"Seems to me that people have been trying to do that for twelve or thirteen years now," replied Holliday, obviously unimpressed.

"Well, Smiley's the man who can do it," said the man adamantly. "And he's bringing the championship to Wyoming," he added, his chest swelling with pride.

"If you say so," responded Holliday, trying to cut off any further discussion.

"You think otherwise?"

"I'm a stranger here," said Holliday. "I have no idea."

"I've got fifty dollars says that Smiley wins," said the man pugnaciously, pulling out a fifty-dollar bill and waving it around.

"I'll take that bet," said Holliday, pulling out his own cash.

The expressions of the onlookers said he was throwing his money away, that no intruder was going to beat their local hero on his own turf.

"We'll let the bartender hold it," said the man.

"Fine by me," said Holliday.

"I just hope that damned ref isn't as blind as he looks," muttered the man. "Whoever heard of a referee with spectacles?"

"Spectacles?" repeated Holliday.

"Yeah."

Suddenly Holliday smiled. "Is he from New York?"

"That's what they say, though I hear he spent some time in the Dakota Badlands pretending to be a cowboy."

"Son of a bitch, I know him!" exclaimed Holliday. "I'll be damned!"

"If you're who I think you are, that's a given," said the man.

The saloon suddenly went completely silent, and every head turned toward Holliday. He stared at the man, then shrugged. "What the hell," he muttered. "When you're right, you're right. Now, when and where is this fight?"

"Maybe an hour from now, out there by Jake Gilmore's corral," said the man, walking him to the door and pointing to a large crowd perhaps half a mile away.

It took Holliday almost twenty minutes to traverse the distance on foot, and once there he walked up to the hastily constructed ticket booth and bought a standing-room ticket, well behind the seated area, since he was much less interested in watching the fight than meeting the referee.

There was a preliminary bout going on, and the crowd was cheering for its favorite, a short stocky man with a shock of blond hair. Holliday saw that the referee was a lean bearded man, and went off to find something to drink. The best he could do was a warm beer, so he took it, spent a few minutes polishing it off, and returned to where he could see the ring. A cheer went up from the crowd just as he reached it, and he saw that the stocky man's hand was being held above his head, while his opponent's corner men were trying to awaken the unconscious fighter.

There was another bout, which ended about ninety seconds after it began, and then the ring stood empty for almost fifteen minutes. Finally a band began playing. Holliday turned and saw the uniformed trumpeters and drummers marching down the aisle to the ring, leading a tall, broad-shouldered man who he recognized from photos and drawings in the few newspapers he had seen in the last couple of years as being John L. Sullivan. The crowd stood up and cheered, and Sullivan smiled and waved to them.

When they reached the ring the band stopped playing and Sullivan climbed the four stairs, stepped between the ropes, and stood calmly, awaiting his opponent.

A moment later William Smiley walked to the ring in solitary splendor. Again, the crowd began cheering when they saw him, and one woman even threw him a bouquet, which he caught, brought carefully to his lips, and then handed to a teenaged girl who was standing on the aisle.

Holliday studied Smiley as he gracefully made his way to the ring. He was a lean man except for his arms, which were heavily muscled. His face bore no marks of previous battles, and in a time of cauliflower ears and crooked noses that was remarkable in itself. He smiled and waved to the crowd as he entered the ring, then walked over to shake Sullivan's hand. Sullivan, straight-faced, said something that made Smiley laugh, and Smiley's reply elicited nothing more than a sneer from Sullivan.

But Holliday wasn't watching them. His attention was focused on a third man who was approaching the ring: medium height, broad of chest, wearing the mustache he'd grown during his last trip out West, and watching the world through a pair of rimless glasses.

A man dressed in his Sunday best entered the ring and held a bullhorn to his mouth.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he intoned, "welcome to the match for the heavyweight championship of the world. Cheyenne is proud to host this momentous event, and we are delighted to welcome the reigning champion, the great John L. Sullivan!"