Chapter 4
'Tis a Puzzlement

No… no, Morning Star, I beg you… they'll come for you like they came for Black Kettle! There has to be a better way! No… no, don't listen to Crazy Horse… this won't save our people…

"MORNING STAR!"

"Dammit, Cheyenne, hold still!"

The shock of hearing a female voice curse that way broke through the nightmare haze enough for Cheyenne to recognize that the strong hands pinning him to the bed weren't the same as the ones that had bound Touch the Sky to his horse and forced him to watch the slaughter of the 7th Cavalry. Wildly, he looked around and finally recognized the faces staring into his as belonging to Reese and Miss Shaw. He really was in New York, in… in… he still couldn't admit the year to himself, but at least he wasn't back at the Little Bighorn.

"Sorry," he gasped and tried to relax. His head was splitting. He wouldn't have minded if New York had turned out to be the nightmare—not that he wanted to relive the Little Bighorn—but he was in too much pain for this room and the people holding him down to be anything but real.

"You awake now?" Reese asked, relaxing his hold.

Cheyenne was too out of breath to do anything but nod. Oh, his chest hurt like he'd been kicked by a mule from behind. At least this bed—what had Reese called it… memory foam?—was soft enough not to compound the pain. The same could not be said of Miss Shaw, who promptly shone a bright pinpoint… penlight, that was her word, into each eye and then told him to follow the light with his eyes. He did so, but he couldn't hold back a groan of relief when she stopped.

He knew she was a medic, a qualified doctor—the tattoo of the Rod of Asclepius on her right forearm had told him as much, even before Reese had mentioned her having been to medical school. The USMC above it had told him she was a Marine; he hadn't known many, but he suspected that accounted for much of her uncouthness and the fact that she had a tattoo in the first place. He appreciated her competence… but he'd be lying if he said he liked her.

"How's your pain level?" she asked, not sounding as if she particularly cared.

Cheyenne couldn't remember the scale they'd told him to use. He decided on, "Kicked by a mule. Still not as bad as when I got caught in a cave-in. What time is it?"

"Two in the morning," Reese answered, letting go of Cheyenne's arm completely and sitting down on the edge of the bed. "You've slept nearly the full two hours. Sounded like one hell of a nightmare."

Cheyenne nodded but decided not to elaborate. His throat hurt as if he'd been screaming for real. However much they'd been able to make out, he'd let them draw their own conclusions.

"Not time for Tylenol yet," Miss Shaw added. "But I won't wake you until the next scheduled check unless you want me to."

Cheyenne sighed and scrubbed at his eyes. "Don't think I do. Thanks."

The mention of Tylenol brought his mind back to the puzzle he'd been working on the last time he'd fallen asleep: Mr. Finch, the boss whose authority had been stamped on his bearing and manner just as obviously as Miss Shaw wore her past on her arm. Reese had hinted that the government had tried to kill Mr. Finch over the mysterious thing he had built, just as they'd targeted Reese and Miss Shaw. Whatever they'd done had evidently left Mr. Finch permanently injured—he couldn't turn his head and walked with a limp, when he walked at all. Cheyenne had seen the pain lines on the man's face. Yet when he'd started to offer Mr. Finch some of the Tylenol pills, Shaw had stopped him. Tylenol won't even touch his pain, she'd whispered.

"Why isn't one o' you with Mr. Finch?" he finally asked aloud.

"You need us more than he does," Miss Shaw answered flatly, checking his bandages.

"Hell, for Finch, today was a good day," Reese added. At Cheyenne's confused frown, he continued, "Finch has been in constant pain longer than I've known him. He's got his own routines, his own coping mechanisms, his own pain meds that he won't take half the time because they cloud his mind, and he hates having other people make a fuss over him. I've been working with him long enough to know when he needs help, even though he won't ask for it, and when he's doing well enough that it's better not to try. Trust me, if this were a bad day, either I would have sent Shaw with him, or I wouldn't have let him leave the loft."

That filled in some blanks and rearranged some of the other puzzle pieces. Reese had his own air of authority, despite his deference to Mr. Finch, and Cheyenne hadn't quite figured out how the two fit together. The picture was becoming clearer now.

Miss Shaw, on the other hand, scoffed. "You'd seriously inflict me on your best friend?"

"Desperate times," Reese teased back with a hint of a shrug and a ghost of a smile.

Miss Shaw snorted indelicately, and Cheyenne's mental jigsaw puzzle rearranged itself further. The words best friend shed a lot more light on the matter.

Reese returned his attention to Cheyenne. "Two more things you should know about Finch."

"He's got more money than God?" Miss Shaw suggested.

"That's one of them," Reese agreed patiently. "I don't know how much he's worth exactly, but he is a billionaire."

At first Cheyenne thought he'd misheard—even Cornelius Vanderbilt, the richest man in the country, hadn't been worth too much more than $100 million at his death in 1877*—but then he remembered the wallet. "I believe it. He handed me a year's wages for pocket change."

Reese nodded. "To him, that is pocket change. Only time I've ever heard him worry about how much I was spending was when I bought a box of a famous scientist's letters at a charity auction for $10 million."

Cheyenne stared at him.

Reese shrugged. "Long story."

"I'm almost afraid to ask about the other thing I need to know," Cheyenne admitted.

"Just that Finch is a very private person. Even his secrets have secrets. I've learned just enough about him to understand why."

"What," Miss Shaw chimed in, "you're not gonna share with the class?"

"No," Reese stated pointedly.

Miss Shaw huffed. "You're no fun."

"If Finch wants you to know something, he'll let you find out, if he doesn't tell you directly. But the man has very good reasons not to trust people. Hell, you should understand that, Shaw."

Miss Shaw glared at him.

Cheyenne's headache was getting worse, which was probably a sign he'd learned as much as his brain could take at the moment. "You folks mind if I go back to sleep now?"

"Nope," Miss Shaw stated and patted his shoulder, which should have been comforting but wasn't. "See you in two hours."

"Hope your next nightmare's better than the last one," Reese said, which was far more comforting than it sounded.

"Thanks," Cheyenne murmured as he let his eyes close. "So do I."

"So you know about willow bark extract," Miss Shaw explained as she handed Cheyenne his next dose of Tylenol at the next time check. "Aspirin was invented as a safer form of willow bark, and Tylenol is a safer form of aspirin."

Cheyenne pondered that as he washed the pills down with water. "All right," he said after he'd swallowed.

"We still use opiates like morphine, and some that are even stronger than morphine, but there's a much broader range of medications that relieve pain and inflammation between the two extremes."

"What Finch usually takes is a drug that combines Tylenol with a derivative of codeine," Reese chimed in. "But like I said, he doesn't take it all that often, especially when we're working a case."

Cheyenne nodded his understanding; he did at least know what codeine was. "But not laudanum."

Miss Shaw's assertion to the negative was more vulgar than he'd heard even among outlaws.

"Language, Shaw," Reese chided.

Miss Shaw's response to that was extremely unladylike, and Cheyenne decided discretion was the better part of valor and tried to go back to sleep while they bickered.

"Seriously," Reese was saying when Cheyenne next drifted back toward full consciousness. "Shoving a gun against his chest when he's not really awake would be like doing the same thing to me, only he's not gonna recognize you until it's too late."

"It worked on Jack Salazar," Miss Shaw returned.

"Salazar had been shot. Bodie hasn't."

"I'm just saying, there has to be a better way to snap him out of those nightmares. I mean, you know I like it rough, but that was not the fun way to ride a cowboy."

"I'm right here," Cheyenne grumbled without opening his eyes, deeply uncomfortable with the way Miss Shaw was talking about him.

There was a pause, and then something small and cold poked his shoulder. "Open 'em," Miss Shaw demanded.

"Not unless there's coffee," Cheyenne demanded back.

"It'll be ready in five minutes," Reese assured him.

Miss Shaw poked him again, and Cheyenne grabbed her wrist—not hard enough to hurt, just enough to immobilize—and opened his eyes to glare at her. "Ain't you heard it's not polite to poke a bear, especially one with a sore head?"

She grinned unrepentantly. "Got your eyes open."

"Poking bears seems to be Shaw's specialty," Reese noted.

Miss Shaw stuck her tongue out at him, then twisted easily out of Cheyenne's grasp and took up the light torture again. By the time Cheyenne got the spots out of his eyes, Reese had left and returned with a large, fragrant, steaming mug of liquid sanity.

"All right," Miss Shaw announced then, standing up, "I'm gonna go get breakfast. Be back in twenty. Don't let him fall asleep," she charged Reese.

"With this much coffee, I doubt that'll be a problem," Reese replied.

She insulted his parentage and left.

Reese set the mug on the nightstand with a sigh and adjusted Cheyenne's pillows while Cheyenne pushed himself up to a sitting position. "I'm sorry about Shaw," Reese said. "She's not exactly normal."

It took Cheyenne a moment to catch his breath and several sips of (very good) coffee to fortify him enough to ask, "What's wrong with her?"

Reese pulled up a chair and sat down. "Think you heard her say she's got an Axis II Personality Disorder. I'm trying to think how to explain that in terms you'd have heard before—psychiatry wasn't exactly a popular field before the mid-twentieth century. And it's not like she fits neatly into any one category, like sociopath." He paused a moment to consider. "I guess I'll start with 'sociopath.' That's basically someone who's never felt emotion of any kind, although they can fake it if they have to. My ex-partner was like that, and so was our handler—she strapped a bomb to his chest, and he killed her with it. You may have run into some sociopaths who'd turned outlaw and some who made the worst kind of cutthroat businessman."

Cheyenne nodded slowly, thinking of examples, and took another drink of coffee.

"Shaw's not that severe. She can feel emotion, but it has to be really intense for it to register, like when the government killed her partner and tried to kill her. When it does register, it usually comes out as anger. Otherwise, she just… doesn't care."

Cheyenne nodded again. That didn't improve his opinion of Miss Shaw, but it did explain a good deal. "You known her long?"

"No, just since we saved her life earlier this year. You're lucky, by the way. The first time we met, she shot me."

That surprised a laugh out of Cheyenne.

"She didn't actually agree to start working with us until May," Reese continued, "and she's… still getting used to the way we operate."

The name Samantha Crawford suddenly came to mind. Bret Maverick had tangled with her more often than Cheyenne had—in fact, after finally stopping her from getting away with the payment she'd promised, withheld, and stolen from him repeatedly, Cheyenne had sincerely hoped he'd never see her again—but she was still the coldest, most calculating swindler he'd ever met, and he still wouldn't be surprised to learn that she'd graduated from swindling to murder.**

"Reckon that explains the way she talks," was all he said aloud.

"More the inappropriate suggestions than the coarse language," Reese hedged. "I think the language is as much a function of her time in the Marine Corps as anything else. Carter swears, too, but not as harshly, and I've never heard her talk about men the way Shaw does."

"I've known saloon girls who'd have called that remark brazen." Cheyenne pulled the covers higher over his bare chest, even though Miss Shaw was no longer in the room.

Reese smiled ruefully. "Yeah, that's Shaw. I'll tell her to back off."

"Thanks."

They fell into companionable near-silence then as Reese did something with his pocket telephone and Cheyenne drank his coffee and watched what little he could see of the sunrise past the buildings on the far side of the park. The sky was bleared with a brownish haze, even this early, and the constant roar of cars and honks and wails and voices continued unabated, muted though it was by the brick walls and windows of the apartment building. Cheyenne's head and back were still throbbing, although the Tylenol had ratcheted the pain down a notch or two, and his mood was souring.

In truth, it wasn't just the pain and Miss Shaw that were grating on him. Cheyenne hated cities in general, and New York in… in this year was even worse. There were too many people too close together; the buildings were too tall and too close to the road; everything was loud and hard and unfriendly; and nothing stopped. He knew there was nothing for it but to stay, especially now that he'd taken the job with Mr. Finch, but if he'd had the choice, he'd get on the next train west and never look back.

"Actually," Reese said suddenly, "I've got an idea."

His reverie broken, Cheyenne blinked rapidly to regain his bearings and looked at Reese. "Sorry?"

"You know what a zoetrope is, right? I mean, you've seen them before?"

Cheyenne nodded.

"Chronophotography?"

"Seen a couple."

"Magic lantern?"

Cheyenne frowned, unsure where this line of questioning was going. "Yeah."

"There's a step up from those called motion pictures or movies. We've got the technology now to combine sequential images with sound recordings to capture dramatic performances so they can be shared widely and watched again and again. And it's cheap enough these days that anyone can do it"—here Reese held up his pocket telephone—"with one of these."

"So?" Cheyenne still didn't understand how one could take pictures rapidly and without glass slides, the way Reese had done yesterday, but he suspected that was beside the point right now.

"We've already established Jim Merritt as a stage actor," Reese explained, "but realistically, he would have tried to break into movies at some point, probably more than once. Finch is working on building Merritt's professional portfolio, but it'll be a lot more convincing if he can include a 'first look' clip from a failed movie project—just a short scene, no more than five minutes."

Cheyenne's frown deepened. "What kind of scene?"

Reese leaned forward. "The kind of tense, dramatic romantic scene that gets Shaw off your back. Low light, no makeup—you don't even have to get out of bed or do more than ad lib a few lines telling her to go to hell. Finch can make up a story synopsis to go with whatever you come up with."

Cheyenne hummed thoughtfully and sat back. He truly hadn't enjoyed being an actor, but if it would build his cover and get Miss Shaw to leave him alone… "We can try it."

Reese nodded once. "I'll tell Shaw what to do, and I'll shoot it to where you're both silhouetted against the window, which'll make it harder for anyone to recognize Shaw. Might also explain why the movie never sold," he added with a wink.

Cheyenne chuckled and considered his options. Words alone might not get through to Miss Shaw—she seemed the type to respond to a flat no with You don't really mean that—but by the time he heard the front door open and close, he'd figured out what might get his point across.

"Hope you like Mexican, Cheyenne," Miss Shaw stated as she walked over to the bed with a brown paper bag full of something that smelled delicious.

"Hm?" Cheyenne returned. "Oh, Mexican's fine, thanks."

She reached into the bag, pulled out something cylindrical wrapped in tin foil, and handed it to Cheyenne, along with a small clear container of what looked like salsa roja. He opened one end of the foil to find a flour tortilla wrapped around a generous amount of bacon, fried potatoes, cheese, and scrambled eggs. He'd never encountered this particular dish before, but he tried it while Reese began explaining the movie scene idea to Miss Shaw, and it was pretty tasty, especially when he put some salsa on the end. By the time Reese had talked Miss Shaw into agreeing to the scene, Cheyenne had finished eating and folded up the foil to set the salsa container on.

Miss Shaw did a double take when she turned back to him. "Wow. You were hungry."

"Still am," Cheyenne admitted, "but I reckon it's better to wait a while 'fore I try to eat anything else."

"So…" Miss Shaw turned to Reese. "You wanna shoot this thing now?"

Reese shrugged. "Might as well."

Miss Shaw grumbled a little under her breath as she set the bag on the table and let Reese direct her where to sit while he lined up the image on his pocket telephone.

"That's good," Reese told her. "That's the attitude. You're having a fight—you want something from him and he won't give it to you."

"I'd rather not end up with any more bruises," Cheyenne noted.

Miss Shaw grumbled again, sized him up, and put her hands lightly on his shoulders. "Ready," she said, glowering at him.

"Bodie?" Reese prompted.

"Ready," Cheyenne answered, glowering back at Miss Shaw.

"And… action!"

"All I ever hear from you is no," Miss Shaw began. "Maybe I need to try another way to get you to say yes." And she ran her hands down toward the sheet that was still covering Cheyenne's chest.

He trapped both her hands with his left. "I've had about all I'm gonna take from you," he growled and used his right arm to pull her into one almighty kiss. She was so tiny that he didn't want to use much force, lest he hurt her, but it was still not a tender embrace.

She squeaked and struggled a little, though not as much as he was sure she could, and swore breathlessly when he let her go.

He caught her chin, more gently than the quick movement would appear to the camera, and forced her to look him in the eye—then found himself remembering a similarly tense conversation he'd had with Irene Travers when she'd wanted him to join Custer's men in carving up Sioux territory for themselves in violation of the Fort Laramie Treaty. "I'd do most anything for you," he quoted himself, "except destroy what I believe in."

"Then you won't?" Miss Shaw panted angrily. "Not at any price?"

"Not for all the gold in the Black Hills."

She pushed herself away from him slightly. "Well, maybe you just don't love me enough."

That was what Irene had said, and six years later, the words still stung. Cheyenne wished he were standing at the door so he could leave after his next line and slam it behind him. Instead, he pushed Miss Shaw away a little further, to the point where she was halfway standing, and snarled what he'd said then: "Maybe the shoe's on the other foot."

"Cut!" Reese interrupted.

Miss Shaw's legs gave out, and she crumpled to the floor beside the bed with a curse and started fanning herself.

Reese looked at her and did something with his pocket telephone. "I don't think we need another take. Just sent that to Finch."

"That's the only kiss you'll ever get from me, Miss Shaw," Cheyenne stated. "Hope you enjoyed it."

"Um," Miss Shaw gasped. "Yeah. Okay. Whoo. Point taken." She cleared her throat, used the hand Cheyenne held out to her to leverage herself to her feet, and went back to the table. "I'll just, um… eat outside." And she took her own foil package and left.

Reese watched her go before turning back to Cheyenne with a look of painful innocence. "You want another burrito?"

It was all Cheyenne could do not to laugh out loud as he accepted.

At the library, Harold had worked through the night building social media profiles and a professional website for James Thornton Merritt, partly to get the work done and partly so that he wouldn't lie awake brooding over this latest number. The more time he spent tracking down suitable stock photos into which to photoshop Mr. Bodie, the less time he had to worry about how Mr. Bodie had managed to arrive in the present so suddenly and how in the world they were going to send him back to his own time. And finding the right balance between past success and present obscurity for Merritt, Thalia Rep, and Merritt's co-stars, all of which had to be built from scratch, helped postpone the question of why none of the people Mr. Bodie had mentioned having known, apart from big names like Cole Younger, seemed to have existed even in the 1870s.

The notion of an alternate universe kept niggling at the back of Harold's mind, no matter how he tried to squash it. He didn't want to believe such things were possible. And yet… even the Machine had found no trace of Mr. Bodie before his abrupt and unquestionably real appearance that day, and he spoke of Juarez when he should have known the city as El Paso del Norte, and other details of his past simply didn't square with known history. None of it made any sense.

Harold didn't have time to worry about it. He had connections to create, apartments to scout, and a guitar and recording equipment to source because Mr. Bodie had mentioned over dinner that Merritt had been a song-and-dance man. Video of Mr. Bodie dancing might not be called for, but if they could persuade him to record some songs, it would be simple enough to release an online album under Merritt's name and even offer CDs on Merritt's website.

While Harold worked, he was also keeping an ear on the proceedings in Mr. Reese's loft, just in case anything of interest came up in conversation. The nightmare that caused Mr. Bodie to wake up screaming in Cheyenne certainly qualified, but it would be hours before it would be sensible to send the recording to anyone… and where could he send it without raising too many questions? Cheyenne was a dying language, so a new recording of someone speaking it with native fluency would be suspect, especially if the recipient could somehow tell that the speaker was white. The conversations about Harold's own well-being, on the other hand, were rather touching, and he found himself glad to have Mr. Bodie as a new ally… especially since he seemed to share Harold's opinion of Ms. Shaw's capacity for vulgarity.

Harold was just putting the finishing touches on George Willis' obituary around 5 a.m. when there was a familiar chime, followed by Mr. Reese's quiet voice on the speakerphone asking, "Finch?"

"Good morning, Mr. Reese," Harold answered. "Is something wrong?"

"It's my watch, and I needed something to keep me awake, so I did some digging. Found a Cheyenne dictionary online. And I think I know what Bodie's nightmare was about."

"Oh, really?"

"There were two words that he repeated: a'áahe, which means 'no,' and Vóóhéhéve, which means 'Morning Star'—it's the Cheyenne name of a chief better known by his Sioux name, Dull Knife."

Harold's eyes widened. Chief Dull Knife College was where he'd considered sending the recording before he'd talked himself out of it.

"Once I had that to go on, I was able to identify a couple of other names: Mo'ȯhtávetoo'o was Black Kettle, the Southern Cheyenne peace chief whose village was slaughtered by Custer at the Battle of the Washita River in 1868, and Tȟašúŋke Witkó was the Sioux chief Crazy Horse."

Harold was glad he was already sitting down. "Dull Knife was one of the Northern Cheyenne chiefs allied with Crazy Horse…."

"And Bodie was trying to tell him not to do something. Finch, I think Bodie was trying to prevent the Little Bighorn—but probably not out of any affection for Custer. If he was appealing to the memory of Black Kettle, my guess is that he was trying to stop Dull Knife from doing anything to earn a reprisal attack from the Army."

"Obviously, he failed. The question is whether it was only a nightmare or whether any of it really happened."

"Oh, it happened, all right. Remember, Bodie said he last spoke Cheyenne while undercover four years ago, which for him was 1876, the year of the Little Bighorn. And it was after the Little Bighorn that Ranald Mackenzie forced the Northern Cheyenne to surrender after an attack on Dull Knife's band. Between that attack, the conditions on the reservation in Oklahoma, and Dull Knife's flight back to Dakota Territory, hundreds of innocent Cheyenne lives were lost that theoretically could have been saved if Bodie had talked Dull Knife out of working with Crazy Horse."

Harold slumped back in his chair. "No wonder he has nightmares." He turned to look at his own wall of nightmares, the list of irrelevant numbers he hadn't been able to save before John had surfaced in New York and agreed to be his partner. Together they'd saved so many people in the last two years, and yet….

"Figured you'd understand," John said gently. Then he added with an undercurrent of wry humor, "Better than Shaw would, anyway."

Harold scoffed and got up to move around. "I do hope Ms. Shaw has been sufficiently shocking for one night."

"I dunno," John said in all seriousness. "Think she's hoping to violate professional ethics and sleep with her patient."

"That would be a very bad idea, John."

"I know, and I don't think he'd go for it. Problem is how to convince her to back off."

Harold grimaced and hobbled over to his tea station to start a fresh cup brewing. "I don't have eyes on the room—what are the sleeping arrangements?"

"He's on the bed. We each have a pallet on the floor on either side."

"Perhaps it would be better for her to go home."

"As soon as the first twenty-four hours is up and the danger of sudden death is reduced. But I'm not sure that's going to solve anything."

"This isn't exactly a problem I've had," Harold admitted. Aside from some brief flings in college, which hadn't been as frequent or as intimate as Arthur Claypool had long assumed, Harold's only real girlfriend had been Grace Hendricks. Nathan Ingram had always been the one to whom girls flocked, with his good-ol'-boy charm and that hint of Texan drawl in his speech. Yet Harold couldn't remember even Nathan having had a woman like Ms. Shaw throw herself at him when he didn't return the interest.

"Well, keep the line open, Harold," John sighed. "If I come up with anything, you and Bodie will be the first to know." And he hung up, knowing that Harold could still hear everything through the phone's microphone.

Not half an hour later, while Harold was trying to assemble a decent-looking photo gallery for Merritt's website, Ms. Shaw woke up and started arguing with John over the best way to wake Mr. Bodie if he had another severe nightmare. Not only was Harold stunned by her crudity, but Mr. Bodie happened to waken at the worst possible moment. Harold wished fervently that he'd already given Mr. Bodie an earwig and could apologize privately, but he was moderately relieved when John apologized the moment Shaw was out of the room.

Shortly after John and Mr. Bodie let their conversation lapse, Harold got a text from John: Still there?

I can't believe she *said* that, Harold texted back.

Told you. What are you working on?

Harold looked back at the work he'd abandoned in his shock. Photo gallery for Merritt's website.

Could you use some stills of Merritt brooding over his coffee?

Harold glanced at another monitor, where one of his Photoshop creations was still displayed. It wasn't nearly as convincing as an actual picture of Mr. Bodie would be. John's cell phone camera wasn't as high a quality as his Leica, but it would do for photos meant for online display.

Yes, please, he sent back.

John responded with a slew of both portrait and landscape images of Mr. Bodie sitting up in bed and staring pensively out the window, artfully framed by the brick wall and headboard behind him and lit by the half-light of dawn. The long part of his hair, normally kept slicked back, had fallen into his face on his right side, though not far enough to obscure his eyes, and the only other color in the frame came from the blue sheets and the oversized red mug in his hand. They reminded Harold of Nathan, somehow, although Nathan had been fair where Mr. Bodie was dark. In fact, as Harold picked the best shots to add to the gallery, he thought the pictures looked rather like the result of a professional photoshoot, or else…

Movie stills? he texted to John. It wouldn't be the sort of movie Harold preferred, probably more along the lines of Death Wish, but he could see the potential commercial appeal, although the project would obviously have to have failed to find a distributor.

John didn't text back right away. When he did, his response was, Remember how Don Lockwood proved he was the greatest actor in the world?

It took Harold a moment to place the Singin' in the Rain reference to the scene where Gene Kelly, as Don Lockwood, and Jean Hagen, as Lina Lamont, had an argument while filming a love scene for The Dueling Cavalier. The scene had ended with a passionate kiss, and after the director called "Cut":

"Oh, Donnie," Lina gasped, "you couldn't kiss me like that and not mean it just a teensy-weensy bit!"

"Meet the greatest actor in the world!" Don shot back. "I'd rather kiss a tarantula!"

Lina giggled prettily. "You don't mean that."

"I don't—" Disgusted, Don turned to one of the prop men. "Hey, Joe, get me a tarantula."

Harold considered before replying, I'm not sure where to get a tarantula on short notice.

"Actually," John said aloud, clearly addressing both Harold and Mr. Bodie, "I've got an idea."

Harold had no time to protest before John began outlining his plan, and once Mr. Bodie agreed, Harold's opinion was moot. He could only watch in fascinated horror as Mr. Bodie unknowingly went for the Lockwood option, although the kiss came at the beginning of the scene instead of the end. Ms. Shaw was no Lina Lamont, of course, and quickly pushed the fake film's rating to an R, but Harold couldn't help being impressed by how handily Mr. Bodie took control of the scenario and both made his point to Ms. Shaw and created an intense character that really would fit in a Death Wish or Walking Tall type of film. Granted, they had only one camera angle, but it would take only minor editing to make the clip seem believable… and it might give them plausible deniability once the second Man in the Suit made his appearance.

Harold was trying to come up with a decently bad synopsis for this theoretical film when Ms. Shaw called. "Finch," she asked in a tone just short of a whine, "you're not really going to post that online, are you?"

"Mr. Reese did make a persuasive argument for doing so," Harold answered.

"But… but Cheyenne…."

"Mr. Bodie may have been raised by the Indians, Ms. Shaw, but he's still very much a nineteenth-century gentleman. You, on the other hand…."

Ms. Shaw spat an insult worthy of Det. Fusco and hung up. It may have been a function of having been up all night, but Harold was inordinately amused.

.

* According to the articles I've found online, Vanderbilt's estimated net worth was over $200 billion in 2014 dollars—more than Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos combined were worth in 2014—which should give you a sense of both the scale of his wealth and the severity of inflation since 1877.

** Cheyenne 2.1 "The Dark Rider" is the first evidence that Cheyenne and Maverick exist in the same universe. Maverick creator Roy Huggins wrote the script for "The Dark Rider," which introduces Samantha, and reused it for Maverick 2.20 "Yellow River," where the party being conned was Bart Maverick and the con woman is a different character. But Bret matches wits with Samantha in four episodes in the first two seasons of Maverick, and Bart repeatedly asks the woman in "Yellow River" whether she knows Samantha. (Cheyenne later appears briefly in the mega-crossover Maverick episode 4.2 "Hadley's Hunters," which makes the shared universe official.)