Laura barely gave herself time for her eyes to adjust to the change in light before her boots hit the stairs. She sighed in relief as she saw that she had dodged the strange bird of a hotelier-mayor and his bizarre questioning that he couched in some arcane dialect. The wild-haired man who used antlers to pray to a moose head on the wall seemed much more…comfortableto be around.

She glanced down at the lobby from the top of the stairs. E.B. Farnum was staring at her and trying to hide it by canting his face towards the floor. She wrinkled her nose unconsciously as she stepped into their room and locked the door behind her.

Ugh.

There was a smell in the room that hadn't been present before. She slowly circled the room, not touching anything. She'd had her space violated enough in the past to tell when her place had been tossed. That little…she sighed. Nothing to be done now but inventory their things and check for anything dangerous left behind. And wait for Bill.

Half an hour later, she was satisfied that nothing had been taken or left. She poured a scant ounce of whiskey in a short tumbler of water and sat by the open window, hoping to see the first sight of Bill riding back into camp. She smiled at the thought of the Admiral on horseback…she wondered if he would be as confident about "it all coming back to him" from his school days after spending several hours in the saddle.

She watched the evening coming in the distance, the last rays of the sun washing over the street. Smiling, she scooted back behind the lace curtain a bit and settled in for some people-watching, one elbow resting on the windowsill. Laura sipped at her drink while she watched a leather-clad person—hard to tell if it were male or female—stumble along with an open bottle in hand, swearing at all and sundry.

She finally decided she was watching a woman as the foul stream of cursing came through the cracked window. Another woman, in one of the prettiest outfits she'd seen in a long time, all lace and satin and a fine silk top hat, buckle sparkling, pulled the drunken one towards a side street. The cursing stopped as one touched and the other batted hands away, then relented. She watched a silken arm drape around leather shoulders, and wondered what was keeping Bill.

Animals, chickens, men and a few women shared the muddy streets, the humans picking up their pace as they all made their way towards their homes or other comforts. She spotted Mr. Bullock's stiff striding figure and unconsciously pulled back a fraction further behind the curtain. Mrs. Bullock had continued to be kind and encouraging all day, letting Laura observe the children before gathering a reading circle together. She wasn't sure how many hundreds of years separated them, but the act of reading a story to a group of children hadn't changed, and it had brought her a sweet sense of peace.

When Martha spoke of her husband, though, there were the flashes of anger and sadness running through her tone that Laura had noticed before. She remembered a remark about the bank president, and wondered if that could have been the dark-haired elegant woman she had seen exiting the bank on her way home. A woman owning a bank didn't seem to fit with the history she had scanned last night, but Deadwood was a strange place, it seemed, even for its own time.

She stilled her glass as she watched Bullock stop dead in the street. She followed what she thought was his line of sight and saw the dark-haired woman again, her emerald-green dress dragging in the mud of the thoroughfare as she left the Gem saloon. The woman crossed the street, pointedly avoiding looking at Bullock, as far as Laura could tell. Bullock stood still for a heartbeat, then turned on his heel and walked with a slower stride towards his home. His shoulders seemed a bit slumped.

Laura looked away then, feeling voyeuristic, when movement at her level caught her eye. She hadn't been the only voyeur watching the two figures. Across the way, on a balcony festooned with a bedraggled banner identifying "The Gem Saloon" was Mr. Swearengen, china teacup in hand. His eyes seemed to follow the woman, then fell on Mr. Bullock, with what looked from Laura's angle to be a self-satisfied smile on his face.

She drew back even further when he turned his head toward the hotel. Although she was sure she was well behind the lace curtain, and the angle should have been wrong, she sensed that he could see her as clearly as when she'd been in his bar. She had almost convinced herself she was imagining his gaze when he lifted his cup towards her in a sardonic salute, smiled, and went back into his office. She absently worried the satin rope tie-backs on the velvet drapes as she became certain of who had commissioned the search of their room.

Finally, the evening coming into full twilight, the oil street lamps being lit the length of the town, she saw a broad-backed man, a bit more bow-legged than when he left her that morning, make his way across the thoroughfare to the hotel. She let some of the stiffness melt out of her spine as she listened for his steps. She ignored the pops of her bruised knees as she stood up and went to meet him at the door.

"Everything's still working. The readings show that something's being transmitted down that fits Galactica's signature, but as for distance…" He shrugged. "I don't know what they're picking up, but if they get any reading at all, they'll know it's us."

He slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, groaning. "I set new packet bursts for every six hours with our sitrep and coordinates. Now…" he gritted his teeth as he worked on his boots, "…we wait."

"So did your old riding skills come back as advertised?"

"They did." He hissed through his teeth as he straightened his legs out. "Which is not the same thing as the endurance I had as a twenty-year-old coming back."

"How was it, getting away by yourself? Any problems?" She sat in front of him, helping him with his boots, running her hands firmly over his tired feet.

"Pretty sure I wasn't by myself much. Couple of times I'm pretty sure I spotted Dan, the bear-looking guy with the long hair, remember? He stayed back, but I think he was in the vicinity the whole time."

She dropped his leather boot and reached for the other, frowning.

"Shouldn't you have aborted? What happens if they find the Raptor?"

He wiped his hand over his weary features. "Had to get the new sitrep packets out, make sure the equipment was working. He didn't interfere, and, Laura…there isn't a way of keeping it secret from everybody. Best we can hope for is that the only other people who know about it are more on our side than not. "

She began working on thigh muscles that had knotted up on the ride back, kneading deep and hard until she felt them start to loosen.

"That's a pretty thin guarantee."

He flopped back on the brass and iron bed. "Best I can do."

She propped on her elbows, beside him on her stomach. "So how was the rest of your day...your knees make it through okay?"

He chuckled. "Oh, yeah, that didn't help matters. The day…I went over some basic field maneuvers, some field tactics using terrain, and ammo storage. They've been storing enough gunpowder and other explosives in wooden barrels and buildings to blow up the whole frakkin' town."

Something poked her hip. She looked down.

"Where'd you get that?"

He grinned. "This? I was gonna show you this last night before I got distracted. Dan Dority again. Not a bad gun at all. Offered to pay him for it but he said the previous owner had no further need for weaponry." He kept his suspicions to himself as to the probable reason for that.

Laura edged over to his side to rest her face on his shoulder as she told him of her suspicions and findings. He smelled of sweat, both horse and man, and the faint dry sweetness of leather. She nosed deeper into his shirt, enjoying this scent, so different from shipboard metal and air scrubbers.

"You don't seem concerned about that freak tossing our room."

He shrugged. "I'll ask Swearengen about it. I'd be surprised, skittish as he is, if Farnum searched us on his own. More likely he was acting as Swearengen's agent."

She cocked her head as he gently dislodged her, getting up to fetch the bottle and two glasses.

"Don't you have some objection?"

He poured for them both, looked into the rust-colored liquid and then back at her eyes.

"I'd have done the same thing, if the situation was reversed." He drank, welcoming the burn.

Laura realized he was right, and something about that thought made her uneasy. She tried to put it out of her mind as she began thinking about dinner.