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wished to return to Arizona Territory and be a boy of twenty again, either.
    â€˜Life is what you make of it,’ he said at last.
    â€˜A truism—but looking at you, I don’t think that you have changed much…other than that you are now clean.’
    Cobie’s smile was sweet. ‘Yes, I hardly think that I looked like this eight years ago.’
    â€˜No, indeed. But the man inside is the same, I’ll be bound. Is London safe while you live in it?’
    Cobie thought of the night on which he had rescued Lizzie Steele—and began to laugh.
    â€˜Perhaps, perhaps not. But I don’t pack a pair of six-shooters on my hip whilst walking down Piccadilly, more’s the pity.’
    â€˜What exactly are you doing to stir up the assembled nobility and gentry? I would wager that there are easier pickings here than at San Miguel.’
    Cobie offered him his most winning smile.
    â€˜Nothing.’
    â€˜You’re doing nothing? Now that I don’t believe.’
    â€˜Ever the sceptic. Believe what you like.’
    Mr Van Deusen also smiled. Cobie knew that smile. He had seen it on the face before him in more than one tight corner. He decided to provoke in return.
    â€˜And what exactly are you doing here, Mr Van Deusen? It’s odd, you know, but I find it hard to think of you as other than Schultz, the Perfesser who packed a mean gun.’
    â€˜The Perfesser and Jumpin’ Jake are long gone,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen smoothly, ‘and no resurrection awaits them, I think.’
    Cobie remembered the boy he had been, laughed and added, ‘You hope, rather. You remember the old saying, “Truth will arise, though all the world will hide it from men’s eyes.”’
    â€˜By God, I hope not,’ said Mr Van Deusen fervently. ‘Iam a most respectable and wealthy citizen of Chicago, thinking of running for the US Senate in the next elections.’
    â€˜The Perfesser in the Senate would only be matched by Jumpin’ Jake marrying into the British aristocracy.’
    Cobie paused, and then, as though some ghost, some premonition, had walked through his head, asked himself, Now, why did I say that?
    â€˜I thought that Lady Kenilworth was already married,’ remarked Mr Van Deusen slyly.
    â€˜So she is, but I have English cousins. Best to tell you, knowing you, you’ll soon find out. Sir Alan Dilhorne, the noted statesman, now retired, is by way of being a relative. He is the elder brother of my foster-father, Jack Dilhorne.’
    Van Deusen whistled. ‘Dilhorne of Dilhorne and Rutherfurd’s and Dilhorne of Temple Hatton, Yorkshire?’
    When Cobie, his mouth twisted derisively, nodded assent, he exclaimed, ‘By God, young sir, what were you doing wandering around the West, stealing peanuts when all you had to do—?’
    Cobie cut in, his voice quite different from the one he had been using. Instead he was speaking in the harsh Western drawl which had driven the respectable and the unrespectable mad in Arizona Territory.
    â€˜Ah, yes, when all I had to do was take foster-Daddy’s handouts, get him to destroy Greer and all my enemies for me. Say pretty please, Uncle Jack and Uncle Alan, and let them run my life for me.
    â€˜Oh, Perfesser, I thought you knew me better than that! Besides, the peanuts I stole from Bratt’s Crossing and San Miguel became the wealth of the Indies when I lit out from the West and arrived on Wall Street and began to trade with it. What did you do with your pile, Perfesser, sir?’
    â€˜The same as you. Made myself richer. Returned to thebosom of my remaining family, began a career in politics for the hell of it—no illusions there—Republican infighting is merely San Miguel writ large.’
    â€˜Oh, the whole world is merely San Miguel writ large,’ remarked Cobie dismissively, ‘my father and Sir Alan notwithstanding.’
    â€˜Then that being so, shall we