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children, men riding rearing fish-horses, an entire life-sized barge—while fountains shot foamy-white arcs high into the sky.
    To the right of the lagoon was a long, stately, bepillared building as big as anything we’d yet seen. You had to pity it, though, grand as it was, for to the left was a structure so vast it could swallow the other whole and a half dozen like it. It stretched on so far you couldn’t see the end of it. You couldn’t even be sure there was an end to it.
    There was much more I didn’t have the presence of mind to note beyond hazy impressions: What are all those columns down there and how do the boats in that big pond move so fast with no one rowing and is that actually a statue of a cow over yonder? I couldn’t pause to think any of it through, not with a uniformed band nearby hammering away at “The Liberty Bell March” for a throng hundreds strong—a good portion of it staring at us .
    Old Red grabbed hold of my arm and muttered something I couldn’t quite hear.
    “What’s that?”
    “I said, ‘Holy shit!’ ” my brother bellowed just as the band went pianissimo for a piccolo solo.
    I can’t say the entire crowd turned to stare at us. It sure felt like it, though.
    “Look!” a man shouted, pointing at me. “It’s Buffalo Bill Cody!”
    “Naw, that ain’t him!” someone hollered back.
    “Yes, it is!”
    “No, it isn’t!” another man joined in. “That’s Annie Oakley!”
    At last, there was agreement.
    Everyone laughed.
    “Come come come!” Smythe prodded us, head slick with sweat. He waved at a gazebo bandstand about fifty yards away, and when I looked at it I saw a cluster of frock-coated dignitary-types up there looking back at us . “They’re waiting!”
    Gustav was still clutching on to my arm as we started for the bandstand, and I heard a woman nearby hiss-whisper, “Oh, my … the little one’s blind .”
    “Must’ve stared too long at the big one’s clothes,” some wag replied, and there was more laughter.
    Old Red let go of me and marched on with as much dignity as he could muster. I tried to follow suit, but mustering dignity’s not easy when walking in chaps so starchy-stiff you can’t bend at the knee, and I ended up lumbering along with all the easy grace of the town drunk on Saturday night.
    When we reached the stairs up to the bandstand, a pair of Columbian Guards parted to let us pass. A big, bluff, bushy-mustached man met us at the top of the steps.
    “So, Smythe,” he said, looking me and my brother over like we were something even the most indiscriminating cat wouldn’t have bothered dragging in, “your new champions made it.”
    “Yes, yes. Here they are, Mr. Pinkerton. Otto and Gustav—”
    “Amlingmeyer” turned into a strangled wheeze halfway out of Smythe’s mouth.
    Mr. Pinkerton—Mr. William Pinkerton of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency—hadn’t waited for Smythe to finish.
    “Alright,” he said, turning away, obviously addressing himself to someone else. “Let’s get this over with.”
    Just beyond the man, till then hidden behind his bulk, was a toothy grin so big it seemed to just float there in the air. It was pointed our way … and standing behind it was Armstrong B. Curtis.
    “Awwww, hell,” Old Red said.
    He wasn’t even looking at Curtis, though. He was eyeing the folks clustered up at the back of the bandstand—our competition, I presumed. Among them was a dark-haired beauty cut from the same lovely cloth as Diana Corvus, and beside her was a little gent who looked for all the world like her employer, Col. C. Kermit Crowe. It took but a blink for me to realize why the resemblances were so striking.
    It was them.

5
    PALPITATIONS
    Or, The Contest Kicks Off with Another Kick in the Pants
    “I think I’m palpitating  … I think I’m palpitating,” Smythe puffed, pressing both hands to his heaving chest as he gaped at Armstrong B. Curtis.
    “You have got to be kiddin’,” said I, widening my