, ​     "They're coming right at us," Estelle said as she put her phone back in her pocket.​

​     The four of them waited for a stagecoach that would take them from one side of the Wild West exhibit to the other. It was a lot easier to tell the difference between the simulates and the civilians in this exhibit. The simulates were all dressed in western gear: cowboy boots, cowboy hats, six shooters around the waist. One helped Estelle and Shawnacy on to the coach. "Why, you sure are purty, ma'am," he said to Estelle. "Why, if you weren't in such a hurry, I'd take you to the barn dance tonight."

     "Pity," Estelle replied.

     Shawacy smiled as she was helped on to the stagecoach. It was a stagecoach specially designed to carry people in wheelchairs. Brock allowed himself to be helped on. An invisible Gramps got on last. 

     "Hurry, please," Estelle said to the driver. "We need to get to the other side of the exhibit as quick as we can."

     "We'll go with all possible speed, ma'am. Yee-haw!" He flicked the whip in the general direction of the horses, and they took off galloping. They passed through an Old West town. Estelle saw saloon girls and galoots doing elaborate rope tricks in the middle of the street. Beyond the town, they passed a 19th Century locomotive chugging along on its tracks. Beyond that, they passed a Native American settlement with the tee-pees and the Native Americans dancing around a central fire going, "Woo! Woo! Woo!"

     "What did people ever see in this era?" Brock asked. "I mean, in the early days of the movies, they made hundreds and hundreds of westerns, right?"

     "They saw freedom and danger, only danger in another time in someone else's life," Gramps replied. "Then they started to get all the danger they could possibly want right outside their own homes, and those westerns started to look real quaint."

     "All I see is dust and..."

     BAM! 

CONTINUE