“That was practically stealing,” Rand said.  He carried the musket to the light and examined it closely.  “Nice condition, too; I wouldn’t be afraid to fire this with a full charge, right now.”  He handed the weapon back.  “He didn’t lose a thing on that deal.”

“I should say not!  I’d give him two hundred for it, any time.  Even without the history, it’s worth that.”

“Who buys history, anyhow?” Rand wanted to know.  “The fact that it came from the Sawyer collection adds more value to it than this Mayflower business.  Past ownership by a recognized authority like Sawyer is a real guarantee of quality and authenticity.  But history, documented or otherwise—­hell, only yesterday I saw a pair of pistols with a wonderful three-hundred-and-fifty-year documented history.  Only not a word of it was true; the pistols were made about twenty years ago.”

“Those wheel locks Fleming bought from Arnold Rivers?” Pierre asked.  “God, wasn’t that a crime!  I’ll bet Rivers bought himself a big drink when Lane Fleming was killed.  Fleming was all set to hang Rivers’s scalp in his wigwam....  But with Stephen, the history does count for something.  As you probably know, he collects arms-types that figured in American history.  Well, he can prove that this individual musket was brought over by the Pilgrims, so he can be sure it’s an example of the type they used.  But he’d sooner have a typical Pilgrim musket that never was within five thousand miles of Plymouth Rock than a non-typical arm brought over as a personal weapon by one of the Mayflower Company.”

“Oh, none of us are really interested in the individual history of collection weapons,” Rand said.  “You show me a collection that’s full of known-history arms, and I’ll show you a collection that’s either full of junk or else cost three times what it’s worth.  And you show me a collector who blows money on history, and nine times out of ten I’ll show you a collector who doesn’t know guns.  I saw one such collection, once; every item had its history neatly written out on a tag and hung onto the trigger-guard.  The owner thought that the patent-dates on Colts were model-dates, and the model-dates on French military arms were dates of fabrication.”

Pierre wrinkled his nose disgustedly.  “God, I hate to see a collection all fouled up with tags hung on things!” he said.  “Or stuck over with gummed labels; that’s even worse.  Once in a while I get something with a label pasted on it, usually on the stock, and after I get it off, there’s a job getting the wood under it rubbed up to the same color as the rest of the stock.”

“Yes.  I picked up a lovely little rifled flintlock pistol, once,” Rand said.  “American; full-length curly-maple stock; really a Kentucky rifle in pistol form.  Whoever had owned it before me had pasted a slip of paper on the underside of the stock, between the trigger-guard and the lower ramrod thimble, with a lot of crap, mostly erroneous, typed on it.  It took me six months to remove the last traces of where that thing had been stuck on.”