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Page 355

| put the stone back inside it. He was soon driving away, the creaking wheels stirring up more rust-colored dust in their wake. |

| "Lord, I am so glad that you saw him here pestering me," Sasha said, raking her fingers through her heat-dampened hair. "I'm afraid I would have been forced to make him leave by gunpoint." |

| "I didn't return home because of the vendor," Ashton said, looking toward the river. "I came to tell you what one of our men discovered yesterday while snooping around close to Stanford Sidwell's sheep station." |

| "Discovered?" Sasha said, a strange sort of sudden fear gripping her. Bianca. She had not had a chance to go and see Bianca since she and Ashton had returned from Narrung. "What, Ashton? Tell me." |

| "Stanford has abandoned his sheep station and all of his cattle and sheep," Ashton said in a low rumble. "The cattle and sheep that weren't already dead were wasted away to nothing and had to be shot. As for Stanford and his men, no one knows where they are." |

| Fear for Bianca gripped Sasha's insides. "Ashton," she said, grabbing his arm. "What of Bianca? Diddid Stanford abandon her also?" |

| "Seems not," Ashton said, inhaling a shaky breath. "At least he didn't abandon her there. There's no sign of her." |

| Sasha screwed her face up into a frown. "Poor Bianca," she murmured. "And what of her child once it is born? It doesn't have a chance, Ashton. Not a chance in the world of living a normal life." |

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