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Page 215

| to get a look at his sheep?'' Crispin said, resting a hand on the handle of his holstered pistol. |

| "No, there's no use in doing that, mate," Ashton said. "We won't be able to trace the blame to him. He'd not leave any diseased sheep at his station. He's smarter than that." |

| "It must have been done real quiet-like," Rufus mumbled, remembering with pride his nights beneath the stars among the sheep. "I never heard nothin'." |

| "That bastard can move around in the dark like a spook and no one is ever the wiser," Ashton said, recalling the night that Stanford had suddenly been straddling him in the jail cell, the blade of his knife cold on his cheek until the blood began to run warm across his flesh. . . . |

| "He'll slip up if he tries anything else around here," Crispin growled. "I'll be on the lookout for him and his men. I won't stop to ask questions, neither. I'll be shootin' to kill." |

| "I think that bastard has nine lives," Ashton said, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "I don't know how many times he's escaped the clutches of the law and the bounty hunters in these parts. Now he looks like he's livin' legal-like. But never a breath escapes from that man's mouth when he isn't involved in one rotten scheme or another." |

| "Perhaps this time it ain't so much what he's involved in," Crispin said, keeping his voice low so that it would not carry in the wind to the men working around him. "Maybe he's snoopin' around here, purposely causin' trouble, to get in on the |

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