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Page 160

| was, as Crispin quickly caught up with him on his proud mare. "Who is it, Ashton?" she said, shadowing her eyes with a hand as she stepped out onto the porch beside him. |

| She sucked in a wild gulp of air when she recognized the man that Crispin had stopped before he reached the house. "Why, Ashton, that is the con man who caused you trouble at your pub," she exclaimed, but Ashton did not hear her. He had left the porch and was walking in wide strides toward the con artist. It seemed that Ashton had some past relationship with this manand that his past had followed him to the outback. |

| Sasha circled her hands around the rail of the porch and watched as Ashton stepped up beside the man, who had not dismounted and whose fancy clothes seemed misplaced in the outback. |

| She could not hear what was being said between them, but she could tell by the looks on their faces that it was not a congenial conversation by any means! |

| "Ashton, should I send the son of a bitch on his way by gunpoint?" Crispin asked, his hand resting threateningly on his bolstered revolver. |

| "Let's hear what he has to say first," Ashton said, meeting Stanford's steady stare with his own. "Sidwell, what're you doing out here? How'd you know where to find me?" |

| Stanford reached for a cigar in his front pocket and thrust it between his lips. With this same hand he took a match from his pocket and scraped a very carefully manicured thumbnail across the head of the match, igniting it. As though there was meaning |

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