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Page 256

| Ashton was taken aback by what Stanford said, then he squinted his eyes at him. "Do you expect me to believe that?" he questioned. |

| Stanford waved a hand toward one of his men. "Go and bring the body so that we can prove that what I say is the truth!" he shouted. "And make it snappy. We've got two men here who need convincin'." |

| One of Stanford's men swung around and rode away toward his sheep station. Stanford's lips curled into a slow smile, having expected Ashton's arrival and prepared himself for it. Stanford knew that he would need a body to prove his point and he had not batted an eye when he had ordered one of his most devoted followers to break the neck of the most lazy and useless of his hired hands while he was sleeping off a drunken stupor. |

| As for Ashton's stolen sheepto hide the evidence, Stanford had ordered his men to kill and bury them. |

| The waiting was filled with a strained silence, and then Ashton sat taller in his saddle to watch as Stanford's hired hand reappeared in the distance, leading a horse on which a body lay across its back. |

| "And so you do have a body to show us," Ashton said, his eyes following the approach of the lifeless man. "How am I to know that he was killed by the same man who killed Rufus?" |

| Stanford shrugged as the man draped across the horse was brought to Ashton for closer inspection. "All I can tell you is that this man was my best sheepherder and someone broke his neck sometime during the night," he said, the lie on his lips coming as easily as breathing. "I've lost a valuable property |

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