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Page 50

| of York's Pub. "No one can hide such female attributes in a man's breeches and shirt. At least not from me." |

| He glanced toward the far end of the road and mocked a half salute at the men waiting for him, then smiled smugly at the packhorses, dray and bullocks that he had made sure were stocked well enough for the journey into the outback. He planned to be Ashton's shadow, at least until Ashton became careless and revealed where he had stashed the chest of coins and jewels that Stanford had overheard him talking about to his sidekick, Crispin Tilford, when he had visited Ashton in prison. |

| Not wanting to let Ashton and Sasha get too far ahead of him, wanting them to be so close he could smell them in the breeze, Stanford straightened his ascot, cleared his throat, and made his way through the section of Melbourne that had been nicknamed Canvas Town. He had been there countless times and it made his skin crawl no less now than before. It was a place of squalor. The immigrants who were too listless to dig or dolly for gold, or too poor to pay their coach fares to the diggings a hundred miles north of Melbourne, lived crowded together in rough timber huts, mud and wattle humpies, bark lean-to's, and tents. The people who infested these makeshift shelters were rough, tough men in woolen shirts, women in Wellington boots, and squabbling children, mixed generally with pigs, goats, dogs, geese, and hens. |

| Picking his way through broken bottles, rusty tins, gin jars, and the wreckage of brandy cases, Stanford |

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