stages full of girls ready to pile in here that'll make Lily Dupree look like a man." He smiled at his own joke and Rip laughed,

too.

"Never," he said lightly. "If Lily gets to stay on here, she'll always be the darling of the valley, just you wait and see."

He didn't hear Cooper's be- mused comment, "I'm afraid he's absolutely right," which upset George Askin even more. Hassell was too busy thinking about how he was going to explain to Lily that her engagement had just been indefinitely extended, and that she would be going on a picnic with Douglas after all the following day.

"I won't go! I'll just become Monty Lewis again!" Lily's pale face, framed with gentle brown curls, her lips very pink to con- trast with the dark green silk she was wearing, was repeating her argument even as they waited for the trap to be delivered from the livery stable. “This is taking it too far!"

"You like the money you've been getting, don't you?" asked Rip harshly, as he watched the street from her bedroom window "This is just one of the payoffs for that. Think of it this way. Jim Douglas has given us at least one more week of raking in noth- ing but profit." He turned. She looked very neat, the dark green ribbons under the straw hat the touch she needed to look so young and innocent. She looked even younger than Leah Douglas, but then that young lady took after her father in both looks and physique.

The buckboard was now turn- ing up the main street. "Come on," said Hassell, picking up the bag of cosmetics Lily had insist- ed she would have to take with her. "You're going to go, and you'll have a good time." Lily re- sisted his taking her arm, walking

ahead of him, her mouth a sullen pink line. "Look," said Hassell exasperated. "I don't like this one bit more than you, and if I could think of a way out, I'd take it. But don't let's kill the golden goose just because some guy wants to marry you. You can always say no.

""

Lily's dark painted eyes turn- ed ablaze to Rip Hassell. "Sup- pose I say yes,” she retorted. For a moment, Hassell was speechless "He couldn't say anything, could he?" she sneered. "I mean, after our wedding night, he couldn't tell the world that Lily is a man and Jim was a fool, could he?” She opened the door, smiled easily at the guard at the top of the stairs and headed down, past a line of admirers.

"You wouldn't do anything like that?" Hassell's voice was dry and raspy even to his own ears. He had only caught up to Lily as she mounted the buck- board. Now, she waved to the men who whistled and raised their hats as Rip directed the team out of Cottonwood and up the only road out of the valley in the direction of South Bend.

Lily didn't answer. She grip- ped the side of the buckboard and looked about her disinter- estedly at the silver-leafed wolf willow that lined the road. "He'd kill us both," said Hassell, his tone strangled. "He likely killed his first wife anyhow. Strangled her with his own bare hands." He shook his head. "You wouldn't live past that first night."

"Oh, forget it," said Lily, irri- tated. "It was just an idea I thought you'd be coming up with any second."

For the first time in half an hour, Rip breathed a sigh of re- lief. He rested the team halfway up the incline towards South Bend. It was a steep climb, but the going would be easier when they made the turn off just un-

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der the brow of the long plateau, and plunged back towards the river and Douglas' ranch.

"You had me going for a while," he said to Lily, getting out and reaching up to take her by her waist and lift her to the grassy side of the track. "You don't seem quite yourself these last two days. What is it?"

Lily sat down on the edge of this hill, looking back across Cottonwood Creek. To their left, there were dark gashes in the slopes of the hills, marking out the excavation sites of the mines. When the rail came along the valley floor in another year, not only would Douglas be richer from that, but then Cottonwood would really boom as its stock- piles depleted and the miners would be joined by railway men in the saloons and and taverns.

"It's this whole thing," said Lily, when Rip sat beside her. Her hand, nails a pink now to match her lips, took in the whole valley with a wave. “Do you know I'm actually beginning to like being the only girl in the whole place? All of you guys are so nice to me. You move on any whim I have. Do you know what it's like to be accepted, even loved, after being disliked and ig- nored for so long?" She swallow- ed and looked directly at Rip. "I was even rather glad when you came to me and told me I could carry on wearing my skirts for another week. So what does that tell you about me, huh?"

Hassell was shaken, he'd quite forgotten Monty Lewis in the last few days. Of course, he knew that Lily was a man. But that hadn't stopped him thinking that she'd react like a woman. What kind of man was it, he trembled at the thought, who liked to be a woman more than to be a man?

"I've got to get out before this gets worse," Lily was going