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suggested that they travelled within hailing distance of each other, Georgina was happy to agree.
    It was reassuring to have a man in sight, she thought as she bounced along behind Craig Everson, near enough to see him but sufficiently far away to escape his dust.
    She was doubly sure of this when the motorcycle began playing up some time later, then finally stopped. Within minutes Craig was back by her side again, but it took him an hour to spark the reluctant engine.
    ‘Where did you get it?’ he despaired. ‘In a lucky dip? If so, I can assure you that you weren’t lucky.’
    ‘We gave very little for it,’ Georgina admitted.
    ‘We?’
    ‘My stepfather and I. For the small outlay we’ve had good service.’
    ‘Well, I can tell you one thing, it won’t be serving you much longer,’ Craig said.
    ‘But it has to! I have to get there.'
    ‘Where?’ he demanded.
    ‘I—I’m not sure. I mean I was, and then Well, I had second thoughts. Oh, dear, I’m not making any sense.’
    ‘More sense than you think,’ he said shrewdly. ‘It’s to do with the Lucy, isn’t it? You’ve been pumping me hard enough.’
    ‘Well ’
    ‘And to do with Larry Roper?’
    ‘How would you know that?’
    ‘How would I know, the lady asks, after oh-so-carefully yet oh-so-obviously cross-examining me from the moment we met! ’ Craig laughed aloud.
    ‘I’m sure I didn’t.’
    ‘Well, how do you explain now that I’m right about Lucy and Roper?’ He grinned at her.
    ‘You’re not right. I’m going to the first station that can find a niche for me. Any project that needs a cook or a clerk or a : ’
    ‘But that wasn’t the original intention.’
    ‘Yes ... no.’
    He ignored that. ‘Roper’s was?’
    ‘Well—yes,’ she admitted.
    ‘Did I change your mind, saying the things I did about him?’ he inquired solicitously.
    ‘No, I think I changed my mind myself, and before you spoke.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Because,’ Georgina admitted with a grin, for she found Craig Everson extraordinarily easy to talk to, ‘a girl can t be a man.’ She gave him a triumphant look. ‘Now I’ve got you,’ she challenged.
    He laughed. ‘You haven’t really! I believe I can see it all. You’ve answered an ad from Roper asking for a man.’
    ‘Did you read it?’
    ‘No, but I know you wouldn’t be going out there unless you had something in view, and I also know that Roper would never advertise for a woman, not now. So this time, Craig Everson grinned, ‘I’ve got you.'
    ‘Well, yes, I did do just that,’ she admitted, ‘I did answer an advertisement for a man. It seemed all right then, but afterwards I knew I was being crazy.’
    ‘Very true; very crazy, and it wouldn’t work. Roper s an eagle, nothing escapes him. But then it probably wouldn't work if you were the other sex—not many men can put up with the Mighty Roper.’
    ‘Mighty Roper?’
    ‘He’s called that out here.’
    ‘Because he’s mighty?’
    ‘Because he thinks he is,’ he amended.
    ‘You don’t like him,’ guessed Georgina.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Any reason?’
    ‘Plenty. My main one is that he messed up my life.’
    Georgina looked at Craig curiously, and decided he didn’t appear to have a messed-up life. She felt he had more to say, and being Craig would certainly say it, so she waited.
    ‘His own life had been messed around,’ Craig obliged, ‘but that was no reason why mine should be, too.'
    ‘A girl?’ asked Georgina shrewdly.
    ‘Yes. She was Roper’s fiancée. Like most hard, tough westerners Larry Roper fell hard and tough for Elva. He put everything into his plans for her.'
    ‘And?’
    ‘Well, she got bored with his plans and tore them up. Not literally, of course, but she let Roper know that for her he was only a diversion.’
    ‘Then where did you come in?’
    ‘Elva had become interested in me, just as I was interested in her.’
    ‘Then why didn’t you ... Oh, I’m sorry, it was the money, I suppose, I mean the lack of it,’