Our quarry put on another burst of speed, knowing full well that he neared the border. Constable Sinclair and I redoubled our own efforts, snow crunching and skidding beneath our feet. If Jenkins crossed into the United States, he would be out of our jurisdiction and untouchable.

"This would be so much easier if we still had our horses!" Sinclair gasped. I worried for him. He could be as relentless as a hound on the hunt, but we'd been running for hours, and he had that old knee injury.

Given the opportunity, he would run himself into the ground.

I regretted what I'd done, even if it had seemed right at the time. "That family needed them more, and only for a brief time," I panted back.

"Frost, why *did* I save your life three years ago?"

Speaking of the knee injury... "So you could use it as blackmail for the rest of my life."

"Oh. Well, that is correct. And if you die, I can't use it anymore."

"Brat. I pay and pay and pay."

"No! He's across. Nothing to lose now. He still has a huge lead, but maybe I can make the shot..."

"Thom, that would be illegal!"

"I'm waiting for you to make a point."

A gunshot rang out, and Jenkins screamed and fell. I thought I could see him writhing on the ground. A horse galloped toward the border from the American side and stopped next to Jenkins. Its slender rider reholstered his gun, leapt down, and started to drag Jenkins back over the border.

"Why, it's Billy Hawkins," Sinclair said.

"Would you please get that smirk off your face."

"I'm sorry. I thought you'd be happy to see your one true love, even if he is a Yank. Are you worried about what society will think?"

Yes, there were disadvantages to having an open-minded partner, at least when he was Constable Thomas Sinclair. "With our postings? Society has little to do with us. No, he's far too young. He hasn't even begun to shave yet."

"You'll let a razor come between you and true love?"

Pay and pay and....

When we reached Billy and Jenkins, I saw that Jenkins had been shot cleanly through the thigh in a way that hobbled but didn't cripple him. If I knew Billy, the bullet had missed the bone as well.

"Well, lookee here. You're in Canada again. However did that happen?" the American shootist gloated in his soft, hoarse- sounding voice. His poncho swirled around him in the wind, which also whipped his hat off, revealing a tangle of tarnished gold hair. Fortunate his hat had that cord that went around his slim neck. "Tommy! Ian! How are Canada's finest today?" He put it back on, tipped it at us, and grinned. At me.

No one would say that Billy was pretty, but there was something very pleasing about his almost delicate face, the way his green eyes sparkled. He could be like barbwire at times, and he was rough of manner but good at heart. His talent with the two guns he carried never failed to stun me.

He never failed to stun me.

Sinclair saw that I was too busy trying not to stare at Billy to speak, so the young demon said, "Much better now that you've brought Jenkins in. But he can't walk now."

"Dump him over the back of my horse. I'd like to walk with you for a while, if it's all right. You just have to take him in to the nearest outpost, right?"

Sinclair's smirk deepened. "That's fine. Isn't that fine, Constable Frost?"

Only great effort kept me from sighing. "Exceedingly. Billy, how did you come to be at the border at such a fortuitous time?"

Billy took a moment to translate that, then said, "The Sight runs in my family. I'm told I was born with a caul."

"Uhm. Well...."

"I'm joking, Ian. It was pure chance. The fortuitous thing was you Mountie boys wearing your red coats so I had some idea what was going on and could help."

Billy knocked Jenkins out with the butt of his gun. "Billy!" I protested.

"What? It's not like I *fired* it in Canada. Besides, he's a bad guy. On the frontier he'd be lucky to make it to a hanging jury alive." Then Billy's face went still. "He is a really bad guy, right? I didn't just shoot someone for something stupid, did I?"

"No, he's a murderer."

"That's good then. Hey, is there some new thing where the Mounties aren't mounted anymore?"

"Tell him why we don't have any horses, Ian."

Pay and pay and....

******************************************************

Thom and I needed a rest, so we set up camp for a while. Thom had begged Billy to do some gun tricks for us. I could make a comment about my partner being easily amused, but Billy's grace with his guns did hold the eye. The pistols spun like magic in his long-fingered hands as he spoke.

"--worked for a rancher for a while, and, let me tell you, it turned out that that man was so crooked he could see around corners. Got tired of feeling like I was helping someone really awful, so I did an outrider bit for some stagecoaches. Then I got deputized for a while in one town, but that only lasted until we brought that outlaw gang to justice. It was nice to have regular folk respecting me for a while, but it didn't last, never does." Billy holstered his guns. "Isn't your commanding officer going to be upset about the horses?"

"We'll get them back," I said.

"But not until after we bring Jenkins in. Wolfe will take a fit when he hears." Sinclair put on his Wolfe voice and gestures to say, "'Someday, constables, I will go with you to see how it is that you two can turn something simple into something strange and complicated. You better pray that day never comes. There are proper ways of doing things...' He'll start to do that entertaining thing with his hands. I can't wait."

Billy cleared his throat. "I need to talk to you, Ian. Alone."

Thom kept shooting me significant looks. I returned to speechlessness. "Uhm..."

Billy shrugged. "Okay. But if you want me, but I'll be a few trees down for a bit. See ya."

As Billy walked away, Thom hit me on the shoulder. "What did I save your life for anyway? Go!"

"If you get up and start limping to drive your point home, I will throttle you."

"I ran for hours! Fine. Abuse me all you care to, but talk to Billy first. You two are making me crazy!"

"You're incorrigible."

"Yes, that's why I'm the only partner of yours who sticks around. Go!"

I stood and followed Billy, to Thom's applause. Billy hadn't gone far, just out of earshot of camp. He leaned, arms crossed, with exaggerated ennui against a pine trunk. "Glad you could join me. I think you know what this is about."

I decided to be uncharacteristically bold out of fear that we would continue circling around the issue in a torturing dance, as we had every other time before, forever otherwise. "I care for you, deeply, but it can't work."

"Why not? It's because I'm a boy, right?"

"No. It's you, not your shape, that matters to me."

Billy let out a breath in relief. "Then what's the problem?"

"It's how young you are."

"And you're a codger?"

"I'm 34."

"Let me get you your cane!" He shrugged. "I'm 22, myself."

I let myself stroke his exceedingly smooth chin and shivered myself at the shudder that went through him. "Liar."

He took in a deep breath. "Okay. I was going to do this anyway."

He took off his hat, then his poncho. When he unbuttoned his coat, then started on his shirt, I asked, "What are you doing? It's cold."

He pulled his shirt partially open to reveal tightly wrapped bandages binding his chest. At first I thought he'd been injured and that was what he'd intended to show me. He suddenly had a knife in his hand and cut the bandages away.

To reveal a gentle swell of breasts. "My God."

Billy closed up... his? shirt and took advantage of my shock to explain. "I've been a boy for five years now; it's the only way I can live the way I want. Being a woman shootist would be putting a target on my back."

How could I have been so fooled? "Who are you really, then?"

"This *is* who I am! I never lied to you, Ian. I never said to you, 'Hey, Frost, I'm a boy.' I showed you most of the truth; this is the rest. Putting me in petticoats would be the lie."

"How do you possibly fool everyone?"

"Smarts and sneakiness. It's better than the alternative."

"The alternative?"

"Probably rape and death, whether I got discovered for a woman out here or went to that marriage my parents had planned for me to some guy who'd already buried one wife. You don't know how easy it was to walk away from that life. No one ever expected me to just leave. Turns out the only thing keeping in my place was not realizing I could go. Went West because there you are who you make yourself to be, not who you were born."

"I... don't know what to say."

Billy's mouth twisted as he rebuttoned his coat and put his poncho back on. "Your look says it all. Hey, don't give me away to anyone else, okay? I worked hard to set myself up."

If I didn't break free of my shock and do something, he would leave forever, and with the wrong impression. I grabbed his arm. "No, it's not like that at all. I said it wasn't your shape. I'm just surprised."

That cocky smile I loved resurfaced. "Got you good?"

"Got me." I pulled him in and kissed him until we were both dizzy.

Billy grinned. "Good thing it's not me being a boy that put you off, because that's not stopping. I never was no lady, and I'm not starting now."

I tried to imagine Billy in petticoats and nearly choked at how wrong the picture looked. "I'm fine with that. But now we have to let Thom know we've come to an agreement."

"If he misbehaves, I'll kick him in the head for you."

"I'm seeing the advantages to this already."

**********************THE END***********************

NOTE: I did mention my love of _Dead Again_ in the last past life story. <g>
When I mentioned my plans for Dief, Dawn Sharon asked me if it was a step up or down for a dog to be reborn as a human. Ray often seems to think that a dog's life is better... I know opinions on reincarnation vary, but I tend to think it's weird to try to rate how much better one form is than another. That means I don't necessarily see coming back as a plant or animal as a demotion. So Dief is Fraser's equal in any life. (Though I guess that also means any of them could come back for a brief existence as a chrysanthemum or something.)

More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room at http://members.tripod.com/~drovar/viridian/