I could live now as a womanfull time if I wished. All that remained was to be able to have a job,and support myself as a woman.That was what I wanted ...hen above all else in the universe. I had neverfelt comfortable as a male. It took me a long time to figure out whatwas wrong, but now I knew. My c***dhood had started out normallyenough, but I was never really interested in the things that the otherboys in the neighborhood were.= = * = =I found sports boring. My father could never understand. Reaching the building's back end, Jasmine stopped in the walkway short of entering the open space between the plant rows and the wall. The span was almost twenty feet in width. Kneeling to look out, Jasmine saw that there was no doorway to her right.Craning her neck slowly to the left, she spotted a common doorway twenty-five yards distant.She listened as carefully as the pounding of her heart and the drumming of the rain would allow her to. Jasmine saw no movement along the line of shelves and. I looked away but, subconsciously, worked my way to him. He stood when I approached and took off the hat, showing longish black hair streaked with gray. Of course, he was wearing boots and jeans. The jeans were skin tight and his legs were thick, heavily muscled, like the rest of him."Hi, Cowboy," I said gaily."Good evening, ma'am," he replied in a drawl. He offered me the stool and I sat, allowing him to buy me another drink."Well, cowboy, what brings you to this watering hole?" I asked,. " Both of those things would have sounded interesting before. Now, we don't have much of a choice but to do something like that. The way I understand it, it was economic pressures that caused so many people to go to Oregon in the first place," Cassie said, and again I was amazed by her intelligence."That and the discovery of gold in California," I said. "All of the people immigrating across the Oregon Trail after gold was discovered was what started causing problems with the plains Indians.".