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“Almost…three years ago,” she leaned forward as if to share a hushed confidence. “And you know, Jesse dear…I wish I could tell you it gets easier. Maybe one day. Anyway, we know what you’re living with and our hearts are with you.” She smiled big and warm.
    Jesse nodded.
    As Ruby told of the violent act that took their son, Bear sat silent, sad-eyed, pain-wracked stone, till he caught Jesse’s glance and smiled wanly. Ruby went on to express their gratitude for havinghad their son for the time that they did, and to tell how fortunate they were to have “the most beautiful and talented daughter. And she’s just come home from her life in the big wide world to be with us for a while.”

16
Larry Littlefield
    H e turned off the paved road at Florissant into a dirt road maze through the alpine mystery of the Front Range. Round a bend, a lush meadow billowed where a band of horses arched grazing with a pair of mule deer does and a fawn. At the distant end of the valley, Pike’s Peak, snow-capped and bronzed by sun-wash, jutted toward the heavens.
    Barely discernable among the thicket of conifers and aspens stood the beginnings of a Gallus gate, two peeled upright cypress poles, ungated and wanting a crosspiece at the top. He turned in through a forest corridor bordered by an incomplete cypress fence. About an eighth of a mile through the trees, things opened up. He could see the house and barn. The pond across from the house mirrored a stand of black, spear-pointed spruce, a flock of ducks painted on the still water. A pair of tepees stood white against the green meadow next to the pond.
    Larry was at the hitch-rack in front of the barn pulling a saddleoff a horse as Jesse walked up. He turned smiling, flung the saddle on a rail, and came to Jesse. He shook his hand, eyes atwinkle, saying, “Goddamn, it’s good to see you.” He introduced Jesse to young Roxanne. She was tall, strong, kind and gentle and was to Larry pretty much what Abbie was to Jesse. Reaching for a snaffle bridle, he said, “Why don’t you get on that buckskin there. I want to ride this colt up in the hills a little bit. This ol’ vet I know bought him and he’s a little too much for him so he dropped him off here for me to work him for a while. I’d like to trade him out of him. This is a pretty nice colt.”
    That was non-stop Larry—riding horses, training, trading, running a business, emceeing a charity event, and hosting people he didn’t even know, and he did it all with a kind of offhanded ease. His wife, Rosie, and their ten-year-old daughter, Linda, were in the house cooking for the twenty or thirty people who were expected tomorrow.
    Larry led the way at a trot across the meadow behind the barn. They rode over a rise through a stand of aspens and sage, then down a slope alongside another alpine tarn dotted with ducks. They kicked up into a lope. The colt flung his heels in the air like a whipcrack. Larry looked back at Jesse and laughed. Hell, he was six times world’s champion cowboy; this colt would have to get up pretty damn early to worry him. The trail stretched out in front of them for quite a ways over rolling meadows. Pretty soon they were side by side at a canter, then a gallop, and then the race was on. The buckskin was big, powerful, and could damn sure cover some ground. The colt, light and airy, possessed the competitive aggression of youth, and plumb refused to let the big buckskin nose ahead. Jesse gave himself up totally to the charge until he could no longer tell where he ended and the horse began. They breathed as one. The same pounding heart seemed to serve them both. Jesse was rooted in the buckskin’s being. He glanced down at the spinning grass and flashing hooves reaching forward pulling the earth to him as if to accelerate the rotation of the planet. They flew over the traillike warring Comanches whooping and hollering,