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shuffling gaits. But the old roan knew the job and the trail as well as he did. Soon Old Tom let his age-mottled hands settle onto the saddle horn and let his attention wander.
    He lifted his gaze and surveyed the craggy sea of peaks, the light pure and the sky blue.
    A faint wind came off the peaks and rustled through the trees like the echoes of a distant waterfall.
    Across the years, he heard the voice of his wife
    --his beloved Beauty--as clear as if she were riding beside him. "Only Mozart made music beautiful enough for a day like this, Tom." In his mind's eye, he saw the rapt look on her face as she gazed at the mountains aflame in a symphony of color.
    Ahead, the broad trail opened into another meadow that made a tawny splash against the emerald solidness of the pines. The cattle, bred for the leanness of their beef, stretched in a wide, black line across it, flanked by outriders.
    Facing this range that was his home, the only one he'd ever known, seeing its thick layer of fertility, its length and its breadth, its wildness and its beauty, Old Tom felt a strength in his chest and his muscles. With pride, he watched the cowboys working ahead of him, keeping the line steadily moving.
    "Cowboying is a lousy job," Old Tom announced, breaking the silence. "Low pay for long hours of dirty, backbreaking work. There's nothing glamorous or romantic about it."
    "The same can be said for ranching," Bannon said with a smile.
    "Don't I know it." Old Tom snorted a laugh. "Been at this business better than sixty years and about all I got to show for it are bones that creak louder than this saddle. Hell, we're still just one step ahead of the bank."
    "True." A faint smile lightened the assured and rather hard cast of his features.
    "But it don't matter what you say against it.
    This is the way man was meant to live--close to the earth where you can watch the seasons change and feel the cycle of life." The roan horse splashed through a small stream, its clear waters muddied by the cattle's cloven hooves stirring up its bottom. "Out here, there's none of them newfangled computers or the stink of towns, no walls hemming you in. There's just weather, water, grass, and cattle--and man standing against the things the mountains put against a lone man. That's what stiffens his backbone and makes him view the world differently than other men."
    "Could be."
    "Could be? Hell, it is."
    "Right." Again the smile showed.
    Taught by the land to be watchful and aware of his surroundings, Bannon let his glance make a sweeping arc, pausing for a moment on the mountains to the north. Winter crouched somewhere beyond it. One day or one night, it would swirl in and turn the land white, shriveling every living thing exposed to it. He knew this land, and the feeling of being in it expanded his chest and sharpened his pleasure in the moment.

    It was a country of extremes, of deep silences and howling winds, of incredibly lush greenness and high suns rent by boiling thunderheads unleashing jagged bolts of lightning to walk the rims and canyons amidst torrents of rain, of the drowsy crystalline peace of a winter dawn and the ominous roar of an avalanche somewhere high up.
    This was the Rockies, raw and primitive, beyond taming. It scoured the softness out of a man and put an expression in his eyes that never faded. And a claim on his heart that never lost its power.
    The limo rolled to a quiet stop in front of a sprawling, multileveled house located in the exclusive, gate-guarded community of Starwood, Aspen's renowned luxury subdivision. Spread across the shoulder of a mountain overlooking the town, the contemporary structure was all wood and stone and soaring glass, strewn with sun decks, terraces, and balconies.
    "Here we are." John Travis helped Kit out of the rear passenger seat. She paused beside him to stare at the house, her eye drawn by the striking counterpoint its geometric lines made to the natural beauty of the mountain rising behind it. He