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how to lose, and—” she grinned and lifted her brows “—I know how to win.”
    â€œPoint taken.” He tilted his head as if to view her from a different angle. “From now on, Sam, we play head-to-head.” He smiled, and she was no longer sure they were talking about the same thing. “I know how to win, too,” he added slowly. They continued at a leisurely pace for a time, crossing a narrow branch of the Medicine Bow River. They paused there for the horses to quench their thirst in the icy water that forced its way over shining rocks with hisses and whispers. At Samantha’s request, Jake began to identify the surrounding mountains.
    Pointing to the long fingers of peaks at the south, the Laramie Range, he told her they extended from eastern Colorado. The middle section was the Medicine Bow Range, and the Sierra Madre loomed to the west. The vast ranges were separated by broad tongues of the Wyoming Basin. Silver-blue, they gleamed in the sunlight, lacings of snow trembling from their summits.
    She had reined in without being aware of her action. “I can never look at them long enough. I suppose you’re used to them.”
    â€œNo.” There was no laughter or mockery in his tone. “You never get used to them.”
    She smiled a bit uncertainly, not at all sure she could deal with this side of him.
    â€œAre there bears up there?” she asked.
    He glanced up at the mountains, smiled, then looked back at her. “Black bear and grizzly,” he informed her. “Elk, coyotes, mountain lions . . .”
    â€œMountain lions?” she repeated, a little nervously.
    â€œYou’re not likely to run into one down here,” he returned with an indulgent smile.
    She ignored the mockery in his voice and looked around her, again awed by the miles of open space. “I wonder if this looked the same a century ago.”
    â€œSome of it. Those don’t change much.” He indicated the Rockies with an inclination of his head. “The Indians are gone,” he continued, as if thinking aloud. “There were Arapaho, Sioux, Cheyenne, Crow, Shoshone, all roaming free over the state before the first white man set foot here. Then trappers came, trading with Indians, dressing like them, living like them, and the beaver was nearly driven into extinction.” He turned back to her, as if suddenly remembering she was there. “You’re the teacher.” His smile appeared. “You should be telling me.”
    Samantha shook her head in mock despair. “My knowledge of Wyoming’s history is limited to late-night Westerns.” They were walking their horses slowly, side by side. She had completely forgotten her aversion to the man beside her. “It’s impossible to believe the killing and cruelty that must have gone on here. It’s so serene, and so vast. It seems there would have been room enough for everyone.”
    This time it was Jake who shook his head. “In 1841 more than a hundred and fifty thousand people crossed the South Pass going west, and a few years later, fifty thousand more came through on their way to California looking for gold. This was Indian land, had been Indian land for generations. Game disappeared, and when people get hungry, they fight. Treaties were signed, promises made by both sides, broken by both sides.” He shrugged.
    â€œIn the 1860s, they tried to open the Bozeman Pass from Fort Laramie to Montana, and open war broke out. The trail ran through the Sioux hunting ground. The fighting was of the worst kind, massacres, indiscriminate killing of women and children, butcheries by both white and Indian. More treaties were signed, more misunderstandings, more killing, until the whites outnumbered the Indians, drove them away or put them on reservations.”
    â€œIt doesn’t seem fair,” Samantha whispered, feeling a wave of sadness wash over her.
    â€œNo, it