Since the 1930s my extended family has had a remote ranch in a hidden Colorado Rockies valley abutting Medicine Bow National Park south from Laramie, Wyoming. The mountain fasts there—almost alpine in environment—are majestic, but they can be raw and cruel as well.

Our family raised cattle there and took timber off the mountainsides in a planned "thinning" harvest pattern that supported a construction business down in Denver without denuding the forested hillsides. We weren't year-round ranchers, though, eschewing the forbidding winters by centering our lives elsewhere and only using the oft-expanded rambling stone and log ranch house for periodic vacations. Anyone in the family corporation could show up at the ranch after merely checking to see how many others would be in temporary residence; the rest of the year the ranch was taken care of by a long-term foreman and a succession of young—and not so young—wranglers holding fast to the dream of the wild and independent American West cowboy.

These cowboys were a sturdy, if somewhat rough and self-absorbed lot, many of whom had accommodated to the life of isolation in a wild and remote wilderness by taking whatever opportunities came their way.

Thus it was that, having called ahead to report that I was on home leave from a European tour and planned to take a Colorado rest and recuperation by riding the range and fishing the cold mountain trout streams, I found Big Bill, a handsome if wind-chiseled-featured rangy cowboy of almost indeterminate age hunched over the railing of the stable fence, waiting for me to arrive. He was leaning his lithe and sinewy hard-worked body over the fence with one booted foot on the lower rail and spinning a stalk of oats in his mouth when I caught sight of him. A big grin spread across his creased weather-beaten face when I drove up in a Jeep Cherokee in a cloud of dust and came to a sliding stop beside the covered log veranda extending across the wide face of the ranch house. A hunky hulk of a young blond I'd never seen before was keeping him company at the rail.

"Heard yer were comin' into the valley, Mr. H.," Big Bill called out to me. I walked over toward him, and he stood up straighter as I did and set his creased and oily cowboy hat back on his head so that I could see the glint of welcome in his eyes.

"Yep," I replied. "Got a little tired of being targeted by all those bombs on my forays into the Middle East," I said, with a grin. "Thought I'd come back here for a spell and check out whether there are any missiles here as threatening as those I encountered in Lebanon."

"I reckon we can find a few here if that's what you want," Big Bill responded, with a hearty laugh. "Come for another ride, did you? Wantin' to go up into the hills again like we did last summer?"

"Yeah, that's exactly what I want," I answered. I need some tension release. I figure a good ride and then several hours in the trout stream will help a lot."

"Doesn't look like you brought the family," Big Bill said.

"Nope. The wife couldn't get away. She's still back in the Mediterranean."

"So, it's just you, is it?" Bill asked.

"Yep. Any of the rest of the family in residence?"

"Not for another week or so. Most of