“Hear that, Spirit?” he asked the horse. “Sounds like there’s a ruckus going on.” Spirit turned his head to look back at Matt as if he were saying Oh? Really? Running into trouble was something the two of them did all too often. Matt’s Stetson was cuffed back on his shock of blond hair. Humor sparkled in his pale blue eyes at the moment, but under the right circumstances, those eyes took on a blue-gray tint that made them look like chips of ice. They were about as cold as ice, too, when Matt was angry. He sat there for a moment, listening to the popping of gunfire. It seemed out of place in such idyllic surroundings. The heavily timbered slopes of the Big Horn Mountains loomed around him, forming a majestic backdrop for the lush valley through which he was riding. Off to his left, a creek ran clear, cold, and swift bubbling over its rocky bed as it traced a course between banks dotted with cottonwood and aspen. Several such creeks watered that valley, which explained the lush grass in the meadows that provided ample graze for the cows Matt had seen.
