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Lucas had been fourteen that year, already pushing six feet in height and with a man’s strength from a lifetime of hard work. His older brother Matthew had been almost sixteen, with all the wild impetuosity of any young male on the verge of adulthood. The two boys had been inseparable all their lives, with Matt’s cheerfulness balancing Lucas’s darker nature, and Lucas’s levelheadedness reining in the worst of Matt’s adventurousness.
    The youngest Cochran, Jonah, was six years younger than Lucas and had always been excluded from the close relationship between the two older boys, notfrom any maliciousness on their part, but because of the simple, unbridgeable distance of age. The closeness in their ages meant that Matt and Lucas had been together from babyhood, had always had each other as a playmate, had slept together under the same blanket. Those were things that Jonah could never share, and he was largely left to his own devices. He was a quiet, withdrawn boy, always standing on the fringes and watching his two older brothers but seldom included in their rough activities. It was odd, Lucas often thought, that as close as he had been to Matt, it was Jonah’s thin, solemn face that had remained clearest in his memory.
    The Indians had attacked the ranch house one day while most of the men were out on the range, something they had evidently known. Matt and Lucas had been there only by chance, having ridden in early only because Matt’s horse had thrown a shoe, and where one went, so did the other. Alice, their mother, had insisted that they eat lunch before riding back out. They had been sitting at the table with her and Jonah when they had heard the first shouts.
    The Indians hadn’t had any firearms, but they had outnumbered the few defenders by five to one, and it took time to reload the muzzle-loaders the Cochrans possessed. The speed of the attack, an Indian specialty, was dizzying. All Lucas could remember was a blur of noise and motion, the explosions of gunpowder in his ear, the panic as he tried to reload while keeping an eye on the Indians. He and Matt and Alice had each taken up a position at a window, and he remembered Alice’s sudden scream when she had seen eight-year-old Jonah standing at an unguarded window,bravely sighting down the barrel of a pistol so heavy it took both hands for him to hold it. Lucas, the closest, had tackled his baby brother and stuffed him behind an overturned table with orders to stay there. Then he had turned back just as the front door was kicked in and Matt met an Indian warrior in a chest-to-chest clash, muscles straining, hands locked together. The Indian had held a club in one hand, a glittering knife in the other. Lucas grabbed up the pistol Jonah had dropped and whirled on one knee, trying for a clear shot, when Matt went down under the warrior’s greater weight and the long knife buried itself in his chest. Lucas had shot then, his aim true, but too late for Matt.
    The attack was over as fast as it had started, perhaps because the Indians had known the men out on the range, alerted by the gunfire, would be riding hell for leather for the ranch house. The entire fight had lasted less than five minutes.
    Losing Matt had left Lucas like a wounded animal, unable to find comfort. His parents had comforted each other over the loss of their firstborn; Jonah, accustomed to being alone, had pulled even deeper inside himself. Lucas was the one who had been cast adrift, for he had always had Matt, and now his entire world had changed. He had truly grown up that year, for he had seen death, and he had killed, and without Matt to buffer those experiences the hard edges of his character had grown even harder.
    The Civil War had started in 1861, and the army had pulled out of Colorado Territory to fight it, in effect leaving the citizens of the Territory on their own to face the increasing Indian attacks. Only the fewsettled towns were safe; Prosper