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cars, with the exception of the locomotive’s powerful steam engine, prominent gold lettering decorated the shiny black sides. “Colonel Buck Buchannan’s Wild West Show,” the gold letters proudly proclaimed.
    At the very front of that long show train, in the big steam engine’s sweltering cab, Boz Whitman, the engineer, jumped down off his stool. Grinning from ear to ear, Boz reached up and gave a firm tug on an overhead rope. The train’s whistle instantly sounded a long, loud blast, startling a small herd of white-faced cattle grazing near the tracks.
    The aging engineer laughed, then moved his big wad of chewing tobacco from right cheek to left, and spit a string of brown juice over the side of the train. Boz wore his regulation striped railroad cap with a bright red bandanna, a red shirt, striped overalls, and a pair of goggles to protect his sensitive sixty-two-year-old eyes from cinders as he leaned out the window.
    Continuing to laugh, Boz gave the whistle cord another yank, eased off on the throttle, and slammed on the brakes. A great grinding sound was almost deafening. Orange sparks flew from beneath the heavy steel wheels. Finally the train began to slow. Curious show people poked their heads out the windows, wondering why they were stopping when Denver was still a couple of miles west.
    When the locomotive had come to a complete stop on the tracks, a pair of loading doors slid open on an animal car at the train’s rear. A wooden ramp was lowered into place. Then a broad-shouldered, powerfully built young man with dark blond hair appeared in the car’s opening.
    Billed on the program as the Cherokee Kid, the big suntanned man coaxed a nervous chestnut stallion, heavily packed with weapons and camping gear, down the wooden ramp and off the train.
    Following the Cherokee Kid were a pair of the show’s brawny equipment handlers, the Leatherwood brothers, Danny and Davey. The playful, loudmouthed Leatherwoods yanked brutally on their mounts’ reins, unmindful and uncaring of the steel bits punishing the horses’ tender mouths.
    On their heels came a short middle-aged cowboy. William “Shorty” Jones was a leathery-faced little man who was so painfully thin he had trouble keeping his faded denim pants up. A silver whistle hung from a chain around Shorty’s neck and a cigarette dangled from his lips. Hitching his breeches with one hand, leading a roan gelding with the other, he squinted through the smoke curling up into his eyes. Never taking the handmade cigarette from his mouth, Shorty warned the thoughtless, overgrown Leatherwood pair, “Take it easy, boys. Take it easy!”
    Shorty was the troupe’s animal wrangler and he couldn’t stand to see any kind of animal abused. A very quiet, very shy little man, Shorty was consistently gentle with all God’s creatures—man and beast—and it sorely rankled him to see the bullying Leatherwoods mistreat frightened horses.
    Sharing Shorty’s concern, a white-haired old Indian, his bronzed, stony face deeply creased and sun-weathered, led a big paint pony down the ramp after Shorty. He was called Ancient Eyes, and he had once been a powerful subchief of Colorado’s Uncompahgre Utes. Those days had long since passed. Ancient Eyes had seen seventy-five winters come and go. The last twenty had been spent with Colonel Buck Buchannan’s Wild West Show . Ancient Eyes realized his value to the Colonel was not so great as it once had been. He was far too old to be the daring fierce warrior, which had been his role in the beginning. Still, he knew that so long as the troubled show kept operating, he had a place with the troupe, with the Colonel, his old and valued friend.
    Drawing the long leather reins up over his paint’s lowered head, Ancient Eyes groaned a little as he climbed up into the saddle. Then, seated astride the paint, the old Ute suddenly shuddered involuntarily. Shorty, mounting his roan near Ancient Eyes, saw the tremor go through the Ute’s