The two men digging the postholes stopped their work, which Joe sensed they didn't really mind doing. Both were in their twenties, one thin and wiry, the other soft and fat. The soft, fat man had dark circles of sweat under the arms of his sweatshirt and his forehead was beaded with moisture. The wiry man wore tiny round glasses and was pale from exertion. They both looked to the woman to speak for them after Joe's greeting.

"I've never seen you around here before," she said in a clear voice, "but I'm glad you like our weather."

"I'd guess that when the shadows from the mountains come over, it'll drop twenty degrees."

"Maybe thirty," she said.

"Hope you can stay warm," he said, looking at the tents. They were lightweight hiking models. He glimpsed a crumpled sleeping bag through one of the openings. He saw no sign of firearms.

He walked within a few feet of her and to the side and tilted his hat back on his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets; another deliberate, nonthreatening gesture. He could see her relax, almost instinctively. She was not unattractive, he thought, despite her complete lack of makeup and unkempt long straight hair, not so much parted as shoved out of the way of her face. She had delicate features and sharp cheekbones. She wore a fleece pullover, faded jeans, and hiking boots.

"You must be the new guy," she said, looking him over. "Are you here to replace Will Jensen?"

"At least for a while," Joe said, and introduced himself. He reached out to shake her hand, which meant that she had to uncross her arms.

"My name is Pi Stevenson," she said, almost demurely.

"Pleased to meet you," Joe said, and introduced himself to the posthole diggers. The slim man was named Ray and the fat man Birdy.

After meeting Birdy, Joe turned and looked at the sign that was lying flat on the ground, nailed to two long posts.

"'Jackson Hole Meat Farm,'" he said aloud. Under the huge block letters was a smaller line that read ANIMAL LIBERATION NETWORK. Then he looked up at Pi. "What does that mean?"

The defiance he had seen earlier returned to her eyes. "That's what this refuge is, a meat farm. It's a place where you feed and fatten wild creatures so that humans can slaughter them and eat their flesh in the name of so-called sport."She spit out the last two words.

As if hearing an unspoken command from Pi, Ray and Birdy lifted the sign and dropped the posts into the holes in the ground. The sign was now visible from the highway. Joe looked up and saw an RV slow, then pull off to the shoulder so the driver could read it.

"This Animal Liberation Network," Joe asked, "is that your outfit?"

"It's all of us," Pi said, indicating Ray and Birdy as well. "We're just a small part of a much bigger movement."

"Can Ray and Birdy talk?" Joe asked innocently.

Pi flared a little. "Of course they can. But I'm our spokesperson."

"I bet you get lonely in Wyoming," Joe said.

"Yes," she said, emphatically. "This may be the most barbaric place there is. You can't even walk into a restaurant without being surrounded by the severed heads of beautiful animals."

"Then why are you here?" Joe asked.

She crossed her arms again. "Because the best place to make a statement about injustice is where the injustice is taking place, isn't it? Someone's got to be strong and brave."

Birdy interjected, "Pi's famous. She's the toughest, most compassionate person in the movement."

"I see that," Joe said.

"Thanks, Birdy," Pi said, rewarding him by sending him a sweet smile. Birdy flushed.

"So you're putting the sign here so that people coming into or out of Jackson will see it from the highway?" Joe asked, nodding at the line of cars that had now pulled to the shoulder to look at them. "To raise awareness of your issue?"

"That's correct," she said. "The two newspapers and the wire service guy interviewed me this afternoon, so we should get some play there."

"Hmmmm," Joe said, noncommittally.

"You're a flesh-eater, aren't you?" she asked Joe. "I bet you're convinced that humans are on one level of being and animals are beneath them. That animals are on this earth to serve us at our pleasure, to be our 'pets' when we want them to be and our food when we want to murder them and eat them."

Joe thought about it. "Yup, pretty much," he said. "I've heard it said that the definition of a Wyoming vegetarian is someone who eats meat only once a day."

He couldn't get her to warm up.

"You have so much to learn," she said. "But I don't hate you because you're ignorant. Have you ever heard the saying 'An insect is a cat is a dog is a boy'?"

"Nope," Joe said, a little disappointed that she hadn't even cracked a smile at his joke.

"It means we're all interconnected. We're alllife. There aren't degrees of life, there is only life. Eating beef or elk is the same as eating a child. There's no difference. It's all just meat."

Joe winced.

"Americans, on average, eat fifty-one pounds of chicken every year, fifteen pounds of turkey, sixty-three pounds of beef, forty-five pounds of pork," she said. She was getting into it, stepping toward Joe, gesturing with her hands in chopping motions. "Then there's lamb-lamb! — and veal. Out here these people eat even more red meat than that, like deer and the elk that will be fed and fattened at the place we're standing. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see all of those creatures every day, instead of murdering them for their flesh?" She talked as if she were quoting, Joe thought.

He didn't want to get into the debate, but he had a question. "Isn't it different for a man to hunt his own food than to buy it wrapped in cellophane in a grocery store? And what about these elk? Would it be better if they starved to death in the winter? There isn't enough natural habitat for them anymore. They'd die by the thousands if we didn't feed them."

Pi had obviously heard this argument many times before and didn't hesitate. "As for your first question, meat is meat. As I said, an insect is a cat is a dog is a boy. As for your second, we never should have gotten to this stage in the first place. If we weren't raising the elk for slaughter, and feeding them, we wouldn't have this problem."

Joe nodded. "But we dohave this problem. We can't solve it now by just saying we shouldn't have it, can we?"

"Touche," she said, smiling. "You have a point, if a weak one. But I've accomplished what I set out to do here."

"Which is?"

"To get you thinking."

Joe smiled back.

"So, are you going to arrest us?" she asked.

"Did Will arrest you?"

"Many times. Once he arrested me up on Rosie's Ridge, in the middle of an elk camp. I dressed up like an elk with these cute little fake antlers"-she raised her hands and wiggled her fingers over her head to simulate cute little antlers-"and walked around the hunters going, 'Who killed my beautiful wife? Who shot my son? Who shot my baby daughter in the guts?'"

"It was so cool," Birdy added. "She had those bastards up there howling."

Joe stifled a grin. The way she told the story was kind of funny. "Yup, I bet they were."

"I went a little too far with that one," Pi said. "It was too much too soon. The Wyoming legislature passed an anti-hunter harassment law after that, and Will was really angry with me. He said I wouldn't be accomplishing anything if I got myself shot, although I disagreed at the time. The movement needsa martyr. But I was too strident, I admit it. I even threatened Will, just so you know. I wrote letters to the editor about him, and put a picture of him on our website with a slash through it. I went a little overboard. He was just doing his job. So now we've scaled things back a bit. We need to work in incremental steps, to raise awareness."