“Why?”

“Oh, it’s a long story,” Brenda said. “Dallas did something he shouldn’t have done. I had to figure out a way to keep him out of it. See, I’m the only one who does any thinking around here.”

“I believe it,” Liv said. “So why was injuring Dallas a good thing for him?”

“Wasn’t just him. It was for the whole family. I look after my whole family and keep ’em on the right path. I don’t let anyone get in our way. Anyone. I saw when they sent Timber away to Rawlins what happens when I don’t stay on top of ’em. Timber’s my middle son. He’s the wildest of them all and he got out of prison this morning.”

There was a pause. Brenda pulled the brush through and Liv mewed. It was a false emotion, but to Brenda it sounded genuine.

“You like that, huh?” she asked softly.

“I do,” Liv said. Then: “It’s too bad you didn’t have daughters.”

“Yeah,” Brenda said wistfully. “Boys is all I know. It was the same growing up. I had two brothers and I was the only girl. I don’t even know how to talk to other women—they always seem too soft and emotional to me. Most women, it seems to me, should get the crap kicked out of them by a couple of brothers like I did to toughen ’em up.”

Liv lied and said, “My brother did the same thing to me growing up.” In fact, she had no brothers.

Brenda said, “My dad bounced around between being a miner and a logger in the Ozarks. That’s where my people are from: Jasper County, Missouri. A lot of the time he didn’t work at all. But I was the apple of his eye.”

“I thought I heard a little of the South in your accent,” Liv said.

“Yeah, and I’ve never been back. I left when I was sixteen. I came to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park with my uncle Harold. I’m still surprised my folks let him bring me out here, but they did. Uncle Harold raped me a few times and left me in one of those cabins they’ve got in the park. That’s where I met Eldon. He was driving through Yellowstone to go hunting on the other side. He picked me up on the road. We caught up with Uncle Harold in Cody, and Eldon beat him half to death with a rifle butt near Heart Mountain. We’ve been together ever since.”

Brenda’s tone was calm. Liv swallowed hard.

“But back to my dad. When he was home, we’d listen to records together.”

“Is that where you heard Kitty Wells?”

“Oh, that,” Brenda laughed. “I must have been a sight back then, singing that song about cheating when I was just a little girl.”

Liv hummed the tune, and to her surprise Brenda joined in.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Bull said from above.

Liv faked a laugh. “My mom used to sing it around the house.”

“Did you have a daddy?” Brenda asked. She sounded curious.

“He worked on shrimping boats,” Liv said. “He died when I was five.”

“Mmmmm.”

“I don’t remember much about him.”

“Better that,” Brenda said, her voice hardening, “than him showing up whenever he felt like it. My brothers were animals, and they needed a man around to set them straight. He wasn’t there when he should have been. He was mean when he got drunk and he knocked Mama around. Then he’d feel bad about it, but instead of making it up to everyone, he’d take off again.

“I swore back then that if I found a man, I’d make him stay close to me and his kids. I thought I could tame Eldon of his wild hairs, but over the years I’ve learned how to handle him instead. I’m close with my boys, and Eldon is . . . there. I wish he’d take more interest in them, but he’s not much for ambition in any department except hunting and fishing. So I wore him down, which is the next best thing to having a good man in the first place. He doesn’t even know how to think for himself anymore, which is a good thing, because I do it for him and I do it better. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s the best for the family.”

Liv thought: She’s proud of her boys?

And she realized right then that Brenda was even crazier than she’d realized.

—

“MEN ARE SUCH SIMPLE CREATURES,” Brenda said, keeping her voice down so that Bull couldn’t overhear. “You and me, we have a thousand things going on in our minds at all times. It gets noisy in there. But men are different. They can’t hold more than one thought in their brain at a time. It’s ‘I’m hungry,’ or ‘I’m horny,’ or ‘I need to fix the transmission or this truck won’t run.’ If they could ever get inside our brains, the hullabaloo going on would probably kill ’em in a few minutes. And if we could ever get inside theirs, I suspect we’d get bored real fast with all the peace and quiet.

“But you probably know that, because you’re pretty and they fall all over themselves to get next to you. But when you’re plain and you look like me and don’t know fashion from cow plop, you learn to appeal to other base instincts, like food.

“If you look like me, you learn to cook. You find out what they like and you give it to ’em—and plenty of it. If you do that, they’ll do anything you want. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken-fried steaks, pot roast—whatever. Waffles and fried chicken will be enough to convince them to go into a barn and gun down Nate Romanowski. It’s simple, girl. Do you cook?”

“A little.”

“Of course, you have other ways, don’t you?”

“Like what?” Liv asked.

Brenda bent closer. “Like luring Bull down here.”

“He did that himself.”

“Sure he did.”

—

“SO WHY DID BULL and Eldon beat up Dallas?” Liv asked. “I don’t understand.”

The question was met with silence. When Brenda spoke, her tone was flat.

“He had to look like a bull tore him up. He couldn’t just fake it.”

“But why?”

“I told you,” Brenda said with annoyance. “Dallas could have gotten in trouble. This way, he got hurt a little, but he didn’t get arrested or nothing. He’s still with us and he’s just about recovered.”

Liv asked, “Why did Eldon and Bull ambush Nate? Did they have something against him?”

“Not at all,” Brenda said. “In fact, I think they kind of liked him.”

“Then why did they do it?”

Brenda scoffed. She said, “Anyone around this county knows that when the game warden gets in a situation, Nate Romanowski shows up to help him out. No one wants Nate around on the other side. That guy is crazy.”

“I’m not following you,” Liv confessed.

“I told you. Dallas did something stupid. It involved the game warden’s daughter. We were able to handle the game warden—he’s by the book and not that bright. He even came out here and saw Dallas, and he seen for himself that the boy was injured after all.”

Liv recalled the item she’d read in the Casper newspaper about Joe’s middle daughter being found beaten on the side of a road. Liv’s stomach suddenly turned, but she tried hard not to show any reaction.

Brenda continued. “But Joe Pickett doesn’t let things go. I’ve watched him over the years and I know that about him. If he told his buddy Nate that he suspected Dallas, even though he couldn’t prove it, well, Nate may come a-calling. I didn’t want Nate after my boy. So we put the word out there and lured you up and took him out before he could get together with his friend Joe Pickett and hear the story. It was a precautionary thing. We bought ourselves insurance, is all. Any mother would do the same thing for their boy if they thought they had to do it to keep him alive.”

“So it was all a preliminary strike,” Liv said. “You killed Nate just in case.”

“Pretty much,” Brenda said. “And it wasn’t easy. I had to look my husband and son in the eye and say, ‘Get in that barn and get ready. He’s just a man. There’s nothing special about him.’ Finally, they went in there and got set up. I wasn’t sure they’d go through with it until I heard the shots.”

Liv boiled inside, but she tried not to show it.

“I didn’t know you’d be with him,” Brenda said. “You were sort of a kink in my plans.”