Rancher Croom is a cattleman in an area so rural that he brews his own beer and makes his own boots. His story begins mid-action as he rides across the Wyoming plains, where he stops at the edge of a canyon, dismounts his horse, and then—after a pause, with a ferocious cry—leaps from the cliff.
Meanwhile, his wife, Mrs. Croom, is on the roof of their farmhouse, sawing her way into the attic, which she has been forbidden to enter for twelve years. With the saw and a hammer and chisel, she is able to cut a hole in the roof and look inside, where she discovers the corpses of women Rancher Croom has abducted and killed. Some of the bodies date to “years ago” and are aged and decayed, suggesting that Rancher Croom has been killing women for a long time, and it is also strongly implied that he has been using the corpses sexually. Proulx ends the story with a standalone sentence: “When you live a long way out you make your own fun.”
