Maybe talking would help. At least she might find out what was going on.

“So you’re my uncle. Is that right?” Win asked. All she could think of was that the blood of outlaws flowed in her veins. Her father a killer. Her uncle a thief. “And was Cl-Clovis Hunt my uncle, too?”

Sick, she realized that made her and Kevin first cousins. Was a marriage between first cousins even legal? Was it wise?

“Clovis is my brother, but Oliver isn’t blood kin to us.”

“Th-that’s why my father doesn’t have the same hazel eyes.”

“Yep, them brown eyes with the stripes of gold run strong in our family. Clovis had ’em, and me. Your pa, the youngest of us, is the son of one of my pa’s friends. When his friend died and our ma had died, Pa married his friend’s widow and took her boy, Oliver, in. I should’ve told him to run, risk starving and dying in the cold, but I wasn’t smart enough to spare him a new family.

“Oliver was the same as a brother to us. Clovis did his best to protect Oliver and me from Pa when he was sideways from the drink. Both of us looked up to Clovis.”

“Your accent is getting stronger as we ride. How did you and my father lose that Southern accent when Clovis had it so strong?”

“We were making a new life. We headed for Chicago, but Clovis met a woman and stayed behind. Oliver and me, we didn’t want anyone to know we’d spent time in that boys’ prison. And Oliver had plans to marry a fancy, rich woman. Not sure where he got that notion, but it was a good one. He said he’d never fetch one around if’n she knew he was a mountain boy. So we made ourselves into city toffs, invented an education and a background. While we were at it, we didn’t mention being brothers.”

“Is your name really Kingston or Hunt or Hawkins?”

“Clovis and I were named Hunt. We were half grown when our pa took Oliver in. Your pa’s real name is Jethro Pervis. We both chose new names, wanting to sound more like city folks.”

“And because there were records of you being in prison under your real names.”

Kingston grunted. “If I was going to name myself, by golly, I’d pick a royal name. I kept Randall and settled on Kingston. But Oliver’s name was Jethro.” With a shake of his head, Randall said, “Jethro Pervis. He was never gonna get a fine woman to marry him with that name. So he went about calling himself Oliver Hawkins.”