Any last words, Branick? Sheriff Tull's hand rested on his revolver. The hangman's hand rested on the lever, rope around his neck, chains on his wrists, a box under his boots, because no gallows in Montana was built for a man his size. Seven brides had climbed his mountain. Seven had run.
The whole town knew why, or thought they did. The eighth had left a note, crumpled in his chained fist, scorched at the edges, pulled from his burned house. I'm sorry. Like the others, Anel Branick looked down at it one last time and saw the line he'd missed. Except I am not like the others.
Look for me where we first stood together. The depot. His eyes snapped to the end of Main Street. White steam rising. The eastbound train ready to roll.
She hadn't run. Someone had taken her now, Tul said. The hangman's knuckles went white on the lever, and the devil of Copper Hollow threw his whole weight sideways. The ring hit the mud first, a thin gold band, cheap, bought in Helena with three months of wages and a prayer. It spun once in the wet ruts of the yard, caught the gray light and sank.
Just like that, gone. And the woman on the wagon was still screaming, "Turn around. Turn this wagon around." Her name was Singa Lindquist, 26 years old, Swedish, pale hair pinned under a blue bonnet she had clearly saved for this day. She had ridden two days up from the railroad to marry the man on the porch. An hour ago she had smiled at him, shy, hopeful, pink in the cheeks.
Now she would not look at him at all. Anel Branick stood on his own porch and did not move because moving made it worse. It always made it worse. 6 feet and 7 in of man. Shoulders like a barn beam.
Hands that could no, just hands, ordinary hands. He pressed them flat against his legs so nobody could say otherwise. Miss Lindquist. Lo, careful. The voice he used on spooked horses.
If something's frightened you, don't. I only want to. Don't you come near me. She was clutching something to her chest. A handkerchief.
A scrap of paper. He couldn't tell. Her knuckles were white around it. I wasn't going to, he said. Drive.
The driver drove. He did not need telling twice. The mules leaned into their collars, and the wagon lurched down the mountain road, and Singa Lindquist did not look back. Not once, not even at the bend. Her trunk still sat on the porch.
The driver had set it down before the screaming started. Anel looked at the trunk, then at the mud where the ring had gone. He did not dig for it because what was the point? By supper, all of Copper Hollow knew, the barber knew, the blacksmith knew, the ladies at the mercantile counter knew, and they told it behind their gloves in that low, delighted murmur that travels faster than any telegraph wire. Seven.
Seven brides in four years. Seven wagons up the mountain road. Seven wagons back down. Didn't even make it to supper this one. Well, can you blame her?
You've seen the size of him. It's not the size of him, Martha. It's the You know, I don't know. Yes, you do. And they would laugh and lower their voices and say it again.
The devil of Copper Hollow, not for anything he had done. He had never raised a hand to a living soul. Never raised his voice. But seven women had run from his porch like it was on fire. And a town needs a reason for a thing like that.
So the town made one. Something about him. Something unspeakable. Something no decent woman could bear. Anel heard all of it.
A small town keeps no secrets. Least of all from the man they are about. That night he dragged Sing's trunk up into the loft and pushed it into the dark corner. He did not open it because what would he find? Linens.
A Bible. a wedding dress, maybe. Somebody else's hope folded up neat. He couldn't look at that. Not again.
That was the autumn of 1886. He told himself it was the last time. It wasn't. One year later, the rain had been falling on the high country for 3 days straight. It turned the wagon ruts to soup.
It drummed on the tin roof of the Copper Hollow Depot like the whole sky wanted in. Anel stood under the narrow eave with his hat in his hands, water sheeting off the brim, oilskin coat soaked through at the shoulders. He should not be here. Except he was because Leand Ashcom had come up the mountain in August with a letter in his coat pocket and that patient banker's smile. One more, Anel.
Just one more. No, hear me out. A doctor's widow, Ohio, 41 years old, sensible, steady. Not some silly girl with her head full of novels. No, she writes a fine hand.
Says she wants quiet. Says she wants work. I read it twice, Anel. I think this one's different. Leland Ashcom always read the letters because Anel couldn't, never could.
The letters on a page swam and tangled like fish in a creek, and he had stopped trying when he was 14, the year his mother died. Leland read them for him. Wrote the answers, too. 25 years of kindness from the one man in Copper Hollow, who had never once called him a devil. So Anel had said yes.
God help him. He had said yes. And now he stood in the rain and thought about his mother. Small woman, fierce woman. She would pull him down by the collar when he was a boy already taller than grown men.
And she would look him dead in the eye. The Lord made you strong so you could be gentle where other men can't. A weak man has no choice but to be careful. A strong man has to choose it. He had chosen it every day, every single day.