Should the said Anel Branick die unmarried and without issue, or be convicted of a felony in any court of this territory, all titled to the said land shall pass to the Ashcom bank of Copper Hollow. The match went out. Darkness. Anel stood in the dark of Leland Ashcom's office and felt the floor tilt under his feet. Die unmarried seven brides.
Seven brides run off the mountain because a married man had a wife and a wife could inherit and a wife could fight. So Leland made sure he never had one. He lit a fourth match with shaking fingers. Looked at the desk. There was a map spread across it.
A big one. He knew the shape of it at once. His mountain, his ridge, his pass, and a thick red line drawn straight through it. Railroad. A railroad line cutting through the only pass in 50 mi.
From Copper Hollow over the ridge to the new copper strikes on the far side of the range and across his land in neat little letters he could just make out two words. Branick tracked and under them one word more pending. It wasn't Odessa. It had never been about Odessa. It was him.
It had always been him. He stood there in the dark of the bank for a long time. Then he folded the map and put it back exactly as he found it. Left the deed in the drawer. left everything exactly as it was.
Because the moment Ashcom knew the deed had been found, the plan would accelerate. He needed someone outside Copper Hollow to know first. When he got back to the house, Odessa was at the kitchen table, candle lit, paper out, pen in hand, like she had been waiting for him, like she already knew. There's a chief justice in Helena, she said. Not Kemp, a real one.
I looked him up in the territorial register last week when I started to understand what Ashcom was. She did not look up from the paper. Tell me everything you found. Every word, I'll write it down. He sat across from her and he told her the deed, the claws, the railroad map, the red line, the word pending.
She wrote for a long time, careful, precise, the same hand that set bones and stitched wounds, making sure every word landed exactly where it was supposed to. I'll give it to the conductor on the morning train, she said. Before Ashcom opens the post office. The chief justice won't get there in time. No, she agreed.
But he'll get there. And when he does, Ashcom will have nowhere to go. She blew on the ink to dry it, folded the letter, wrote the address in her steady hand. It won't save us from what's coming next week, Anel said. No, but it might save us from what comes after.
He looked at her at the candle, at the letter on the table. We have to act like we don't know, he said. I know. We have to let him think he's still winning. I know that, too.
She looked up at him and in her eyes was the same steady calculation that had looked at a man dying on ice and decided in two breaths to run anyway. We have to buy time, she said. However we can, he nodded and they blew out the candle and went to bed like people who did not know anything at all. He came up the mountain at dawn with snow in his beard and fire in his eyes. She was on the porch waiting.
She hadn't slept either. He told her everything. Standing in the yard in the snow, the deed, the claws, the map, the red line. She listened, did not interrupt once. When he was done, she was quiet for a long time.
So, as long as you're alone, she said slowly. He wins. Yes. And if you hang, he wins. Yes.
And Jubel and me and the bond and the letters. She shook her head. He brought me here to get you in trouble. to make you do something stupid, something violent, something like strangling Jubel Varnum in my own barn, which you didn't do, which I almost did. Almost isn't a felony, Anel." He looked at her, standing on his porch in the cold morning, silver in her black hair, a bruise still purple on her lip, not afraid, not even a little, and he knew, not in a flash, not like lightning.
It was slower than that. It was like the sun coming up over the ridge. It had been coming for weeks, months. He just hadn't turned around to look. He walked to the bottom of the porch steps and got down on one knee in the snow in the mud underneath it, right there in his own yard, which at 6'7 put his face almost level with her.
She stared down at him. Anel, what are you doing? Proposing because of the deed? Partly, partly. Mostly not.
Mostly not. Will you stop repeating everything I say? I'm trying to do this right. Her mouth twitched. "Go on then," he took both her hands.
"Small, chapped, steady. I've got nothing anybody wants," he said. "Except this land, apparently. I'm too big. I can't read.
I sing so bad. My cows have filed complaints. And I've been alone so long, I don't know how a person's supposed to be," he swallowed. "But every day since you stepped off that train has been the first good day of my whole life. Every single one.
and I'd spend every day I've got left making sure you never have to stand still on a riverbank again. Not for anybody, her eyes filled. So marry me, he said. Not for the deed, not for the bond, not to beat Leland. Marry me because I love you.
Past all sense. And I think God help me. I think you might love me too. She did not answer right away. She looked down at him at the giant on his knees in the mud.