The bruises go all the way around the neck in an even band. There are no thumb prints. There are no finger marks. Hands don't leave an even band. A rope does.
A rope wrapped in a leather glove. I said, sit down. Whoever killed Jubilum used a rope. Not hands. Look at the body.
Anybody can look. I'm begging you. Just look. The room was silent. Judge Kemp leaned forward, peered at her over his spectacles.
Up, down, and you are. Odessa Branick, his wife. His wife. The judge's mouth curled. The Apache woman.
The one wanted in Ohio for murder. A ripple through the room. Somebody laughed. That has nothing to do with madam. The court does not take medical opinions from an accused murderous, least of all an Apache one.
He banged his gavel. Sit down or be removed. Odessa did not sit down. Two deputies took her by the arms. She did not fight them.
She did not scream. She let them walk her to the door. But at the door, she turned and she looked at the jury, all 12 of them, one at a time, right in the eye. You know him, she said. Every one of you knows him.
Four years he's lived above you on that mountain and never once hurt a living soul. You know that. You know it. Then they pulled her out into the snow. The jury took 20 minutes.
Guilty. Judge Kemp did not even look up from his papers. Anel Branick. You are sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead. Sentenced to be carried out Saturday morning at dawn.
Saturday. 3 days. An appeal to Helena took two weeks. Leland Ashcom sat in the second row and folded his hands and lowered his head like a man in grief. But Anel saw his eyes.
Leland came to the jail that night alone, lantern in hand. Fur collar turned up against the cold. He set the lantern on the floor outside the bars and looked in at Anel sitting in the straw. I'm sorry, Anel. No, you're not.
A pause. I tried to help. You know I tried. I read the deed. Leland.
Silence. The lantern flame wavered. I read the letter too. Anel said hers the first one. She told you everything.
You skipped it. Leland Ashcom did not move, did not blink. And I saw your S's. Anel said the way they hook at the bottom like a fish hook. Same on every letter you ever wrote me.
Same on every note you ever left a bride. For a long moment, the banker just stood there in his fur collar. Then he smiled. Not his warm smile, not his friendly smile. A small, thin, tired smile like a man taking off a heavy coat.
he has worn for 25 years. You learned to read," he said softly. "Well, well, well, that's a shame." "Why?" "Because a man like you, Anel, was so much easier to love when he couldn't." He picked up his lantern. "Saturday," he said. "Dawn, I'll be there.
Front row, Leland." He paused. "Did you kill her?" "My mother." Leland Ashcom looked at him for a long time. "Your mother died of fever, son." He said, "Everybody knows that." and he walked out into the dark and took the light with him. Midnight, a scratch at the window. Anel looked up, snow drifting in and a face, small freckled, missing a front tooth.
Mr. Branick, Abel, what in God's name? It's 10 below. Go home. I can't. I have to tell you, Mr. Ostrander.
Anel went still. Ebstander. Jubel's man. He's gone. He rode out the night Mr. Varnum died.
Middle of the night, I saw him. I was up with my foot. It hurts at night and I looked out and there he was riding hard up the old pass toward the silver queen. The silver queen. The old mine abandoned 20 years 4 miles up the pass.
Nobody else saw. I told Sheriff Tull. The boy's voice cracked. He told me to shut my mouth. He said if I told anybody else, he'd break my other foot.
Anel's hands closed on his knees. Tull. Why would Tull care where Ostrander went? Unless Unless Ostrander saw something. Unless Ostrander knew something, Abel, he said, "Go home right now.
Don't tell anybody you came here. Not your mother. Nobody. What are you going to do?" Anel stood up as far as he could, hunched under the low ceiling. Hands on the iron bars.
"Something stupid," he said. The bars were bolted into pine. Old pine, dry pine, 20 years old. Anel wrapped both hands around the two center bars, set his feet, breathed in, and pulled. The wood groaned.
Something inside him groaned too. His shoulders, his spine, every scar on his back. He pulled until the cords in his neck stood out like ropes and black spots swam in front of his eyes. Come on. Come on.
You lifted a wagon. You lifted a whole wagon. This is just wood. Just old wood. Just a crack like a rifle shot.
The top bolt tore free. Splinters exploding. Then the bottom. and the whole center section of bars came away in his hands like a gate off its hinges. He stood there holding 40 lb of iron, breathing like a bellows.
Then he set it down gently leaned it against the wall because his mother raised him right. And then he was gone out into the snow out into the dark up the mountain, a condemned man, an escaped prisoner. Every man in Montana territory now had a legal right to shoot him on site. He did not stop to think about that because if he stopped to think he would stop. The pass was a white hell.
Wind screaming down off the peaks. Snow to his thighs, then his waist. He had no horse, no gun, no coat, just a stolen blanket from the livery and the boots on his feet. Four miles. It took him 5 hours.