And they still called him a devil. Fine. Fine. He had a plan. He would be kind.
He would be honest. He would let her get one good look at him. And when the fear came into her eyes, because it always came, he would pay her fair home out of his own pocket. Tip his hat, ride back up the mountain. He was good at it now, losing.
He had practiced seven times. The whistle shrieked. Iron on iron. A great white breath of steam rolling down the platform. and his heart did the stupid thing.
That lurch, that hopeful idiot lurch, like a cult that never learns the fence is wired. Stop it, he told himself. Stop it. Stop it. Stop.
Stop. The passengers came down in a trickle. A whiskey drummer in a checkered vest. Two ranch hands. An old woman met by her son.
The platform emptied around him, and the depot man watched from the ticket window with that look, that pity. Anel could not stand that look. And then she stepped down. She was small. That was the first thing.
The top of her plain black bonnet would not have reached his collarbone. She carried a worn carpet bag in one hand and a wooden case with a brass clasp in the other. And she held them both close like a woman who had learned not to set things down where they could be taken. Her hair under the bonnet was black, braided and pinned, threaded with silver at the temples. Her skin was a deep warm brown, and her face was all strong lines, high cheekbones, a straight, stubborn mouth, fine creases at the corners of her eyes, the kind that only come from a life that is asked a great deal.
Behind him, the depot man let out a low whistle. Well, I'll be. That's an Apache woman. A lady on the bench gasped. Somebody laughed.
Somebody else said a word Anel would not repeat. And Anel thought very clearly. Leland never said. Leland read the letter twice and he never said why didn't he? It doesn't matter.
Why didn't he say it doesn't matter? It doesn't. Stop it. She looked at the town. She looked down the platform and then she looked at him.
Anel braced. He knew this moment. Knew it the way a man knows the weight of his own axe. First the eyes go wide. Then the chin pulls back.
Then the whole body does that small helpless flinch. He waited for it. He already had the gentle words ready. She did not flinch. She looked up at him up and up.
All 6'7 of rain soaked mountain. And something crossed her face that he could not name because he had never once seen it aimed at him. Not fear, relief, she crossed the slick boards toward him. Steady on her feet, stopped a respectful pace away, and set down her bag. You'd be Mr. Branick.
Not a question, I would. You're tall. Yes, ma'am. Good. She glanced up at the eave.
because the roof of this depot leaks everywhere except where you're standing. Move over. He moved over. She stepped in beside him out of the rain and shook the water from her sleeves like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Like he was the most ordinary thing in the world.
Odessa hail, she said, and she put out her hand, a small hand, chapped at the knuckles, steady as a fence post. Anel looked at that hand like a starving man looks at bread. Bread he knows will be snatched away. Then slowly, the way you would close your fingers around a bird, he took it. His hand swallowed hersole.
She did not pull back. "Mrs. Hail," he said, and his voice came out rough. "I expect you've heard some things about me. I have three times. A drummer, a preacher's wife, and a woman from Bozeman who felt it was her Christian duty to tell me about you between Livingston and here.
All four hours of it." Then you know I know what they say. That's the same thing. No, Mr. Branick. She looked over at the bench where the ladies were still staring at her. Not at him.
At her. It is never the same thing. He followed her gaze, saw the whispers, saw the pointing. They're looking at you now, he said. Not just me, I noticed.
I'm sorry. Don't be the smallest dry smile. It's nice to share. And Anel Branick, the biggest, loneliest man in Montana territory, did something he had not done in a very long time. He laughed, rusty, startled, like water coming up a pump that hadn't been worked in a season.
She looked pleased with herself, just a little. He picked up her carpet bag before she could argue. She let him. The road up the mountain was a river of mud. The wagon slid.
The mules complained. Rain hammered the canvas. She did not complain, not once. He kept stealing looks at her, and she kept catching him, and neither of them said anything about it, which was somehow worse. Say something he told himself.
Say something normal. Ask about the weather. No, not the weather. It's raining. She knows it's raining.
Ask about Ohio. Ask about You can ask, she said without turning her head. Ask what? Whatever it is you're chewing on. You've been chewing on it for 2 miles.
I wasn't. You were. I was thinking about the mules. The mules? Yes, ma'am.
What about them? He had nothing. Nothing at all. There wet, he said. She turned and looked at him.
A long slow look in her mouth twitched. "Mr. Branick, I think you may be the worst liar I have ever met." "Is that bad?" "No," she said, and looked back at the road. "It's the best news I've had in 2 years." Then they rounded the switchback and the mountain fell down. Not all of it, just enough. A great slick tongue of mud and stone had come loose from the slope above and poured across the road.