This one giving you trouble, honey. You just say I've thrown bigger men than him out that door I own. Anel said, "You have never thrown me anywhere. On account of you, go peaceable, you great ox. Don't spoil my reputation in front of company." and she stumped back to her bar, but she glanced back once at the two of them and something in that walnut face went soft for half a second.
The coffee came. Odessa wrapped both hands around the tin cup and drank half of it in one go. Black, too hot, too fast. Then she set the cup down and looked at him. Mr. Branick, I'm going to make you an offer, and I'd be obliged if you let me finish before you answer.
All right, a room of my own with a door that locks done. Your word that you will never lay a hand on me, I don't invite. He did not even have to think. You have it. And I hang out my shingle.
I was trained by a doctor. My husband, my first husband. 11 years at his side. I set bones. I deliver babies.
I don't faint. And I don't charge people who can't pay. There's no doctor for 2 days ride. He said they'll come, will they? She tipped her head toward the room, toward the stairs.
to an Apache woman living on the Devil's Mountain. Anel opened his mouth, closed it. They'll come, he said again. Quiter, when it's bad enough, they'll come, she studied him. Turn that over the way a careful woman turns over a coin.
And in exchange, she said, we see over one honest winter. Whether two people the world threw away can make something worth keeping. And if we can't, then I leave in the spring. No hard feelings, no screaming, a beat, no rings in the mud. He went very still.
You heard about that? The woman from Bozeman, she said, very thorough. He looked down at his hands. Huge on the little table. Scarred, ugly.
I accept, he said. You haven't heard what I'm running from. Don't need to. You should. You'll tell me.
What makes you so sure? He looked up. Because you just told a whole room you pulled a man out from under a wagon with mud on your face in front of God and Ione Mulgrew. You don't strike me as a woman who hides things for long. For a moment, Odessa Hail did not have a single word to say.
Then she picked up her coffee again. "Drink your coffee, Mr. Branick," she said. "It's getting cold." The house on the ridge was the finest thing he owned and the loneliest thing he had ever built. High ceilings so he never had to stoop. wide doors so he never had to turn sideways.
A hearth big enough to roast a whole hog. Everything scrubbed clean because a man alone with his hands has to give those hands something to do. He showed her the kitchen, the parlor he never used, the springhouse, the barn, and then the last door at the end of the hall. This one's yours. He had fixed it up that morning before dawn.
A fresh quilt aired and beaten. A picture of water, a clean cloth, a little glass jar full of the last purple aers of the season because he had seen them by the creek and thought he didn't know what he'd thought. Something foolish. A giant fussing over a flower jar like a boy before a dance. She stood in the doorway and looked at all of it.
He braced again. It's lovely, she said, and she meant it. He could hear that she meant it. Then she saw the door. The inside of the door where a brand new iron bolt gleamed against the old wood thick as his thumb.
You put that on, she said this morning. Why? He couldn't look at her. He looked at the floorboards. Because I can tell you you're safe here.
Anybody can say that. Words are cheap. He swallowed. That bolt isn't. You lock it and nobody on this earth gets through that door.
Not the town. Not anybody. A breath. Not me. silence long enough that he finally had to look up.
There was something in her eyes, something bright and startled like he had handed her a thing she had been told her whole life she would never have. "Thank you, Anel," she said. "His name, his Christian name, soft. He carried the sound of it around in his chest for the rest of the night like a warm coal. He slept in the barn, told her the mayor was near her time.
It was half true. The other half was that he did not trust himself to be small enough, quiet enough, gentle enough. So he lay in the straw and listened to the rain, and did not sleep at all. The Lund cart came up the mountain at a dead run. The next morning, Mrs. Lund was driving, white as milk, and in the back, wrapped in a horse blanket, was her boy, Abel, 12 years old, freckles, missing a front tooth, and a foot that had turned the color of a thunderhead.
Pitchfork, Mrs. L gasped. 2 days ago went clean through. I thought it would heal. I thought and now there's red going up his leg. And the doctor in Bozeman is 2 days off.
And they said they said there was a woman. She looked at Odessa. Then up at Anel, fear and desperation and fighting in her face. Desperation one. Please, she said.
Odessa was already rolling up her sleeves. Kitchen table, she said. Now, Anel, boil every pot of water you have. Then come back. I'm going to need you to hold him.
Hold him. He's going to fight. He's 12. He's going to fight like he's 20. She was right.
Because when the knife went in, Abel Lund screamed like a soul in torment and bucked so hard the table jumped. His mother sobbed in the corner with both hands over her mouth and Anel held him. One huge hand across the boy's chest, one around his knee. Not hard, never hard. Just there like a mountain is there.