“My God,” Beidler said. “If the Union Army gets those, we’ll win the War.”
“An illegal war.” Fitch had been listening, his eyebrows closed together over the bridge of his nose. “The Federals had no right to invade the South.”
Dan shot back, “Secession is illegal and slavery is immoral.”
Fitch gripped a whiskey bottle. “The hell with this. After we get my boy’s killers, I’ll show you who has the right of it. But first, let’s go get them.” He raised it to his lips, used his stump to steady it at the bottom.
“Go where? Get whom?” Dan asked.
Fitch pointed at Dan. “Where’s your apron?”
Dan knew he meant the Masonic apron. “I don’t have one. I’m not a Mason.”
“Then you’re not coming with us. I won’t have a man I don’t trust.”
What? All this time, Dan had thought men held him at arm’s length because of Gallagher and McDowell, and it was not being a Mason? He had surveyed Fitch’s claim, and the survey had held up in the Virginia miners court. Damn it, Fitch knew him, but would not trust him even now? Afraid to touch the Spencer’s stock, for fear he’d shoot Fitch, he thrust his hands into his pockets, balled them into fists. “God damn it, Nick was a friend of mine, too. I want his killers as much as you do.”
The sharp tang of whiskey reminded Dan of deer hunts, fresh killed meat roasting over camp fires in the dark, men laughing as they relived the stalking, played down the mistakes that spoiled their aim, the buck fever they had overcome, the relief that they were known to be men. Bragged about the good shot, the one that brought down the big buck. God, how he missed that.
A stocky man who had stood by Fitch throughout the burial now spoke. “He’s right, Tobias. We’ll get the murdering bastards and hang them fair and square, but we gotta be sure. That’s all this man is saying.” He nodded to Dan.
“He ain’t coming.” Muscles bulged at Fitch’s jaws. “He wouldn’t move a damn boundary line for me, so how can I trust him?”
“That’s exactly why you can trust me,” Dan said. “I’ve never falsified a survey in my life. I won’t do it for you or any man. And I won’t be party to a lynching.”
“He’s got a point,” the stocky man said. “Listen – ”
“This man you do not know.” Jacob’s voice sliced through their anger. Thin, stooped as if to avoid notice, his sparse beard almost comical, he stood, chin up, confronting Fitch. Nothing comical about Jacob, now.
Looking down at him, Fitch’s jaw muscles relaxed. “Well, Jake?”
Jacob spread his hands, palms up, a mute advance apology for his English. Every ‘th’ was an S. “I come to this country, and nothing do I have. Not a thing. Maybe a few dollars, and some clothes. This man – ” he bent his head toward Dan – “this man, he see me, we talk, he offer me job, show me how to be chain man, share his cabin.” He paused, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “In the Old Country is pogrom. The Cossacks our rabbi lynch. Our houses they burn. Barns. There, a gentile gives not even a crust of bread to a Jew. Dan Stark says, we are not Cossacks.”
Standing quietly, holding his ground while Fitch tried to stare him down, and a gust threatened his hat, Jacob Himmelfarb would not be moved.
The stocky man said, “He’s right. We’re not Cossacks.”
Dan studied the splash of tobacco juice on the toe of his boot. He could think of nothing to say, nothing that would relieve his embarrassment or the tension as they waited for Fitch to react. A hump of snow lay a couple of inches away, and he scuffed the drying yellow-brown mess in it. He felt like a schoolboy waiting to be chosen for a game.
“No.” Fitch relaxed his bunched shoulders. “We’re not. That wouldn’t be Nick’s way, either.” Taking a long swallow of the whiskey, he passed it to Dan, who drank, grateful for the warmth spreading in his gullet. Along the road, candles and lanterns were being lighted in the cabins and stores and saloons. “We went looking for Nick a couple of days after he was due, starting at Long John Frank’s place because that’s where Nick pastured the mules. Long John told us that Nick collected them and started back, and he never saw him after that.” He paused, and Dan heard a dry swallow or two before he said in a shakier voice, “Then comes Palmer to say he found Nick’s – uh, Nick less than a quarter mile from Long John’s wickiup. I say we start there and ask some questions.”
“For my part,” said one of the other men, “I think better when I’m warm.”
“Right,” said Fitch. “We need a battle plan.”
“We’re not going into battle,” Dan protested. “We’re just going to ask some questions.”
Fitch’s long slow stare, one eyebrow raised, spoke plainer than words: Greenhorn, but he only said, “You never know, Blue. You never know.”
As they made their way down the rutted track past miners coming out of the diggings, and lamplight shining from a few windows, the stocky man fell in beside Dan. “Name’s Jim Williams. I have a ranch down on the Stinking Water. Fitch gets the mules from me for his freighting business.”
“Glad to know you.” Dan was not much interested. He watched his footing, busy with the problem of identifying the killer. “Dan Stark.” He didn’t hear Williams’s next comment, but stopped in his tracks so that Williams and Jacob walked a pace or two ahead. He laughed out loud at himself. He was an idiot. This thing was so simple, he should have thought of it at once. “I think I know how to make sure we get the right man. We look for the alibi.”
“How is that important?” Fitch asked.
“The only one who knows for certain when Nick was killed is his killer. If he tries to prove he was somewhere else at a certain time, or on a particular day, we have him.”
“By God, you’re right. But what time? What day?”
“Any time from when Long John Frank says he left until you expected him back.”
“Frank said he left midafternoon on the sixth, and I expected him back by nightfall on the seventh.”
“All right,” Dan paused to flick a match head with his thumbnail; shielding the flame against the wind, he lighted a stub of candle. “It takes what? six hours to ride from Wisconsin Creek to Summit? So he’d stay over somewhere and start back in the morning?” They were all nodding as he groped along the path of his reasoning.
“He didn’t.” Fitch’s stump reached toward his hat. “We asked at Dempsey’s, and Laurin’s, and Daley’s. They never saw him on the return trip.”
The moon was veiled in thin clouds. These calculations were not so different from the routine trigonometry he did every day on surveys, except simpler, more arithmetical. “From what I know now, it seems that Nick was murdered not long after he left Frank’s ranch. We’ll need to know if Frank moved his camp during the last two weeks, but I think Nick died before sundown on the sixth.”
* * *
Sitting Indian fashion in the wagon bed, Martha wished she’d walked. The rear axle twisted and plunged like a bucking horse, while the front one screamed like hogs at slaughter. The wagon itself complaining. A wheel bounced on a rock, another dropped into a hole, and Martha’s hip was one great bruise. Miz Hudson’s pursed lips told a world of hurt as she tried to hold her hat and the sideboards, but the colored gal rode standing up like dancing. Martha would have stood, too, but the child needed the comfort of her mother’s arm. When they were to home, Martha would give the child another swallow of the tincture of wormwood in a sweet syrup.
They jolted down into Virginia City, noise rising up like to drown them. The distant thunder of black powder rumbled, thank the Lord not close, a thousand picks gnawed into the creek, a thousand shovels dropped streaming dirt and rock into contraptions for washing away dirt and catching the gold. Cradles, rockers, sluice boxes. Warped wood against wood shrieked.
Timmy would be working the claim, too scared of his Pap to leave for his friend’s burying. Supposedly he helped his Pap, but like as not McDowell went off and left Timmy to gouge out the gold by himself, braced against the curren
t while ice daily grew out a little farther from the banks. Not that the boy minded work. He’d worked hard back home. Nobody liked killing hogs or wringing chickens’ necks for dinner or slaughtering a yearling calf, but dying so the rest could live was the way of things. In return, farming meant cows giving milk thick with cream, fat bacon and ham curing in the smoke house, hay filling the barn to the rafters, and sunlight slanting through leaves. No, it wasn’t the hard work he minded. It was the lonesomeness. With his Pap there, it might have been joy. Without him, it was misery to drive his shovel into the creek, his feet numb, his blistered hands aching from the cold. Young’uns worked hard like that everywhere, but it didn’t make it right.
They said Alder Gulch was a beautiful place before gold. A sweet-running stream with alder trees giving sun-dappled shade along the banks. Then Bill Fairweather found gold, and the stampede followed them, and someone’s campfire got out of control. Now men hunted gold amid blackened stumps of burnt alder trees. An ugly place. What folks would do to get gold. Kill a creek, kill each other. Kill a boy. And for what? Gold. Gold the only crop.
Mr. Palmer left them where the main road turned left, uphill, and became Wallace Street. She and Miz Hudson called out thanks, and Mr. Palmer waggled a hand over his shoulder. Miz Hudson rubbed her left elbow. “I declare, from now on it’s shanks mare – .”
A pistol shot popped. The bullet, where was it? Men yelled. Martha snatched Dotty behind herself, shielded her. Across the street, men in front of Fancy Annie’s saloon whooped and hollered at three horses galloping away, past the garbage dump, out into the sagebrush. A race.
Drat these men! Shooting on Wallace Street with folks about, and children maybe getting hurt. Martha shook like her bones would part. The fringes on Miz Hudson’s shawl quivered, and she clung to Tabby, who held her round the shoulders. The colored gal looked ready to kill someone with that knife – how’d she come by it? Martha didn’t know as she’d blame her none.
“Mam! Let me go!” Dotty squirmed out of Martha’s grasp.
“The blamed fools!” Martha said, “Someone could’ve got hurt.” She’d give someone a piece of her mind, she would, tell him just what she thought of him. The very idea –
“Mam, you all right?” It was Timmy, running to her, stumbling a bit, and as she assured him that they were fine, just shook up was all, Martha began to cry, the first time she had wept since they brought Nick in. She didn’t cry because she was sad, she was seeing pictures behind her eyelids, pictures that came and went: the farmhouse back home, her own Mam waving goodbye from the porch, Nick laughing, Dotty’s sad little face, Tim’s chapped hands. The boy had a comforting sturdiness as she leaned against him, her son growing up. The pictures changed about, melded together, not into another picture, but into a feeling, a knowing. Her life was wrong. All wrong, and she had to put it right.
She was drying her eyes, assured the young’uns that she was fine, the storm had blowed over, when Sam McDowell, her own husband, all six feet something, wearing a Confederate artillery man’s double-breasted coat, stepped away from the group in front of Fancy Annie’s saloon and walked their way. Jack Gallagher raised his hat to her, and Martha gave him part of a nod. With his long grace Sam quick-stepped around a dog that squatted in front of him, dodged a mule that snaked its head out to bite. Time was, seeing him unexpected like this would have made her damp. No more. With him so changed by the War, his face creased and his eyes holding recollections of battle that woke him, shouting, in a sweat. He was not the man she’d married. She’d prayed so hard they could be a family again like before.
He eyed her down a long-necked bottle he lifted for a swig. “You all right?”
“No thanks to you-all. What do you mean, firing off a pistol that way? ” She shouted, wanting to embarrass him in front of his friends, to make him look past the bottle and see them, see her, see the young’uns, especially the young’uns. Tim, most of all.
“We was just starting a horse race.” He took another drink, swayed a little.
If she’d had a gun, a knife, she might have used it, she wanted to pierce his skin so he’d be reminded of them, if she pricked him he’d have to see her. Or scorch him. She felt like a great balloon filled with flames and she wished she could open her mouth and let out fire, let it pour over him.
“I’ll need dust,” he said.
“Tell Gallagher to pay his board bill, then. I got just enough to buy supplies.” Martha made her hands stay where they were, not touch the poke that lay nestled against her side just above the waistband of her skirt. “Why weren’t you at Nick’s burying?”
“Yeah, I heard they’d found him. I thought he’d just gone south with the mules and gold.”
“He wouldn’t do that!” Tim’s hands doubled into fists. It wouldn’t take much for him to throw a punch at his Pap. Martha prayed he wouldn’t. It would be years before he could match Sam McDowell’s height and weight.
Miz Hudson said, “Nick Tbalt was as decent a lad as God ever touched.”
Late enough, Sam nodded to Miz Hudson, touched his hat brim.
Her lips shut tight against him.
“You should have come to his burying,” Martha said.
“If I’d went, it wouldn’t do him no good. He’d still be dead, wouldn’t he?”
Miz Hudson gasped. “Have thee no decency?”
Sam sparked like flint on steel. “Ma’am, I got my fill of the dead on the battlefield. There was too many to bury so we piled them up and burned them. I’ll never get that stink out of my nose.” He said to Martha, “I got to get back. I’m taking bets.” He held out his hand to Tim. “Give it to me.”
“Pap, I need boots.” Timmy thrust both hands into his jacket pockets.
“What do you need boots for? They won’t keep the water out. Give it to me.” He waggled his fingers. “Now.”
The boy pulled a deerskin pouch out of his pocket, and set it on McDowell’s palm. Walking away, McDowell called over his shoulder, “Boy, you better have more for me tomorrow.”
Tim opened his mouth to yell something after his Pap, but Martha drove an elbow into his ribs. “You’ll do no good.” Wrong, all wrong, but there weren’t no way to fix it that she could see.
* * *
Warming themselves in Lott Brothers’ store, the main commercial enterprise of Nevada City, it did not take long for Nick’s friends to organize. Some, who had horses readily at hand, would ride with Jim Williams to his ranch on the Stinking Water and get mounts for those who did not keep a horse in town. Williams ran a livery, but he offered horses and tack at no charge. Fitch grumbled that he would pay, dammit, Nick had been his foster son, but Williams refused. Everyone was to meet at his barn at ten o’clock, ready to ride. A night ride would keep their secret. They wanted no one to warn Long John.
In the meantime, they should do what they normally did, to throw off any suspicion that something was up, that might alert the killer’s friends, whoever they were. Daniel and Jacob hiked back to Virginia, Jacob to eat his kosher meal with the Morris brothers while Dan took supper with the McDowells. And Gallagher. Maybe he’d have time to retrieve his winnings from Con Orem, add them to his stash at the Eatery.
“How much did you win?” Jacob spoke slowly, feeling his way among unfamiliar auxiliary verbs.
“Last anyone knew, the exchange rate was $18.00 an ounce.” Visualizing the chips in the pot, Dan saw his hands stacking and counting white chips, and blue. Two yellow. “Probably about eighty dollars. And McDowell’s half of a claim.”
Jacob whistled. “That is a great much.”
Footsteps charged up the road behind them, and Dan touched the rifle’s stock; he would be ready, but Fitch panted from a few steps away, “Wait there, you all, wait a damn minute, will you?”
They waited, from courtesy rather than wanting Fitch’s company. Dan forbade himself to laugh at Jacob’s quaint phrasing. “Yes. It turned into high stakes at the end. McDowell plunged.”
“That’s steep
er than I thought.” Fitch gulped air. “What was it you said about McDowell plunging?” He produced a tin box of matches, patted his pockets till he found a candle, and put it between his teeth, the wick hanging out. “My night vision isn’t so good.” Dan had to admire his dexterity as he held the candle in his mouth and struck the match on one of the metal buttons of his coat, though the candle flamed so close to the curly bush of his goatee that Dan thought the hairs might catch. Himself, he preferred the old-fashioned tinder box, matches being too hard to come by, another profit item for Fitch’s freighting business. But flint and steel took two hands.
“Yes. He bet a claim at the end.” As Fitch’s head jerked up, the flame described a swirl in the darkness.
Dan added, “I won it.” The candle flame made caves of Fitch’s eye sockets, his eyes gleamed from within.
“The hell you say.” Fitch brought the candle close to Dan’s face. “You mean you played poker with McDowell – Gallagher was there, too, I’ll be bound – thought so, and you won and walked out with a claim in your pocket?”
God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana Page 3