God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  “A great pity.” Jacob polished his spectacles on his sleeve and hooked the wire rims over his ears. “It is all a great pity.”

  “Fuck that,” Fitch growled. “Who wept for Nick? Who pleaded for Nick’s life when he died alone in the cold? The pity is that we’ve let this go on so long. My boy wouldn’t have died if we’d had the balls to put a stop to it months ago.” He rubbed the stump of his arm against his hand. “I’ll get even, though.” Dan wondered what else, after seeing Ives hang, would be getting even. “When Byam auctions Ives’s ranch, I’ll be first in line.”

  Speechless, Dan gaped at him, and Pemberton muttered. “Good God.”

  “Well, why not?” Fitch blew his nose on his fingers. “A man’s gotta look out for himself in this world. No one else will. They’re going to sell the ranch anyway, and pay the costs of the trial, so I’ll help everyone – myself included – by buying it.” He scowled at Dan. “Hell, Blue, I don’t see you waiving your fee so the mother and sisters can inherit more.” The stump of his arm made a circle. “Someday I’ll be the richest man in the Territory.” With that, he walked over to join Jim Williams, who stood with an extra guard around Ives.

  Pemberton put the notebook in his pocket. His eyes were red-rimmed, and the skin beneath them was dark and puffy. “I was so sure that Ives could not have committed murder. Any murder.”

  Dan could think of nothing to say to help the younger man, but Pemberton appeared not to notice. “The worst of it is, I still quite like him.” He turned the bottle of ink around and around. “I’m shocked to find that my liking or disliking a man does not prove his character. I shall have to be on guard against my feelings for the rest of my life.”

  Some ink dribbled out of the bottle. Dan reached for it and tilted Pemberton’s hand so the stopper was upright. He admired the young man’s courage in admitting he’d been wrong about Ives. Sensing that Pemberton waited for something, perhaps some reassurance, Dan looked into his own life and found words. “We’ve all been fooled by a plausible liar.” Father’s eyes brightest, his air of prosperity growing as the firm’s assets – clients’ assets – shrank and disappeared in the smoke of one bullet.

  Dan shivered. The stars twinkled, as though a man were not about to die, and the moon shone down on the Gulch, laid the shadow of the noose across the ground.

  The two sheriffs stood in front of Ives. “We’re ready for you now.”

  Ives rose to his feet. “If it has to be, I guess we’d better get it over with.” He turned so they could tie his hands behind him, but stopped. “I don’t want to die with my boots on.”

  “OK, fair enough,” said Williams. “You can sit down again.” He called out, “Bring the man some moccasins.”

  Two other guards removed his boots and slipped the moccasins onto his feet. “Ready,” Ives said. Guards helped him stand, and walked him to the cabin inside a solid square of armed men. The judges followed, with the prosecutors. A large packing crate stood beneath the rope.

  Sheriff Hereford placed the noose around Ives’s neck, and adjusted the long knot behind his left ear. He and the sheriff of Junction boosted Ives onto the box.

  Ives stood on the box, with armed guards around it, facing outwards. Somewhere among the crowd a woman’s shriek was cut off as if by a hand over her mouth. Smith and Thurmond sobbed. Tears ran down Alex Davis’s face. A squabble broke out: “Don’t hang him!” “Hang him!” “Banish him!” “Hang him!”

  “You’re murdering an innocent man,” Gallagher shouted. “Nothing Ives ever did compares to this.”

  “Do you have any last words?” called Judge Byam.

  “Yeah, someone put my boots back on. My feet are cold.”

  Yet another delay, thought Dan. How many more could he come up with? This or that little errand to gain precious minutes to live, to feel the breath come and go from his body, his heart beating in his chest. It did not matter about his feet. He would be entirely cold soon, yet someone put his boots on while he teetered on the box.

  Sam McDowell stood as near as the guards allowed. Every so often he swiped his sleeve across his nose and eyes. Jack Gallagher’s curses flowed in a scorching stream of anger at Dan, Sanders, Bagg, and everyone else responsible for Ives’s death.

  The guards brought their guns level and thumbed back the hammers. The ratcheting clicks warned everyone into silence. Running feet pattered down the boardwalk, and the music stopped. Dan heard nothing but people breathing. Weeping. Ives looked across Alder Creek, as if he had climbed up for a view of the mountains whose snow-capped peaks gleamed in the moonrise.

  “Do you have any last words?”

  Ives, gazing over their heads at the shining mountains, said, “I am innocent of this crime. Aleck Carter killed the Dutchman.”

  “Men, do your duty,” said Judge Byam.

  The two sheriffs, one on either end of the crate, jerked it out from under Ives, and he dropped, with a crack like a dry branch snapping underfoot. The body bounced, and the feet kicked out, and his head, his neck broken, flopped over. The rope cut into his flesh and severed the jugular vein. Blood spurted out and a few drops spattered on Dan’s coat and on his face. His stomach jumped, and he saved himself from vomiting by clenching his teeth and swallowing the thin bile as fast as he could. He would not have anyone see him weak. His memory filled with that other violent death – the side of Father’s head blown out, shards of his skull embedded in the leather chair, and his brains sliming the gold-embossed law books behind. Ives’s swollen, bug-eyed face turned to him, away from him, as the body pivoted. Dan fished out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

  “You won’t live to the New Year, Stark.” The threat came from under the sobs and curses. Gallagher’s voice. Albert moved closer; Dan felt the big Negro’s chest brush his coat. Jacob stood at his left, with a guard at his right. Dan wanted to tell them to move away, give him room to swing the rifle, but his voice had stuck.

  The corpse swung on an ever shortening arc. Just a few minutes ago, there had been a man. Now it was clay, swaying, turning, freezing in the cold. Ives would not worry about his feet now.

  There should have been a preacher, Dan thought. But if there were one in the Gulch, he had not come forward to help Ives adjust his soul to its sudden and unexpected journey, to help him approach his Maker. Perhaps someone prayed for him, but no one had offered to pray with him. Nor had he asked for a prayer any more than he had whimpered, or begged, or whined. He had only cared that his feet were cold. Within minutes of death George Ives had thought of his feet, but not his soul.

  Fitch conferred with Jim Williams, and after a few minutes, he joined Dan, who wiped Ives’s blood off his face, brushed at the drops of Ives’s blood on his coat. “A few of us are going after Carter,” he said.

  “Tonight?” Dan shivered.

  “Tonight. Want to come along?”

  Dan shook his head. “We have work to do in Virginia.” But as Fitch said, “Suit yourself,” and walked away, Dan knew he had not refused because of the meeting he’d promised to attend. He needed help to reset the bone in his hand. He needed a woman’s smile warm in mellow lamplight. He had to see her.

  The need dried his tongue and clove it to the roof of his mouth. Telling himself that she deserved to know how her testimony had helped the outcome, how it had given him the certainty to break down the witness, he knew even as he said it to himself, that was a lie. He must see her.

  But how?

  McDowell and Gallagher would kill him, if they could.

  He had to see her.

  * * *

  In Virginia City, curses and shouts overlaid the usual night noises, laughter and fiddle tunes and the stomp of booted feet dancing. “Get the Goddam stranglers.” “The bastard stranglers as murdered poor George Ives.” “He never done no harm to nobody.” “They’ll pay for this, those strangling bastards.” “By God, Sanders won’t live to see the New Year.” “That pansy Stark won’t see Christmas.” “Bagg’s a dead’un.”

>   Bravado. Below the anger sounded a jangling note of fear like one violin out of tune in an orchestra. Why were they not out here if they wanted him dead? Him and Sanders and Bagg? The group that had followed from Nevada melted away into the saloons. Why did they not aim their guns and pistols from the windows, or hide in the dark to kill? Damn it all, he and his small group would have had no chance.

  He smelled pastry as they walked past the City Bakery and his stomach growled. Dan said, “God, I’m hungry. We’ll stop at the Eatery.” She might be there. McDowell was still in Nevada with Gallagher.

  She sat at the rear table, facing the door, bent over a book and a slate. The door creaking brought her head up with wide, fearful eyes until she recognized him and a smile shone across her face. She had chalk dust on her nose. As he unslung the rifle he saw other people, Tabby Rose cutting up meat with a cleaver, Mrs. Hudson rising from beside Mrs. McDowell, Dotty and Timothy playing draughts by the left wall.

  “How do you do, Mrs. McDowell?” What a damned formal greeting when his need pulsed through his veins. He could not use her given name, could not call her Martha.

  “Mr. Stark.” At the sight of his face her smile was snuffed like a candle. “Have you finished?”

  The room was warm. The muscles in Dan’s chest relaxed, and he took what he thought might be his first deep breath since Nick’s body was found. “Yes. Ives was found guilty, and he is hanged.” Jacob helped him with his coat, and Dan greeted her children, and put a leg over the bench. He would at least sit where he could look at her and talk to her.

  “Oh, no,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Such a pity.” Tears gathered in her eyes.

  God damn it, Dan said to himself. Women. Did she think he wanted to be an executioner? Or that the sheriffs had relished their dreadful task? Or that anyone could enjoy Ives’s death struggles, or his blood on one’s face? Christ almighty! Dan wanted to tell her to save her tears for those who deserved them, but he held his peace.

  “What are you-all weeping for?” Fitch asked. “We strung him up fair and square.”

  A clatter startled them all. Tabby had dropped the cleaver onto the table and stood, panting as if from running; her eyes widened and looked into unseen horrors with such terror Dan had never seen on another human face. Even Ives had looked into death as into a shaving mirror.

  Albert set Fitch aside and wrapped Tabby in his arms. She hid her face against his chest, her arms folded like an injured bird’s wings. Her shaking subsided as he murmured to her.

  “Hey!” Fitch’s protest died when Albert raised his head and looked at him, hard, not at all like a slave to the Massa, but a man keeping safe his own woman.

  “She fears a lynching,” Albert said.

  Oh, for Christ’s sake, Dan said to himself. How many times would he have to explain it? How many others would not see the difference between a just punishment after trial and murder?

  Before Dan could speak, Jacob said, “In Old Country is pogrom.” He was talking to Tabby and Albert, and Dan felt excluded somehow, outside the intimate circle of people who suffered from riders in the night carrying destruction on their saddles just because they were a different color, a different religion. Because they were Other. “Pogrom,” Jacob repeated. “Cossacks come, burn our barns, burn our houses, lynch our rabbi. Tonight, not lynching. This Ives, he murder boy. He hang.”

  “Did we lynch Ives, Albert?” Dan asked.

  “No, sir, Mista’ Stark.”

  Dan hoped he kept his voice to free of the irritation he felt, because the youngsters were absorbing every word. “Ives had ample opportunity to provide a defense. He had five lawyers, and they could not do it. He was found guilty by three juries, and his punishment was just.”

  Mrs. Hudson said, “But it’s such a waste. Two young men dead, when they could both be living their lives to some good purpose. It’s just such a waste.”

  “Yes. No doubt about that. But Ives made his choice,” said Dan. “Rather than let Nick ride home, he killed Nick and stole the mules and the gold.”

  “I don’t hold with killing,” said Mrs. Hudson. “Thee may think thee has a righteous cause, but no cause is righteous when there’s killing in it.”

  Dan gripped his thigh with his right hand under the table to remind himself to hold his temper. “Do you really think we could have persuaded Ives out of his ways? If that were so, Nick could have talked Ives out of killing him. We are dealing with murderers who have no conscience, and we have no other recourse.” She would not yield, he understood that as clearly as he knew that now it was kill or be killed for him and all of Nick’s friends. All the righteous, as she had said.

  Tabby tipped her head back so she could look into Albert’s eyes. “Yeah,” the black man said. “It’s like Mr. Stark say. Ives, he could have chose different, only he wanted the gold and them mules. Do you think I’d stay for a lynchin’?”

  “No,” she whispered, and stepped back from him, stooped and picked up the cleaver.

  “Tabby,” Dan said, “I did not like doing it.” He recalled a newspaper drawing he had seen, of cloaked white men stringing up a Negro by torchlight. An artist’s fancy, no doubt, but it had seemed real. He shuddered. God help them.

  “No, sir.” But she would not meet his eyes.

  The others were sitting down, and Mrs. Hudson fetched them their dinners, and the men all gave their pokes to Albert to pay for the meals, and under cover of the hustle and bustle, she smiled at him. “How are you?” she asked. And Dan knew she didn’t only mean his broken thumb. He said, “I think perhaps you might look at it again.”

  Alarm wiped the happiness from her face, but before she could ask a question Dan might have to lie to, Albert startled everyone by speaking in company with whites.

  “Mista’ Stark is the hero of the hour. He done got the truth out of a witness name of Pete Morton.” And though Dan protested that Sanders and Bagg had done far more, Albert went on to tell about the Bamboo Chief.

  Martha McDowell covered a squeak with a cough as if chalk dust had lodged in her throat. She asked him a silent question that he answered with a tiny nod and half a smile, and her pride glowed for Dan so that for the first time in weeks he felt warmth under his breastbone. Maybe he’d postpone going home until after the meeting with Sanders and the others.

  “How did thee know?” asked Mrs. Hudson.

  Dan smiled at Mrs. McDowell. “A little bird told me.”

  Part II: Vigilantes Rise

  6: Alder Gulch: Virginia City

  Boone Helm. The hulking figure waited for Dan and Jacob to cross Wallace. When Dan saw him through a break in the traffic, between a man on horseback and a dray, Helm leered and tipped a whiskey bottle to his lips. There was no place to duck into without showing the yellow feather to the whole town. Jacob sucked in his breath. Helm stepped into their path. His beard was long and matted, and as they came nearer, Dan saw things moving among the hairs. Helm’s lips, red and moist as a wound, mouthed at him. “I’m the meanest son of a bitch west of the Mississippi, my mammy was a polecat, my daddy was a grizzly bear, and I ain’t afraid of no man.” Then the raspy voice dropped a couple of notches, the wink. “I eats people, you know. You want to know what human meat tastes like? Sort of sweet. Oh, you watch out for me, strangler. You watch out. I’ll have your liver on a spit, I will. Or maybe your balls.”

  He laughed while Dan wished he could kill him on the spot, and Jacob trembled beside him. He had been angry at men before in his life, but never had murder seemed so reasonable a means of dealing with an enemy. Dan heard himself say, “Out of our way, Helm.” And to his great surprise, Helm stood aside with a bow that almost toppled him, and his cackle of a laugh followed Dan and Jacob up Jackson Street. The two men were nearly to their cabin before Dan’s fury gave way to a great relief that left him shaky inside: He had not been forced, after all, to see if he could murder Boone Helm.

  * * *

  Imitating a man looking to buy a book, Dan browsed along the open shelve
s of D. W. Tilton’s Stationers. He wished that Tilton had a book to buy. He had never thought how he’d miss bookstores until he came to a place where a book, however dull, however badly written, would be snapped up for an exorbitant price almost before it was unpacked. The lack of books made his small cache valuable. Like Lydia Hudson, he could rent out his books as she rented her wrinkled newspapers, sheet by sheet. He could do that, too, tear the books apart and rent them by the page, or the signature, refusing to give out a later one until the earlier one came back. Some people’s books vanished page by page into the maw of starving readers. Still, he could make good money. A fat novel, Rob Roy for instance, would earn well. He could charge an ounce of dust a month. People would be happy to pay it just for something to read, though it was highway robbery.

  Highway robbery. Dan slipped out the back door of Tilton’s, into the hallway to the stairs that led to Kiskadden’s second floor. He thought, highway robbery. That’s why we meet tonight. Because hanging George Ives had not meant the end of robbery and murder in the Gulch. It had only revealed the discovery of a wild animal’s kill, stinking and rotten, that the creature intended to retrieve later.