Wild Justice

by Loren D. Estleman

  We half-dozen followed it at a walking pace to the station, trailing the mourners behind us, some on foot, some in vehicles, with the widow and the pastor leading in her phaeton, and the Lewis and Clark County Marching Band playing refrain after refrain of “After the Ball” at the rear. The boardwalks, doorways, and balconies on both sides of the street were filled with spectators, the men (with some smug exceptions) standing with hats in hand, the women either daubing at their eyes with lace handkerchiefs or wearing that blank stoic look you saw on the faces of frontier mothers who had buried their children and with them their ability to shed tears. A thump and a puff of white smoke put the whole thing on record in a tripod camera mounted on a scaffold.

  A porter opened the door at the back of the caboose and we transferred the box from the hearse onto a braided oval rug spread on the plank floor between a potbelly stove and the upright desk where the conductor kept his tally.

  The day’s warmth had given way to chill evening, with a stiff breeze tearing the flames away from the streetlamps. I’d started to sweat during the service, and now my own perspiration swaddled me in a clammy sheet. I felt a cold coming on, one of those that lingered. I’ll never know how the old man managed it.

  Well, I’d have done it again, curse him; every bit of it. All I am is his doing, the good as well as the bad. And he hadn’t wasted time about it, beginning on the very first day.

  FIVE

  “Men not bent on mischief do not under normal circumstances break holes in other people’s walls. This court is open to an explanation of your conduct.”

  I’d always been at a loss to read the Judge’s humors. Back in 1876, I had no hope of finding tracks on that ground based on fifteen minutes’ acquaintance, and the swill served at Chicago Joe’s had swollen my brain so that it was scraping the inside of my skull, which was distraction enough. I couldn’t decide whether he was offering me a way out or prolonging my agony.

  “It was a question of loyalty, sir.” Which was as much of a response as I could muster. It came out like a bow scraping a fiddle. My mouth was dry, with wheel ruts in my tongue.

  “‘Your Honor.’ I shall not remind you again, except in the form of a five-dollar fine for contempt. Mr.—” He riffled the pages on his desk, squinting; his vanity even then was full-grown, to the point of refusing to wear glasses in company. “Marmaduke?”

  “Murdock, s—” I swallowed the dust I’d stirred up. “Your Honor.”

  “To what loyalty do you refer?”

  “The Union. Your Honor.”

  Again he consulted his papers, then pushed them aside. “Since the complaint makes no mention of politics, I shall entertain elucidation.”

  The word was three syllables past my education, but I took a stab at its definition. “The barman said that no Yankee can hold his liquor well enough to jump over his own hat when placed on the floor. When I took him up on it—wagering ten dollars on the outcome—he snatched my own hat off my head and threw it in a corner. That left me with only one choice, to pick up a chair and knock a hole in a wall.”

  “Which wall separated the saloon from Chicago Joe’s private parlor. The woman is known to this community as a generous contributor. She took up a collection to replace the plain panes in St. Sebastian’s Presbyterian Church with stained glass, salting the mine with a hundred dollars’ gold from her own safe. As this court sees it, by violating the lady’s privacy you profaned the House of God.”

  That was dangerous ground. I was just off three weeks riding drag on a herd of fleabags, and what the barman was pleased to call Kentucky rye contained enough fusel oil to invite a thumping headache even before the dizzying effect of the spirits had worn off. I was treading water minus the wit to wade no higher than my ankles.

  “If I knew the lady’s quarters were on the other side, I’d not have done it,” I said. “As it was I was acting on behalf of comrades perished at Cold Harbor.”

  “You served Sherman in Virginia?”

  “Rosecranz, Your Honor. Sherman wasn’t in command there.”

  At this point the Judge covered his mouth. To this day I don’t know if he was dissembling a grin over my having called his bluff or wrestling with the agony of his unmatched teeth. In any case his face was a mask of doom when he banged his gavel.

  “Fifty dollars, half to this court, the other half to Chicago Joe’s to cover the repairs.”

  I had only coppers in my pocket. I’d spent most of my wages before making the bright decision to cap off the day at Joe’s. I confessed as much.

  “Thirty days.” Bang.

  His desk wasn’t a proper bench, but a former rolltop whose hutch had been removed so that he could stare attorneys and defendants in the eye; the holes were still visible where pegs had held the thing in place. There was then no courthouse, nor yet the promise of one. The rookie jurist dispensed justice from the ground-floor ballroom of a Gothic horror built by an early gold magnate, who had drunk himself to death without making a serious dent in thirty thousand dollars’ worth of imported brandy in his cellar. The secret of what had become of the rest was a matter between the Judge and the elected officials who had foreclosed on the estate. Mismatched chairs were arranged in rows to serve as a gallery; not that a drunken brawl attracted as much interest as a gun battle or better, an axe murder. One of the seven locals in attendance coughed dryly and looked at his stem-winder.

  The bailiff that year was a gaunt party whose complexion looked like badly cured macadam. He was conducting me in manacles to the door and the jailhouse beyond when a note came into his hands from an apprentice to the prosecutor. He glanced at the angular script, grunted, and steered me farther up the entrance hall.

  Blackthorne’s chambers were in a former pantry, paneled in cottonwood and still smelling of potatoes and dried beans. His desk was a plain whitewashed kitchen table, scarred all over with knife cuts. The Judge, standing in his robes, directed the officer to remove my cuffs and dismissed him. Hanging his uniform of office on a scarred coat tree, he said, “Are you aware of the scientific theory that venom can be applied as an antidote to snakebite?”

  “Your Honor?”

  “You can call me sir in this room. I am suggesting a cure for the after-effects of the evil nectar pressed upon the unsuspecting at Joe’s. By thunder, man, hair of the dog!”

  “Ah. I’ve heard something along those lines.”

  “Next time you patronize the place, bring the wherewithal to secure the fare the proprietress reserves for the local gentry.”

  Swinging open the door of a six-foot pie safe, he produced a green bottle with a cork sealed in red wax and filled two cut-glass tumblers with honey-colored liquid. It smoked a little when exposed to the air.

  He set a glass on the far side of the table and sat in a Jefferson swivel with an Indian blanket draped over the back, probably covering tears in the upholstery. He was in his shirtsleeves and waistcoat, his watch chain and Masonic fob glittering in the light of a coal-oil lamp. I pulled up a split-bottom chair at his invitation. He drank, I drank. Right away the fog began to lift and the throbbing receded into the background.

  “Your fine has been paid,” he said.

  “Does that mean I’m free to go?”

  “Aren’t you the least bit interested in who paid it?”

  “That’s easy. The only man who hasn’t spent everything he earned on the drive is the man who led it. Ford Harper, the owner of the Bar Slash Aitch Ranch.”

  “He sent a message as well.”

  “That’s just as easy. I’m fired.”

  “The rest may be more difficult to guess. He gave you a reference. He said he never had a better foreman and that if it weren’t for you, there would have been blood spilled between hands he couldn’t afford to lose.”

  “He’s a good Christian.”

  “He added that if you weren’t such an insubordinate jackass you’d have gone on being foreman instead of sticking your nose up a cow’s ass for sixty miles.”

 
“He’s a bastard.”

  “Ranchers are in general. I’m curious to learn just how you prevented bruised feelings among the men from escalating to tragedy.”

  “I bruised more than their feelings.”

  He frowned. His face showed more mobility than it had when court was in session. “If I hadn’t seen you in person before he told me of your abilities, I’d have expected a bigger man. You’ve but a few inches and ten pounds on myself, and I am not regarded as middle size.”

  “Cowhands don’t displace much as a rule. Mustangs won’t carry a big man as far as necessary to deliver a herd to market.”

  “What’s your experience with firearms?”

  “I found that when I pull on one end, the other end makes noise. I don’t own one at the moment.”

  He leaned back in his chair and swung the pie safe open again. I solved the mystery of the change in his features then: A set of false teeth rested in a pickle jar on a shelf inside. From the next shelf down he slid a revolver and laid it on my side of the table.

  I hesitated, then set down my glass and picked up the weapon. It was a slender five-shot self-cocker, chambered for .45, with an octagonal barrel, a curved walnut grip, finely checked, and a brown finish. It bore a strong resemblance to a Colt, but it wasn’t a Colt. It had a medium heft and good balance. The cylinder was empty.

  “It’s an English piece,” Blackthorne said, “manufactured by the firm of Deane, Adams, and Deane, originally makers to the late Prince Albert. It came into the possession of this court by way of a gambler I tried last spring. He got into a disagreement with a local teamster, whose Schofield misfired. The Deane-Adams did not.

  “That faulty Schofield saved the gambler’s life twice,” he went on. “The second, when I ruled him not guilty on the grounds of self-defense. I fined him for carrying a firearm inside the city limits, and confiscated the revolver in lieu of a fine. Can you master it?”

  “I can’t prove it in this room.”

  “I am not asking you to. Any fool can point and pull a trigger. I’m more interested in a man with the ingenuity to figure out how to leap over a hat set in the angle between two adjacent walls. Incidentally, whatever possessed you to think I’d be swayed by your loyalty to the Union? For all you know I supported the Confederacy.”

  “You hung a portrait of Lincoln on the wall behind the bench.”

  “That was Horace Greeley, and it was hanging there when I arrived. However, your instincts were sound. I am a Republican appointee. My papers were signed by President Johnson, who served as vice president under Lincoln. That little gambit is another reason for my interest in you.”

  I nodded. “I’m confused. I came into this room prepared to hang my spurs for a month, and now I’m supposed to leave with the gift of a twenty-dollar pistol.”

  “You won’t think it a gift for long. Are you wanted anywhere? I shall find out if you are, so you might as well tell me. I haven’t a warrant for anyone of your name or description, so you’ll walk out of here a free man regardless.”

  “No one wants me at present, Harper included.”

  He drew something between two fingers from a waistcoat pocket and clapped it on the table beside my glass. The scrap of pewter reflected little light. “Pin this on, raise your right hand, and repeat after me.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “To avoid sentencing to a road gang for vagrancy. You said under oath you have only pennies to your name.”

  “You said I was a free man.”

  “I did not. I said if you told me you were wanted, you were free to walk out. I am taking you at your word you are not. I cannot countenance allowing a common tramp to roam the streets of the capital. Such carelessness leads too often to mischief.”

  He wasn’t through. “In addition. You confessed to wagering ten dollars you did not have. That is fraud, punishable by six months in the territorial prison in Deer Lodge. You must agree my leniency in offering thirty days on a gang instead is generous.”

  The son of a bitch had had that badge in his pocket when I came in. I didn’t think he carried it for luck. I had half a mind to take the offer to bust rocks for the territory instead. More than two decades later I still wondered if I’d have been better off to listen to that half.

  SIX

  Mrs. Blackthorne and I chose seats across the aisle from each other and three rows apart. We had no mutual dislike; it’s human nature to stake one’s territory with elbow room to spare. She had a basket of yarn in her lap and her hands were a blur as she worked the needles. I’d brought along my Bible, but I’d slept poorly the night before and reading the ancient vocabulary made my eyes smart. I rested my head against the lace slip on the back of the plush Pullman chair and watched the throng waiting on the platform for the train to pull out so they could put mourning behind them and return to work. The view was all bare male heads, red female noses buried in hankies, and the brazen bells of the band’s instruments blaring “After the Ball.”

  The notes were muted, however, battered back by din.

  From the direction of the jail continued the racket that had been taking place on and off since the news had come from the courthouse; the inmates awaiting trial or removal to the penitentiary in Deer Lodge rattled their mess tins between the bars of their cells, more or less to the accompaniment of a squeezebox in the inexpert hands of a trusty. There was a mystique connected with just how these men segregated from the community learned about such things as the Judge’s death before anyone else in town, but I didn’t see anything exotic in it. Reliable as he was when on duty, on his own time bailiff Gottlieb carried a pocket flask full of tongue-loosener, and the turnkey usually assigned to convey defendants between the courthouse and the jail was his brother-in-law.

  The melody, what there was of it, was a lively jig. Whether the bastards thought Blackthorne’s passing would assist their defense or they were just happy he was worm-ready, I couldn’t say. The rattling and wheezing scraped a razor across my nerves. It almost made me miss that tired ballad from the East.

  At long last the engineer blasted the whistle twice, the car rocked back, then assumed forward motion. The rows of spectators gathered under the station’s porch roof slid toward the rear of the train, and then they were lost in the steam from the jets and the smoke from the stack.

  We swung north toward Great Falls, making a stop there for the locals to turn out and another band to play the Judge’s favorite air. When the conductor, a young man for the trade—but then I’d lately noticed how much younger the population around me was growing—entered and announced that a man who said he was with the Montana Press Association had requested an interview, I looked at Mrs. Blackthorne, who shook her head vigorously without interrupting her knitting. I said to have the fellow meet me in the caboose.

  “Marshal?”

  He was standing at the foot of the coffin, a stringy six-footer with an impressive black horsecollar beard. Just looking at his striped suit of clothes, square fawn-colored hat with a narrow crimped brim, and the liquid shine on his boots, I knew he had a neatly knotted cravat and fresh collar hidden under all those whiskers.

  “Deputy,” I corrected him. “I work for a living.”

  He changed hands on his fold of foolscap to shake my hand. “Howard Rossleigh. I report directly to the wire service. Are you ready to become famous?”

  “I already am. Page Murdock.”

  His faded blue eyes were polite, but I could tell the name meant nothing; another signatory that I’d begun living past my time. There’d been a period when I couldn’t enter a mercantile anywhere on the frontier without seeing an unrecognizable representation of my face and figure on a red-and-yellow cover in a rack.

  “I suppose it serves me right for not getting shot in the back before my fortieth birthday,” I said. “I’d just as soon you left me out of your story. It isn’t my funeral train.”

  He made some unintelligible marks with an orange pencil stump. “I shall refer to you as ‘a s
ource connected with the federal court.’”

  “That will do for now.”

  His brows lifted. “Am I to take that as an indication you plan to retire now that your employer has passed?”

  “No. I’m just looking around.”

  I didn’t know if I was more put out by the misapprehension that the marshals’ service paid a pension like the railroads and the printers’ guild, or that I looked old enough to pack it in and sit whittling in front of a dry goods. Well, I felt old enough. If the clarinet playing outside was pitched any higher it would call in the hogs.

  “Is it true Judge Blackthorne hanged sixty-six men?”

  “You could say that. You could also say he spared a hundred and thirty-two from the scaffold.”

  Scribble, scribble. “We in the press are divided between those who considered him a beacon of justice and those who thought him a barbarian who abused his office. How did you see him?”

  “Usually by appointment.”

  It went on in that vein, me turning aside arrows and he showering the caboose with graphite dust. When, stopping two days later in Lewistown, I bought a copy of The Montana Democrat, I wasn’t much surprised to read that nothing I’d said made the wire column. He’d either found someone more amenable to his purpose or made up a quote referring to the Judge as “a blood-and-thunder throwback to the pioneer past.”

  I was mollified at least that I’d got shut of the fellow. After all the encounters I’d had with journalists, I should have been prepared for what a festering thorn he’d become.