God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  Dan put up his hand to shield his eyes, but too late to save his own night vision. “Yes, and your signature is on it, too.”

  “Christ!” The candle flame wavered on Fitch’s bark of a laugh. “You got one of my contracts?” Another yelp, to Dan’s ear as devoid of humor as his own feelings. “That makes us partners.”

  Partners. Neither man offered to shake hands on it, a one-time partnership they did not want.

  * * *

  Twilight thickened around Martha and the others like the dawn of gloom as they trailed up Wallace Street. Martha felt like her life up to now had started in to die the day she waved goodbye to Mam and Pap and Grandmam, standing in the road, until the wagon left them behind the shoulder of Sugar Mountain, and that with Sam walking off to his pals, it was dead and buried with Nick in his grave. Or maybe it died the day Sam come home and told her he’d sold the farm, and she had carried its corpse all this way. Even holding Dotty close on one side, Timmy’s arm solid around her shoulders on the other, she felt like a kite come loose and sailing on unknown currents of air to – where? Into gathering shadows that foretold winter, when what was was gone and what would be was not yet.

  In this darkness she put down one foot and the next, without seeing where except where light shone from store windows. The stores, Dance & Stuart and Mr. Goldberg’s Pioneer Clothing Store, didn’t tempt her to look at goods the freighters had brought. Nor Dotty, who loved to peer in the windows of LeBeau’s Jewelry and Kramer’s Dress Shop, to see the pretties. Glancing in Kramer’s, Martha saw two fancy women trying on extravagant hats with ostrich plumes, while a clerk watched with folded lips and a crease between her eyes. Helen Troy, who owned Fancy Annie’s, and Isabelle Stevens, one of the girls. Sometimes Jack Gallagher’s woman. With Dotty’s longing for bright fabrics and shiny jewels, Martha didn’t want her envying their kind.

  At BAM, Baume Angevine and Mercy’s dry goods store, she recollected Tom Baume’s anguished cry over the knife he’d loaned Nick, and she wanted to go somewhere and weep alone, but Miz Hudson stopped them at the Eatery. A smile folded her cheeks. “Come in, do. We can stir up some comfort.” She laid a black-mittened hand on Martha’s arm. “We all need it, especially the child.”

  “Thank you kindly,” Martha said. “We could do with some consolation.”

  The Eatery, just one room, held two long plank tables. An aisle at either end, wider on the right than on the left, let Miz Hudson and the colored gal serve up the meals. Miz Hudson used the right aisle, and the colored gal, being far less ample, commonly worked on the left. At a small table hard by the door, Albert collected gold dust from customers, weighed it up on a scale, and gave them a scrap of paper for a ticket. When the colored gal or Miz Hudson brought the meal, they’d collect the ticket. Martha thought she’d like to know how to weigh up dust and give honest measure for it, like the darky did. He could weigh the gold, and convert it to money.

  Imagine! A darky knew how to cipher and weigh gold, and she’d just bet he could read, too. Didn’t seem right a darky could read and write and cipher, and she couldn’t. Didn’t seem right at all. She had to depend on the honesty of her boarders. Mr. Stark always gave her the right measure, but Gallagher might pay more one time and less the next, and she couldn’t cipher it out, but must tell light and heavy by the weight of the leather pouch, the poke, in her hand.

  She hated being so unknowing.

  The darky, Albert, bent deep into a barrel, pulled head and shoulders out with a tin in his hand. He looked mighty pleased with life. “It’s come,” he said, and Martha was struck with the deep richness of his voice, reminding her of her Pap, who sung bass.

  Miz Hudson clapped her hands. “Do let’s see, then.”

  He gave her a square red tin with a wreath of bright green leaves and yellow flowers, below large blue letters. Miz Hudson’s tiny feet danced. “Ooooh! Chocolate! Dear Mrs. McDowell, isn’t it lovely?”

  “Chocolate? Oh, my! I haven’t eaten chocolate since, since I can’t remember when!” But she could, and embarrassment overwhelmed her because she’d tantamount to ask for some instead of waiting for Miz Hudson to offer, and because of that and poor Nick, and Sam, and the life gone that she had wanted – the four of them as a family the way it used to be before the War – and winter coming on, and it was all just too much. She wept while the young’uns patted her back and held her. So she never knew just how the colored gal made the chocolate, only that she did, and they sat as near the stove as might be, tin mugs of hot chocolate in their hands, while the darkies went on working, their chocolate ready to hand. No one said anything special, but Martha, the mug warming her hands, the rich chocolate smell on her palate, somehow felt almost like her soul was on the way to being restored.

  “Gold fever’s a terrible disease.” Miz Hudson sipped, held it in her mouth, eyes closed, before she swallowed. “Some people would sell their souls for an ounce of dust.” She sighed. “I’m afraid my price would be an ounce of chocolate.”

  So unlooked-for a remark from someone she’d thought solemn. Martha spluttered, barely managed not to spit, and everyone was laughing. Even the colored gal, slicing meat for a stew, put down the knife and threw her head back. The laughter died away, leaving the room warmer. Albert prised open another barrel and lifted out a thick wad of crumpled newspaper that he laid on the table.

  “Newspaper! Glory be!” Miz Hudson set to smoothing out the sheets, located the date on each one and sorted them into stacks, to begin putting dated issues together again. Tim and Dotty helped, and pretty soon the three of them had a regular rhythm going, the young’uns smoothing and Miz Hudson putting them together.

  “Imagine someplace where news is regular and newspaper could be taken cheap enough to pack with,” said Miz Hudson. “I’ll rent these out, by the issue or by the sheet and folks’ll be glad to pay me just to have something to read.” She stopped at one page with big black type. “They fought a battle last summer at some place called Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania. The Union won.”

  “Hallelujah.” The colored gal raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Praise the Lord.” There was such joy and hope on her face that it fair took Martha’s breath away. Then, seeing Martha look at her, she emptied the joy from her eyes and bent her head to the work. It was like Martha had peeked through a window to where people lived their lives, only to have the shutters slammed.

  “War’s not over yet.” Miz Hudson talked like she was breaking bad news. “Seems the Confederates got away, but it was a terrible slaughter. Just terrible.”

  “Serves them right,” Albert muttered, and Martha felt Tim’s back stiffen. She patted his forearm and was surprised at how muscular it was, almost like a man’s arm, but his hands were chapped almost raw. When they got home, she’d mix a little ground hops in lard and rub it into his hands.

  “The slaughter was on both sides.” Miz Hudson frowned. “The Lord said, Love thine enemies.”

  The colored gal glared at her with such fury on her face that fair sucked Martha’s breath out of her. “When the overseer’s lash tears open your back?”

  “Or the crucifier’s nails rip into thy hands and feet,” countered Miz Hudson.

  Thinking of Nick, Martha said, “I couldn’t love them as put my son on a cross.” She grasped Timmy’s hand. “I can’t love Nick’s killers, neither.” Like Albert’s scales had to balance. “Them as murdered Nick can’t be let to run around loose to kill someone else.”

  Timmy said, “They have got to be stopped.” When everyone looked at him, he gulped, and went on in his unbroken voice, so odd in a boy his size. “You can see that, can’t you?”

  Miz Hudson said, “The Lord came to show us a better way, but He let Himself be killed because that was the way He wanted us to see.” She spoke so soft that Martha felt like they were in church and laid a finger on the newspaper sheet to stop Dotty. “And to follow Him. He rose again, you know.”

  “I know,” Tim said. “That’s what the preachers say. But I ain�
��t ready to test that yet. I dare say Nick wasn’t, either. Nobody has got the right to make someone else die for his own principle. How do you save my life, considering there could be someone out there that thinks he wants what I have and ain’t so particular about how he gets it? Or maybe thinks I looked at him cross-eyed? I want to be an old man someday.” The boy’s hands gripped the mug. “How do I do that? How do I get old, Miz Hudson? It appears to me right now like my choices are to leave and be murdered on the way or stay and be murdered.”

  “Mam said the men have to be God’s thunderbolt.” Dotty squirmed onto her knees on the bench to give her more leverage with the paper.

  “You said that, Mam?” Into Timmy’s eyes came such pride that she’d never seen before. “Truly?” Love, yes, she’d seen that, but pride? She could only nod, and not just because she had chocolate in her mouth.

  “She truly did,” Dotty said. “Spoke right up to them all, give them such a talking-to.”

  Miz Hudson said, “Thee has much courage, the way thee talked up to the men.”

  “I never thought I’d speak up so,” Martha said. “Never would’ve back home.”

  “That Psalm is a great favorite of mine,” Mrs. Hudson said. “What is thy favorite?”

  Martha set her mug down, watched the brown liquid settle itself. Teetering on a confession, she made up her mind. “I can’t read.”

  Miz Hudson went so still that Martha wished she could back time up and unsay it. “Then thee can’t know how the light of the Lord shines for thee. Thee must always depend on someone else to tell thee.”

  A shiver ran down Martha’s spine. “You mean, the Lord – ” Her throat closed up, and she tried again. “He shines a light for me? Even an ignorant being like me?”

  “Thee might be ignorant, but thee are not stupid. Thee must learn to read, for the Lord speaks to each of us out of the scriptures if we listen for Him.” She paused. “That is one part. Another part is to pray for correct understanding. A third is to listen. A warped understanding does great harm in the world.”

  “Yes, but how can you be certain?”

  “That is difficult. But first one reads. Would thee like to learn? I will teach thee.”

  Martha’s hand opened and took hold of the mug’s handle. Learn to read? To know things. To find out. A world in her grasp, like the mug, and all she would have to do was lift it up and drink. “That would be –” She couldn’t find words to say how glorious. She lifted the cup, set it down. “Yes. Oh, glory. Yes. I can pay you some.”

  “That is not necessary. I will teach thee for friendship.”

  Martha bent her head, set down the cup, and hid her face in her hands. For friendship. She’d had no woman friend to confide in since Mam and Grandmam, and the women on the long walk across the plains had been going to Oregon or some such place, or died from sickness, or childbirth. She felt Timmy’s hand soothing on her back. After a minute she said, “Thank you, but I can’t be beholden.”

  “I understand.” Miz Hudson said after a pause, “Very well, I have a proposition for thee. Daniel Stark has said thee are one of the best cooks in the Gulch, and thy pie crusts are tender and flaky.”

  The praise made Martha squirm. “I don’t know….”

  “I have two barrels of dried apples in the storeroom. Suppose thee bakes apple pies for me. I’ll have the best pies in the Gulch, and we’ll split the proceeds.”

  Timmy said, “Our Mam is a great healer, too. She medicines us till we don’t hardly need no doctors.”

  Miz Hudson sat up straight, like a small animal on watch by its den. “Indeed? I have some small store of information along those lines myself. My late husband was a homeopathic physician.”

  “I just know what my Mam and Grandmam taught me about plants and such. I’ll have to learn fresh here, where it’s so different.” She knew the deep dark woods of home, where trees lost their leaves every autumn and the ground was rich and soft with leaf mold, but now she lived in this sparse dry country of sagebrush and juniper. A hard, rocky country, except where streams ran, or where gold hunters found color and turned it ugly, hard, and stony.

  “As to that,” said Miz Hudson, “thee must consult Berry Woman, the Indian married to Toby Fitch. Their wickiup stands at the bottom of Jackson Street, this side of Daylight Creek.”

  Nodding her thanks, Martha felt a pressure on her arm. Dotty had been clutching it, and now the child shook it; she was impatient at all the talk.

  “Please, Mam.” Dotty clutched her arm. “I want to go to school. I want to know things, too.”

  Martha brushed the hair out of the child’s eyes, inwardly sighting down the decision as far as she could, to where it forked, one to their lives, her and the young’uns, and the other to McDowell. Their hankerings came from being here, among so many different people, Jews and Christians and unbelievers and blacks and whites and Indians. All sorts. Most of them decent enough, some of them good men like Mr. Dance and Mr. Stark and Mr. Himmelfarb, but some pure evil like that Boone Helm, or the whores. Everyone with different notions, maybe like Miz Hudson’s better’n them she’d grown up with, but how to sort through them so as to keep straight, and what did you measure by if not the Bible?

  How to divide a pie and get a fair return if you couldn’t cipher? Or know how much dust you had?

  “Your Pap don’t hold with knowing how to read. And the preachers tell us a woman can’t go against her husband.” What Sam had said was, A woman don’t need to know reading to spread her legs for her man.

  “What does the Bible say?” Miz Hudson spoke nearly in a whisper, but her question swept through Martha’s mind like a strong wind and blew her ideas before it. She would have to disobey McDowell in order to know what the Bible said about disobeying him.

  Dotty’s round eyes pleaded with her, and Martha knew she wouldn’t have the preachers tell her. She would know for herself how the Lord lighted her way. She would make up her own mind.

  “You can’t tell your Pap,” Martha told them.

  “We won’t, Mam,” Timmy said. “I want to learn, too. I don’t want to hunker down in some damn creek all my life and know nothing but shoveling.”

  “Cross my heart.” Dotty swiped her hand in an X across her chest.

  “Then, yes.” Martha lifted her chin. “I accept.”

  Reaching across the table, Miz Hudson took Martha’s hands in her own. “We’ll do as the men do, and shake hands on it. As we’re business partners and friends now, perhaps thee should call me Lydia.”

  Martha laughed out loud. “Only if you’ll call me Martha.”

  * * *

  Trudging up the rise between Nevada and Virginia, Dan kept Jacob between Fitch and himself, and held Jacob’s arm as they climbed.

  Fitch said nothing until they stopped to get their breath. “Well, well, Blue, if you ain’t full of surprises. I didn’t even think you played poker, and here you win against that pair, quit while you’re ahead, and live to tell about it.”

  Dan shook his head. “McDowell’s a poor poker player, and Gallagher’s not much better.”

  “Yeah? You’re too young to have played much.”

  “Hell, my father taught me to play before I could read.” Memories blindsided him: Father’s smile over the cards on the table, the rich smell of bonbons awarded for counting the chips correctly; the rotten-egg stink of gunpowder in his nostrils, the sick-sweet smell of blood overpowering all. He had not eaten bonbons since Father –

  At the top of the rise, the aspect of the moon enlarged, so that it appeared to rest on the northern shoulder of Baldy Mountain, where Alder Creek began its westward flow. Below them, Daylight Creek burbled into Alder Creek, and they stood where Gallagher’s jurisdiction began, the legal dominion changed from the Nevada Mining District to the Fairweather Mining District, from Nevada City to Virginia City. In the camp mellow rectangles of lamplight shone on the snow. Somewhere a chorus attempted a few bars of Handel’s Messiah. The high notes were missing because the dir
ector had rewritten the soprano parts for tenor voices.

  Gunshots rang out, and the music stopped.

  “Damn it, why did McDowell bring his family here? It’s no place for decent women and children, and he doesn’t take care of them.” Dan kicked a stone, that tumbled downhill. He had won McDowell’s claim, and that made him partners with a Confederate, and he loathed the Confederacy. No matter how they couched their damned rebellion in high-sounding principle, there was nothing principled about it. It was base. Immoral. And their preachers, no matter how they twisted their thinking to justify slavery because the Bible – written in times that accepted slavery as a natural state of affairs – appeared to advocate it in the name of the Lord, who must want to vomit every time He heard their self-serving prayers. Yet that was not the worst.

  The worst was that McDowell, gambling away this claim, this paper resting now in his pocket, had a family and was not looking after them. A wife and two children, and he gambled away something that might ensure their future. And now it was his. Conjointly with this God-damned Secessionist.