God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  Through Junction, past the haphazard and ramshackle tents, wickiups, and cabins along Alder Creek, past the saloons and hurdy-gurdies that poured their raucous laughter out onto the darkness, they rode. If anyone heard, if anyone wondered, no one challenged them.

  Leaving Alder Gulch to avoid the roughs’ known stomping grounds like Pete Daley’s ranch, they traveled cross country where patches of snow formed white islands on a sea of dark ground. They rode into gullies whose crusted drifts hid their secrets like hole cards. When they climbed out on foot to spare the horses, knee-deep snow melted into their boots. Remounted, wet feet chilled them.

  Long past midnight, they stopped at a ranch to warm up. When he heard their errand, the rancher brought out two bottles of whiskey. Nick’s friends turned their horses into a corral, forked some hay for them to bicker over, and broke the ice on the water troughs. They could not all be in the house, so they stayed in the barn, where they passed the bottles. Warmed by a swallow or two of whiskey they settled into the loose, sweet hay.

  Dan dreamed he stood in cold water while Harriet, naked, drifted away on a raft. Pale hair streaming behind her, she held out her arms to him, but he could not move. His feet were blocks of ice and something chipped at them. He awoke to find Williams kicking his boot. “Time to go.”

  Black silhouettes of the western mountains, twenty miles away, stood out against the stars. Dan wished he could draw or paint, but he had to trust the poor substitute of memory. Daguerreotypes or these new-fangled photographs could not reproduce a scene as well as a good painting.

  Frozen over, Wisconsin Creek flowed among gnarled roots of willow trees whose stems were caught by the ice so that Nick’s friends had to hack their way through. When broken stems whipped at Dan’s horse’s face, it shied, stumbled, went to its knees. Half over the horn, Dan pushed himself into the saddle as the horse regained its feet. Behind him, Jacob clung to the saddle horn with both hands, the reins loose in his fingers. Dan followed the others down the bank. They had broken through the ice, and water rose above Dan’s stirrups. On the farther bank, Dan looked for Jacob, who was half way across; his horse had followed the others. When they stood on top, Jacob said, “Mein Gott.”

  Feeling for his footing in the dark water, one of the horses slipped and went down. Jumping clear, the rider landed on his backside, immersed up to his neck. Soaked and shaking, he scrambled after the horse up the bank. Raising his quirt to beat the horse, he bellowed through chattering teeth, “You hog-footed good-for-nothing bastard.”

  “Shut up!” Williams grabbed his arm. “You hurt one of my horses and it’ll cost you a hundred bucks.”

  Pretty steep for a $20.00 cayuse, someone muttered.

  Williams tossed the quirt into the darkness of the willows. “Leave it.”

  “If you was mine, you’d get the beating of your life,” the man said to the horse as Williams walked away.

  They waited for light among the willows. Dan’s legs, numb from the knees down, nearly toppled him, but he grabbed the saddle horn, clung to it as he shuffled about. Against the slicing pain of returning feeling, he buried his mouth in his sleeve to stifle a groan. Soft cursing around him told the same story from other men, and in a momentary silence, he heard teeth chattering.

  No one explained to the horses why they should not move. They stamped their feet, shook themselves, blew out their noses. One animal stretched himself out and staled. Fitch muttered, “That does it, goddammit. I gotta piss.” There was the rip of unbuttoning, the sound of the flow, and a long sigh.

  Dan laughed, and his sleeve stifled that, too.

  The moon sank and black night gathered the willow thicket. Dan tried to find stars, but the leafless branches shielded the sky from view. He scuffled his feet, petted the horse, whispered to Jacob, listened to the creek burble. Fitch swore, as if hot words could warm him or melt the ice in his clothes, in time with his marching feet and swinging arms.

  At last the eastern mountains emerged from night. Williams whispered: “Mount up. Quiet.”

  Dan boosted Jacob into the saddle. “It’s almost over.”

  They walked their horses toward Long John’s camp, where the ragged cone of a wickiup stood against the snow. Dan’s imagination conjured an army waiting for them. To him it was impossible that the roughs should not know they were coming, should not have posted sentries.

  A dog barked, then another.

  “Go!” Cap yelled.

  Heels and spurs clapped the horses’ sides. Pent up by standing cold after the icy crossing, the horses leaped into a gallop. Jacob’s foot came out of his stirrup, and he was falling, but Dan swung his horse close, grabbed his arm, hauled him into the saddle. “Hang on!” Dan grappled with his own fear: that his horse might stumble, break its neck. Break his neck. Then the fear left him for the exhilaration of the ride, as the horse bounded from stride to stride through the snow. With other front runners, he reined in at the wickiup. Mounds in the snow became awakening men, who raised their heads to see what the commotion was about. Hardly thinking what he did, Dan pulled the rifle from its holster and levered a shell into the breech.

  “Get down,” ordered Williams. They settled back, watchful and tense in the snow.

  Jacob, jouncing in the saddle, trotted up and edged in between Dan and Fitch. Dan nodded to him, glad he had made it.

  Beidler, on Dan’s other side, asked, “You done this before?”

  “No.” Dan shook his head. “Not with men.” On a deer hunt, a blind bend around heavy undergrowth, the horse smelled a bear seconds before it rose up from a rotten log. Dan had discovered a useful quickness with the rifle.

  “Ain’t a lot of difference, is there? Quarry’s quarry.” Beidler leaned to the side and blew his nose with his fingers, wiped his face on his sleeve.

  “True enough,” said Dan, “but the killing is different.”

  “That depends on who you’re hunting,” Beidler said.

  Fitch laughed, a humorless short bark. “That’s the first damn thing you’ve said I agree with, X.”

  Dan asked, “Was this where they camped when you found them?”

  “No.” Fitch pointed his chin westward. “They were over there about a half mile.”

  The tallest man Dan had ever seen, maybe even taller than the President, ducked through the wickiup entrance. Beidler said, “That’s Long John.” The tall man scratched his crotch, and ran his fingers through his tangled, shoulder-length hair.

  Fitch dismounted. “Let’s go have us a little talk. Come on, X. You, too, Palmer.”

  “Wait a damn minute.” Williams called to the rest of Nick’s friends. “Don’t let none of these fellas think of traveling.” He beckoned to Dan. “You come, too.”

  Fitch frowned, but Cap met him with a hard stare, and any objection died.

  So authority is established, Dan thought as he dismounted, surprised to feel his feet. Not by force, except force of personality. Walking with Long John’s escort, he stomped his feet to warm them up and wished he could swing his arms, but he held the rifle on Long John.

  Palmer led them about a quarter mile toward the main road, where the sagebrush was broken and newer snow lay on old sign. “I found the poor lad right about here. You can see where my team and wagon flattened the brush.”

  Dan knelt, studied the ground with Beidler. A long crushing in the sagebrush going back toward the road – that was Palmer’s team and wagon. Beyond where Nick had lain, in a slightly different direction, he made out a scramble of depressions partially filled with snow. The smaller ones were boot prints, the larger were hoof marks. Blessed snow had kept the marks through melting and more snow and melting again, not clear, not detailed, but Dan, closing his eyes, seemed to see the killer drag Nick here, dismount, walk to the body, remount and ride away. He felt a deep sadness retained in the ground itself, like a battlefield even after grass covered over shell casings, fragments of bodies. Nick had died here, while men counted their takings. In the law, whether they pulled
the trigger or not, they were all equally guilty of his death – those who killed him and those who knowingly let him die. His murderer, the depraved, the indifferent.

  He pictured Nick’s cheerful face and the thing it had become, and rose to his feet in the familiar darkening haze, through which he could just make out the tall form backing away from his intent. A hand on his arm, a voice in his ear, “We didn’t come for that.” Cap’s hand, Cap’s voice, and the haze lifted. The other men were staring at him as if they had never seen him before. Dan breathed deep and made his fingers loosen on the stock of the Spencer, allowed the barrel to drift downward. He used both hands to let the hammer down. He wanted to crawl away, he was so ashamed. He had not felt that consuming rage in a very long time, had had it schooled, beaten, out of him, thought he had control of it, but the beast had lain in wait, to claw at him.

  It did not help that Fitch nodded to him and smiled.

  Cap Williams said to Long John, “You’ll give me a crick in the neck looking up at you. Hunker down.”

  Long John crouched on his heels. Tugging at the sleeves of his Hudson’s Bay coat, trying to bring them over his wrists, he pointed at Dan: “Keep him away from me.”

  Fitch said, “We know you killed my boy. You killed Nicholas Tbalt.”

  “Who? What? I never!” Long John started up.

  Beidler thrust him back with the muzzle of his shotgun, and Long John put a hand in the snow to catch his balance, tucked his hands into his armpits. “I never killed no one. What are you talking about?”

  “You know me, you heartless bastard,” Palmer said. “I needed help with a body yesterday morning. You said, ‘They kill people all the time at Virginia and nobody minds that.’ You wouldn’t bloody help. I found him, and all the time you knew he was here.”

  Fitch spoke on top of Palmer’s last few words. “When I came looking for him ten days ago, you told me he’d left with the mules. You knew he was here. All the time you knew it.” He coughed, wiped his hand across his face. “He was my foster son. He died here, and you did nothing, damn you. Not one God damn thing.”

  “I never killed him, I tell you. I never. I swear.” Long John made as if to stand, but Dan let the rifle barrel drift upward, and its Cyclops eye stared him down.

  “We buried Nick Tbalt yesterday,” Williams said in a calm, reasonable tone whose menace raised the hairs on the back of Dan’s neck. “If you didn’t kill him, you did the next best thing. You knew he was here and you let him die. Look around you. There’s men here loved that boy like their own son. You know what? They don’t care if you didn’t pull the trigger. You could die right here, Long John. You’d deserve it. You either killed Nick, or you know who did.”

  “No, I swear. You got the wrong man.” A drop of sweat rolled down Long John’s temple and disappeared into his beard.

  Dan had been thinking while they talked. He forestalled Williams and Fitch, pretended to be trying to get something straight. “Help me out if I’m wrong. Nick came for the mules. He had a heavy poke of gold dust and when he paid their board he had some left. You killed … . ”

  “I never! I swear it! I’m innocent!”

  “Keep your damn voice down!” Fitch said.

  Beidler was playing with his lariat, looped the rope around and around itself, let the loose end crawl and slither while Long John shivered, watching it.

  Dan went on as if no one had spoken, “… You killed Nick, took the gold and the mules. Then you dragged him here and left him for the birds and the coyotes. Was he dead yet? You took your rope off and left him. Only someone utterly depraved would do that.” He inclined his head toward Beidler. “Depraved killers are not fit to live.”

  “No, no! I didn’t!” Long John screeched. His dark eyes and beard stood out from his pale face, as on a badly exposed daguerreotype. An idea changed his expression from panic to calculation. “If I stole them mules, where are they?”

  Williams countered, “If we got the wrong man, who’s the right one?”

  “Oh, shit,” said Beidler. “Let’s get this over with. We know you done it!” He swung the rope at his side. He had made a noose.

  Long John’s cheekbones seemed to thrust against his parchment skin.

  “If anyone hangs him, it’s me, by rights. Nick was my boy.” Fitch caught the noose and, by placing part of the loop under his stump of arm, widened it, took a step toward Long John. “You have one last chance.”

  “Yeah,” said Beidler. “Make it quick because we’re freezing our asses.”

  Long John gasped, his head wobbled, and he fell over onto his side. A strong odor came from him. His hands dropped over his crotch to cover the spreading stain.

  God damn Fitch. Dan swung the Spencer under his arm and bent to help the tall man up. The son of a bitch had scared Long John so, he’d probably lie, tell them what he thought they wanted to know, rather than the truth. This questioning had to be done right.

  Williams spoke in a calm, reasonable voice. “You see how it is, Long John. You know something. I don’t know’s I can hold these boys back forever.”

  Long John’s tongue came out and circled his lips, reminding Dan of a mouse emerging from its hole and darting in again. “I don’t know. I never knew what happened or who did nothing. I didn’t even know someone had been killed until he showed up.” He nodded at Fitch. “Like I said, where are the mules?”

  He had a point, Dan thought. He might be telling the truth. Five determined men pointing guns at him could be powerful incentive. If he stole the mules, where were they? They couldn’t ride around the valley looking for them. And they sure as hell couldn’t hang Long John on what they knew now.

  The sky was lightening. A mist rose from the creek running black a few feet away, willow stems on the opposite bank trailed into the swift water like the train of a woman’s gown across a polished floor. They moved in a slight breeze Dan could not feel, and then he realized it was no breeze stirring them, but a dark shadow in the mist, a creature following some path a man would not know, and growing larger as it came toward them amid the crackle of ground ice breaking. Goosebumps rose on his forearms. He stepped away from Long John and raised the rifle to his shoulder, rested his cheek against the stock and cocked the hammer.

  “Good God, what’s that?” Williams pointed toward it.

  “Retribution,” Dan said.

  “Oh, Jesus, save me.” Long John buried his face in his hands.

  The shadow emerged, took shape, lifted its mouth, and brayed. Laughing, Dan lowered the hammer, let the muzzle sink towards the ground. He bent over, a hand on his knee. The big black mule brayed again.

  “God almighty!” Fitch shouted.

  Beidler whooped. “Good God in heaven! That’s – that’s Black Bess! That’s my mule. Bessie! Bessie!”

  The mule pointed her nose toward the sky and brayed long and loud.

  Williams was the first to recover. He asked Long John, “Do you know that mule?”

  “Yeah. It’s the mule the boy was riding. The one you’re – I mean ….” His voice trickled to a stop.

  Dan spoke fast. “So you do know her! You know Nick was riding her! Talk. Now! You said we couldn’t prove anything, none of the mules was here, we couldn’t prove Nick was here. Well, goddammit, Black Bess is here, so now we can prove you killed Nick!” It was a terrific leap in logic, and he had to hope that Long John’s fear would blind him to it.

  “I never seen her before. I mean, someone said he was riding a black mule, and I thought this must be the one. She wandered in, I think. Yeah, that’s it. She wandered in. Maybe in the night. I don’t know.”

  “First I knew a mule could unsaddle herself,” Williams said.

  “No, no! I unsaddled her after she come here. I mean – ”

  “You lying bastard.” The words half-strangled in Dan’s throat. “You did know he was dead, because you unsaddled the mule he was riding, and you knew he was riding her because you took the gold in payment for the mules he was sent to br
ing home.”

  “You son of a bitch.” Fitch dropped the noose around Long John’s neck. “You killed him.”

  Long John ducked his head into his collar, and his voice came to them, as if strained through his fingers. “I don’t dare tell you. They’ll kill me!”

  “We’ll kill you if you don’t tell,” Dan said. “Even if you didn’t kill Nick, you’re guilty of being an accessory after the fact. That’s a hanging offense.”

  Beidler said, “Choose, goddammit. You don’t talk, we’ll kill you. If you talk –”

  “We’ll protect you,” Williams said. “Your only chance is to tell us who the killer is.”

  Dan stood the rifle against a log. Crouching beside Long John, he spoke as to a spooked horse. “You see how it is. We’re your best hope. You tell us what you know and we’ll help you. We’ll protect you, but we have to know who killed Nicholas Tbalt.”