God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  Tension melted out of Dan’s neck. Thank God he wouldn’t have to do this alone. With two prosecutors the danger was cut in half. Smiling, he held his hand out to Sanders. “Thank God you’re here. Daniel Bradford Stark is my name. I’ve been asked to prosecute as well.” As the two men shook hands, Dan knew he had heard of Sanders in another context, if he could just think of it.

  Sanders’ grasp was strong without being hard. He smiled into Dan’s eyes. “You may wish to await the outcome before you give thanks. This will be my first case as a prosecutor.” A lean man perhaps an inch shorter than Dan, he carried himself sword straight. His dark beard was close-trimmed, and his eyes were set deep in their sockets.

  “Mine, too,” Dan said. “I practiced in New York, but I have very little criminal experience.”

  “I had a good deal of civil and criminal trial experience in Ohio, but never as a prosecutor.” Sanders swept his hand down the front of his Union coat. “Lately, my law practice has been interrupted.”

  “In a good cause,” Dan said.

  “Glad you think so.” Sanders smiled. “We’ll get along.” He offered his hand, in an odd position, index finger straight and stiff, the next three fingers bent at the second knuckle, thumb out. When it met Dan’s straight hand, the position changed, and Sanders nodded to himself as if he had learned something.

  But if they were not both Masons, they were Union men, one a fighting soldier, and Dan regarded Sanders with satisfaction. An ally, he thought. A man to go to war with. For this was war, as were all trials. Civilized warfare, couched in polite language, full of convention and lacking guns, but warfare all the same, needing strategy, battle plans. He had nothing. No ideas as to how to proceed.

  Fitch said, “I’m Tobias Wayne Fitch, formerly Captain, CSA.” He and Sanders met like two strange horses who inhale each other’s breath in wary and tentative exploration to determine what manner of creature this is. Dan waited for the squeal and flattened ears as two men who would try to kill each other on the battlefield extended their hands. Sanders held out his own left as if it were the common thing. Both placed their fingers in that odd position, and their hands made a join.

  Dan relaxed. Masons both, their recognition lay in the odd handshake; their mutual commitment to the principles of Masonry overrode their antagonistic allegiances to North and South.

  “All right,” Sanders said. “Let’s get to business. What evidence have we so far?”

  “Not much.” Dan summarized what they knew. “I was just about to interview Hilderman.”

  “So you have one man’s word against another’s. Is that all?”

  “No,” Hereford said. “We have Black Bess, but she can’t testify.”

  Sanders cocked an eyebrow. “A Negro?”

  “Might as well be,” Fitch said. “She’s a mule.”

  So Masonry would not stem all belligerence from Fitch. Dan intervened to stave off the anger flaring in Sanders’s eyes. “Nick was riding Black Bess when he disappeared. We found her on Ives’s land, without saddle or bridle.”

  “I see.” Sanders bared his teeth at Fitch, and Dan was grateful that smile was not aimed at him. “So Ives was in possession of stolen property.”

  “Correct.” On a mischievous impulse, Dan added, “Palmer said the mule was another agent of Providence.”

  “Providence?” Sanders blinked at them.

  Fitch said, “William Palmer, he’s a saloon keeper here, found the body. First the sage hen he shot landed directly on Nick’s chest, and then the mule appeared. Providence.” He spoke in the flat neutral tone of someone holding in laughter. Bob Hereford turned his head away and sneezed.

  “I see. Well.” Sanders cleared his throat. “So the sum total of evidence is this Long John’s story and a mule.”

  “For the most part.” Out beyond the ring of guards, someone sang “Dixie” amid loud cheering. Dan hastened to add, “It’s his demeanor. His attitude.” He watched their expressions, Sanders raising an eyebrow at him, Fitch glowering, Hereford wondering. Feeling increasingly silly, he told the rest of it, how Ives had joked with Nick’s friends, and how he had tried to escape. Sanders listened, his brown eyes seeming to probe Dan’s mind. Feeling he would hate to be cross-examined by this man, Dan finished, “That’s not evidence, I know. It’s too nebulous.”

  “Nor really,” Sanders said. “Flight as a presumption of guilt. That’s telling, but it might not be enough. We need more.” As the song ended in the Rebel yell, he forced words through tight lips: “Your feeling carries more weight than you realize. You’re not one to leap to conclusions as a matter of course?”

  “Shit,” Fitch said under his breath, the word so quiet that Dan almost did not hear it under the fire’s growl. Seeing that he had been heard, he said, “Dan Stark is the most finicking man for his damn calculations you’d ever not want to do a survey. He’ll retake measurements until I want to shoot him, but he’s – ” He swallowed, turned his back on them for a second or two, swung back. “Christ. Oh, Christ. It’s true. Ives killed my boy. Our friend. Our God damned friend.”

  If it had ever been possible for Dan to feel sorry for Fitch he would have then, for the pain in Fitch’s eyes that they had the right man. Fitch’s shoulders sagged, and he looked at the ground, the brim of his hat shielded his face. He drew one long shuddering breath. Dan was afraid to look at Sanders for fear he would say something to ruin this, but Sanders kept quiet. They had Fitch, now. For the first time, they had Fitch.

  Fitch said, as if to himself, “They’ll pay. They will all pay.”

  Dan watched what he could see of Fitch’s face, shadowed as most of it was under the brim of his hat. The beard quivered, and one end of his mustache moved up and down with the twisting of his lips, as if pain and anger coalesced into something greater than the sum of their parts. Dan thought he would be afraid to come in range of that feeling. He said, “They will pay,” and Fitch nodded without looking up, though his mouth relaxed into a steady downward curve.

  “Moral certainty is one thing,” Sanders was saying, “It’s important, vitally important, but it isn’t enough to convict a man of murder. Especially not here.”

  Hereford spoke up. “What if he has an alibi? Does that undo everything?”

  “No.” Dan and Sanders spoke together. Dan said, “False alibis have been constructed by perjured witnesses.”

  “That’s something I can do,” Fitch said. “I can find out if Ives has an alibi. I’ll put Beidler on it, too. He can find out anything.”

  A few men were singing the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” despite the Rebel yells trying to drown them out, and Dan hummed along.

  Sanders said, “We need to know if they have an alibi for Ives, who the witness is, and when the alibi is for.” The men singing the Union anthem had apparently given up as Fitch walked away.

  Sanders said, “I haven’t tried a case before the miners court.”

  “Neither have I,” Dan said. “It doesn’t matter, though. Our job is the usual lawyer’s job. Convince the jury. Get a conviction.”

  “That puts it in perspective.” Sanders rubbed his chin, his close-trimmed dark beard. Everything about him seemed neat, tidy, trim. Nothing wasted. He fell silent, thinking, poked the toe of his shoe at a clod of drying mud.

  Hereford tossed a chunk of wood on the fire, and the fire blazed up.

  Dan, who wished to hell he’d been thinking like a lawyer yesterday instead of like a damn civilian, saw a strategy in the flames leaping against the lightening sky, a three-pronged battle plan. First, discredit the alibi, impeach the alibi witness. Second, nullify the defense’s appeal to the mob, the so-called jury of the whole. Third, bolster their own case. Find witnesses to Ives’s other misdeeds, persuade them to the courage to testify. That depended on tricking the defense into allowing prior bad acts. But how? Sanders asked, and as a log broke in a shower of sparks, Dan saw how simple it was. Let the defense open the door.

  “Yes, I agree.” Sanders look
ed Dan in the eye. “But how?”

  “The devil’s in the details,” Dan said, and laughed. He no longer felt as if they were on the defensive in this trial, but with a plan of attack, sketchy as it was, they were on the offensive. “Let’s go talk to Hilderman.”

  * * *

  Crouched over the sock she was knitting for Timmy, Martha listened to Dotty’s chatter with part of her mind, while she wished for more light than the candle’s unsteady flame. Drat! She had dropped a stitch some ways back, and had to rip out what she’d done. She should have lighted a lamp, but kerosene was so dear, and who knew when the next supply would come in if they ran out? So Martha had wished aloud for an endless and cheap supply of bright light indoors, and that started Dotty wishing, too.

  They had cut up a deer carcass McDowell brought in, and while she scrubbed the table with strong lye soap, Dotty was making a list: real cupboards instead of boxes stacked against the wall, furniture you polished. Mirrors. Boughten soap. Martha didn’t know where the child had come by such notions, except that’s what came of having stores with goods in them from foreign places like San Francisco, or St. Louis. Even New York.

  Now Dotty listed the clothes she’d have, and that scared Martha. People like them had to be content with less. She said, “Child, you’re getting plumb notional. We got food enough, and a roof over our heads, and enough wood and blankets to keep warm by.”

  “But Mam, I want more. I want –” Arms outstretched, she twirled, and her skirt billowed around her, and like the blind man whose eyes shed scales, Martha saw the cabin as it was: Bark coming off unpeeled logs, cold lurking in the corners, waiting for them to bank the fire before it crept into the room, dirt sifting everywhere from the ceiling because the roof was made of saplings overlaid with sod. When it rained, mud dripped onto everything. Martha tried not to think about the spring snow melt.

  “I want more, too.” Martha couldn’t bring herself to scold the child.

  “What do you want, Mam?”

  Martha rested her knitting needles. “A house we can keep clean. Windows that let light in. Mostly, I want to read my very own Bible.” She smiled at Dotty. “At least we have a roof. There’s plenty around here living in caves.” And a good few in the wagons they come in that would be lucky to live through the winter.

  “That’s ’cause they’re greedy.” Dotty eyed the table top. “They want gold more than they want to live.” She picked up the pan of greasy water and threw it out the door.

  Bless the child, Martha said to herself. She had it right. Once they came, men had lit out for the diggings too quick to make proper shelter, and this cabin was a sight better than caves and wagons.

  The child stood in the doorway, said over her shoulder, “Pap’s coming.”

  Martha’s stomach jabbed at her. What could he want? It wasn’t his habit to come home until he needed to eat or sleep.

  With hardly even a howdy, McDowell grabbed his musket off its peg.

  Martha stuck her needles into the ball of yarn. “Where you off to?”

  “None of your damn business, woman, but we’re going to free George Ives.” He hitched his belt up and turned to go out.

  “What for? If he didn’t murder Nick, they’ll find him innocent.”

  “Damn right, and we’re going to make sure they do.”

  He was taking his musket to a trial? Her Sam? He couldn’t. “You’d use the gun to scare folks into freeing George Ives?” She stood up, intending to placate him, laid her hand on his sleeve.

  “Yeah, if needs be. Why? What’re you looking at me that way for, like you seen a – Woman, I’m telling you Georgie couldn’t have killed Nick. Nossir.” He shook her hand off, wiped his mouth on the sleeve.

  “That ain’t the way to do it,” said Martha. “Supposing he did kill Nick?”

  “What the hell do you know about it?”

  “The men that brought in George Ives ain’t crazy.” She didn’t dare say, if Mr. Stark had a hand in this, it was all right; she couldn’t imagine him doing something so wrong as to knowingly hang an innocent man. She started to say it would be best to leave it to the trial, to keep hands off, but she only managed, “It’s best you –”

  “Best? You telling me what’s best?” The skin around her husband’s eyes puckered. “What’s best is you do what I say!”

  Even though what he told her was wrong? Heat prickled Martha’s face, swelled outward from her middle until she wondered how she contained it without exploding, that he would order her to do wrong as though she didn’t have her own conscience to answer to, like it meant nothing God would hold her accountable. Her. With no excuses like My husband told me to do. She could not speak, so many words crowded at her tongue, it couldn’t hold them all.

  McDowell must think she was cowed. “You don’t talk to that damned Dan Stark, either, you hear? He’s in this up to his hair, damn his hide. He’s persecuting George. You get me? He’s their God damn prosecutor.” He yelled, his boots crashed onto the porch, and he slammed the door behind him so hard that the plates jumped in their shelves and dirt sprinkled down from the ceiling.

  Martha’s feet would not carry her to a chair, and she’d gone cold inside, could hardly feel her innards. Mr. Stark. Prosecutor? Mr. Stark was the prosecutor? Her thoughts spun around, top-like. He was prosecuting, and McDowell was taking his musket to frighten the jury into voting Ives innocent. If they did let Ives go, things would go on. Men would shoot their guns on Wallace Street, pick quarrels in the saloons, waylay folks for money. Nick had not been much older than Timmy. If he could be killed for the gold he carried, so could their boy. His own father took his musket, and Mr. Stark prosecuted. Musket. Prosecutor.

  God bless Dan Stark. Martha found she could move, persuade her limbs to bend, and she plumped down onto a chair at the table, rested her head on her arms. God bless Dan Stark. She’d promised herself last night that if she could help him during this trial she would, and she meant that, she’d do it, though she had to be careful with McDowell so dead set –. There came into her mind a memory of Mr. Stark looking at her. She gasped. Her head came up. She stared unseeing into the corner gloom where the bed stood, hers and McDowell’s. Mr. Stark had a feeling for her, and she had a feeling for him.

  Dotty rubbing her shoulders recollected Martha to herself.

  Nothing changed, knowing they had feelings for each other. They couldn’t come to anything. They could not. She couldn’t help these feelings, but she could help what she did about them. She wouldn’t act on how she felt. She would help Dan Stark, if she saw a way. What McDowell aimed at was wrong, but she would do the right thing, for herself, and for the young’uns.

  Martha stood up, hugged her daughter. “I think we’d best go for a reading lesson.”

  * * *

  The new house smelled of pitch, and George Hilderman stank of fear, a sharp odor as of a skunk some distance away. Dan fetched a meat pie from a sideboard, dipped out a cup of beer. When he gave them to Hilderman, the fool came close to tears. He drained the beer, held the cup out to Dan for a refill. “No more. Maybe later.” A nod answered him, but Dan knew he would try to beg more. The American Pie Biter. A foolish man in a country intolerant of fools; a pathetic man in a merciless country. Clowning for pies and drinks, being the center of laughter – all ending in the short days of winter.

  Outside the curtainless windows guards kept the crowd back, but Dan heard rumbling like a cougar’s growl that now and then rose into a snarl.

  The president of the Nevada Mining District, Dr. Don Byam, had loaned them two rooms in his spanking new house to keep the prisoners, and he’d given up his parlor for their interrogations. Dan took his place at a table with Alexander Davis, one of the defense attorneys, and dipped his pen. Davis was new to the Gulch, a Secessionist and an idealist. Though he was only two or three years older, Dan felt ancient beside him. To Alex Davis principle was all; he had not known Nick or seen his body. Dan shuddered. Cold drafts swirled about his neck despite the glo
wing corner stove. If the house was cold now with its new planed wood, how would it keep out weather when siding and joists dried and shrank? Dan warmed his hands at the table lamp that lighted their papers.

  Hilderman gobbled pie, until Sanders ordered him to talk about Nick’s murder, and Dan braced himself to hear it again.

  “I didn’t do nothing.” Eating restored some of Hilderman’s small courage. He stretched out his jaw. When no one smiled, he put it back in place, looking bewildered that his usual gambit failed, that he could not clown and win them to his side and make all this go away.

  “I ain’t done nothing,” he said again.

  “Maybe it’s not what you did, but what you know,” Dan suggested.

  Hilderman squirmed, ducked his head. “I gotta go.”