God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  “You can wait till you’ve talked,” Sanders told him. “You have to save yourself, and we’re the your best hope.”

  “Now wait a minute,” protested the other defense attorney. Dan knew HPA, for Harry Percival Adam, Smith, from boundary cases he had testified in before the miners court. He would not trust Smith for an instant, him being an excellent manipulator of juries. “We should let this man relieve himself, and his counsel should consult with him in private.”

  Sanders and Dan held a silent communication. “One of us will accompany you to guard against coaching him.” Sanders rubbed an eyebrow with his little finger.

  “That’s an outrage!” Davis said. “It’s a man’s right to consult privately with his attorney!”

  “Then do we have your word of honor that you will not tell him what Long John has told us?” If Dan had sized up Davis correctly, the younger man would pledge his personal honor not to divulge Long John’s testimony.

  “You have my word,” said Davis, in spite of Smith’s stammered objections.

  “Very well.” Sanders yawned as if he were too weary to care. “Persuade him to tell the truth.”

  Guards took Hilderman and the two defense attorneys out. Dan paced the room, ten steps across and twelve steps up, with pauses at the stove where Sanders warmed his posterior.

  “Neatly done,” Sanders said. “Do you think he’ll realize what happened?”

  “That he joined with us to deprive his client of information?” Something to smile about. “I’m sure he knows by now, but my intent was to hogtie Smith.” Dan loosened his arms in time with his steps. “Don’t underestimate Smith. He made a strong emotional appeal to the crowd after they convicted Buck Stinson, Ned Ray, and Charley Forbes of John Dillingham’s murder. Smith was the primary defense attorney, and most responsible for freeing them.”

  “Stinson works with Gallagher,” said Sanders, “and Ned Ray is in Bannack, under Sheriff Plummer’s wing. Where’s Forbes?”

  “He met a bad end somewhere in the mountains.”

  “Smith drinks, doesn’t he?”

  “Don’t be fooled by that, either. He should have gone on stage. He plays sober when he wants to manipulate the crowd with tragic pleadings and crocodile tears. As a drunk, his comedy endears him to the jury. Of course, many of them might be three sheets to the wind themselves.”

  “Is that how he won over the Dillingham jury?”

  “Exactly. With the help of crying women.” Beidler had described to Dan the convicted murderers, nooses round their necks, on the way to the gallows, standing in the wagon while the crowd wept and argued with itself and took vote after vote that hours later freed them. One man boasted of voting nineteen times. That must not happen here. He wasn’t aware that he had spoken until Sanders said, “Yes, we’ll have to prevent that.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway. When everyone was ready, Smith brought out his flask. “Our client will tell what he knows, on condition. That you agree to hold him harmless from all punishment.” He took a swallow, smacked his lips.

  “I know plenty about this business.” Hilderman eyed the table where two pies remained. “Being arrested is a hungry thing.”

  “You can have more,” said Dan, “when you’ve told us what you know.”

  “I protest!” Davis said. “It is cruel to starve a man.”

  “We’re not starving him,” said Dan. “We’re just postponing the next phase of his breakfast.” He pointed his index finger at Hilderman. “Talk.”

  Hilderman talked. In the beginning, his account tallied with Long John’s, except for differences in wording. And then: “After Ives and the other two left, me and Long John done our camp chores, and when they come back, Ives told us about it.”

  The other two. Making notes, Dan’s hand jerked, and his pen tore the paper, sank into the pad underneath. A blot spread. Long John had not mentioned anyone but Ives. Sanders’s skeptical eyebrow climbed nearly into his hairline. Dan wanted to stop Hilderman, who rattled on.

  “Ives told us the Dutchman couldn’t believe it, you know, what was happening. He started in to cry, and then he asked for time to pray, so Ives said All right, and he kind of fell off his horse and kneeled down, and took off his hat. Ives was glad of that, on account of it would be easier to kill him because the hat might turn the bullet if he had a bad charge. That happened to him once, and he had to let the man go, but the fella didn’t have any money anyhow so it was all right. He thought that was a great joke, you know, pretending to murder the fella. Told him if he didn’t have money next time, he would kill him. Anyway, the Dutchman folded his hands and bowed his head and closed his eyes like a little kid. When he started the prayer, Ives shot him. One bullet. That’s all it took. He was happy about that.” Hilderman wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Can I have the pie now?”

  “Wait,” said Sanders. “Who were the other two?”

  Dan could not bear to meet Hilderman’s moist, hopeful glance darting from him to Sanders.

  “Aleck Carter and – I don’t know the other fella’s name.”

  “You’re willing to swear under oath that Ives pulled the trigger?”

  “Yeah, that is,” Hilderman’s lips came together, and he squinted at them as he probably thought, with shrewdness. “Only if you promise not to kill me.”

  “Your lawyers and we will decide what’s appropriate.” Sanders nodded to Smith. “He can have another pie, and then go back to his room.”

  It took all Dan’s will to watch Hilderman walk away without shouting that he deserved hanging, damn him, he knew beforehand what Ives and the others would do, he did nothing to try to stop it. He and Long John had colluded with Ives in their cowardice.

  When the lawyers were alone, Smith asked, “Well? What do you say?”

  Dan spoke through his teeth. “We want to re-interview Long John. He didn’t mention other men with Ives, and he said nothing about the prayer.” His voice stumbled on the word, prayer. That son of a bitch, Ives. That bastard, Ives.

  * * *

  “I don’t know.” Long John’s rodent tongue circled his mouth. “Didn’t think of it. Anyways, what’s it matter? Ives killed the Dutchman. Ain’t that enough?”

  Though he corroborated Hilderman’s account of the prayer, they could not budge him on why he had not mentioned Carter, no matter how they flogged him with questions. When they had sent him, complaining of its cold, back to his room, Dan realized one benefit to have come out of all this. He believed Long John. The tall man’s story was strong, and with Hilderman’s corroboration, it went a long way to prove Ives’s guilt. What were they to do about Carter? Dan remembered Beidler saying that Carter was decent. Some men wouldn’t believe he could be party to such a thing. He must talk to Sanders alone, but before he could winkle Sanders away, Davis fired the opening shot across their bow.

  “You can’t use their statements to implicate Ives. They’re hearsay.”

  The younger man looked so proud of himself that Dan almost regretted puncturing his certainty. “No, because Ives told them both, he confessed. Furthermore, each statement implicates the other man as an accessory before the fact.” Ives shot Nick as he began to pray. Dumb Dutchman. Dan felt a tingling in the tips of his ears. He clamped his jaws shut, shook ink off his pen into the ink bottle and laid it down on the blotter as the anger rose, like an ocean wave. He must not give in to it.

  Sanders said, “What my colleague says is absolutely true. We could try all three, and hang them all. However, if these two turn state’s evidence that results in a conviction, we might not hang them.”

  “I don’t know,” said Smith, “that I can put that over. You’re asking us to give up Ives.”

  “Not entirely.” Sanders inspected his fingernails. “The jury might find that even with their testimony and the extrinsic evidence of the mule, we haven’t proved our case.”

  “You’ll agree not to hang them?”

  Again the silent consultation, a lift of an eyebrow, a n
od so slight it could have been a tremor. Sanders said, “Yes, but we’ll recommend banishment.”

  “That’s not good enough. Freedom or no testimony.”

  “For both.” Sanders squared his shoulders, upright on the chair, not resting his back. The commanding officer. “There will be no forgiveness.”

  Dan cleared his clogged throat. His tongue felt stiff. “If either of them comes back, they’ll be shot on sight. If Fitch doesn’t kill them, I will.”

  Davis gasped. “You can’t mean that!”

  “Believe me.” Dan met Davis’s wide shocked eyes, but he was seeing Nick’s faces, the living and the dead. “I mean every word.”

  “You understand how irregular this is?” Davis’s voice trembled. “A prosecuting attorney threatens the life of a defendant? What sort of lawyer are you? You should recuse yourself.”

  “Oh, yes, you’re right. I should step down, leave Sanders to prosecute alone, against you five, with the lives of the entire Gulch hanging – if you will excuse the expression – in the balance. And we should perhaps wait until we have a courtroom, a police force, a jail, a judge who is not a medical man popularly elected, but one who knows the law. We should have a body of law, not just miners court rules. Absent all these things, what would you have us do? Slap murderers on the cheek and tell them not to do it again? Boys will be boys?” He stopped, because he had run out of breath, and because he heard himself shouting.

  Smith said, “If anyone should recuse himself, it’s you, Sanders. You have history with Ives.”

  “Oh? Are you referring to the time he tried to kill me at Rattlesnake Ranch?” Seeing Dan’s surprise, Sanders explained, “I was spending the night there, when Ives came in drunk and tried to get the drop on me.”

  Smith laughed. “There was more to it than that, the way I heard it.”

  “No doubt,” Sanders said. “But my colleague’s statement goes for me, too. Absent a body of law and a legal system, we must do the best we can.”

  Dan had to leave this suffocating house, to breathe fresh air. “Let’s get out of here. We still have to interview Ives.” He gathered up his notes and slung the rifle over his shoulder, heard Davis gasp. Perhaps he would lay a bet with himself how long it would take Davis to carry a gun.

  At the front door, Smith said, “Wait.” He tried to drink from his flask, shook it, put it into a pocket, and from another pulled a bottle of Valley Tan. “All right. I warn you I can’t promise, but this will save the two of them, and besides, we’ll prove Ives could not have done it. He will have an unshakable alibi.”

  As they walked toward the cabin where Ives was being held, Dan and Sanders dropped back, and guards protected them amid the crowd grumbling threats in the growing light. “Why didn’t Long John mention Carter yesterday?” Dan fumed. “We could have brought him in. Now we don’t know where he is.”

  One of the guards, who had black shadows under his red-rimmed eyes, said, “We can find out. You want us to go after him?”

  “Not yet,” said Sanders. “That might only confuse things. If they don’t bring in Carter’s name, we won’t.”

  “Even if they do,” Dan said, “it won’t matter now. Ives pulled the trigger.”

  “But knowing he was there could confuse the issue, can’t you see that?” Sanders temper flared. “How do we know Carter didn’t pull the trigger?”

  Dan’s own irritation rose to meet him. “For Chrissake, because both Hilderman and Long John agree that Ives confessed to killing Nick. So stop worrying.”

  “I can’t,” Sanders said. “You shouldn’t either. We cannot be confident of the outcome.”

  “I know.” Dan’s anger ebbed, until it took some strength to support the rifle on his shoulder.

  * * *

  Nick’s friends kept Ives in a long, low cabin behind the Star Bakery. Coming in from outside, Dan almost gagged at the stench of unemptied night wastes. The shadowed front room, lighted by one table lamp to the right of the door, seemed full of men – Ives, his lawyers, guards. Ives sat on the dirt floor. Light logging chains around his ankles and waist, anchored around the logs of the wall, kept him from standing or lying full length.

  “How do, Sanders,” said Ives. “We meet again, in what you might call trying circumstances.”

  “Ives.” Sanders ignored the pun. He was distinctly cool to the defendant, but what, Dan asked himself, was the proper etiquette when meeting a man who tried to kill you and whom you now prosecuted?

  Smith introduced Sanders to another of the defense attorneys, who wore a Confederate greatcoat. “My esteemed colleague is the Honorable James Thurmond. Mr. Davis you already know. Our other two colleagues are elsewhere, gathering incontrovertible evidence of Mr. Ives’s complete innocence of this dastardly crime.”

  Dan saw how Davis stepped back into the shadows as if dissociating himself from his colleagues. As well he might, if he wanted to acquire a reputation as a good, responsible lawyer.

  Sanders touched Thurmond’s hand just enough for a form of politeness. “Naturally, you would have to take that position,” Sanders said, “considering that you’re being paid to represent them.”

  Thurmond raised his voice. “I resent that. You’re just trying to railroad the boy because he showed you up at Rattlesnake Ranch.” He swung round to Dan, “What are you doing in this case, Stark? Didn’t know you were a lawyer.”

  “Life is full of surprises.” Dan kept his hands in his pockets. He’d be damned if he’d shake hands with anyone who attacked the honesty of his surveys in court, even if everyone did know it was a ploy to win for his client.

  Ives chafed his hands, put them between his thighs. “Sanders is from Ohio,” he told Thurmond.

  “An Oberlin man,” sneered Thurmond. “Niggers and whites sitting together in classes. No decent person would go to school with niggers.”

  Sanders said, “I never set foot in Oberlin College. I’m from Ohio, and Oberlin College is in Ohio, and there it ends. Dammit, what I think about the Negro people is not germane to this case, but your prejudices will do your clients harm with the jury.”

  “Like hell,” snorted Thurmond. “Folks here are Secesh, and they’ll vote Secesh.” He laughed. “In fact, you might as well give up now and let the boys get back to work. No jury in the Gulch would vote with an all-Union prosecution. Never!”

  Damn, thought Dan. Thurmond could be right.

  Sanders fished a candle from a pocket and lighted it from the lamp on the table. He spoke to Ives. “Your attorneys do you no favors trying to play the War card. It would be in your best interests – ”

  Thurmond broke in: “I’ll decide what’s in my clients’ best interests. Don’t believe him, George. They’re out to get you.”

  “We’d like to talk to him,” Dan said. “Outside.”

  Thurmond spoke to Ives. “You don’t have to talk to him at all. In fact, I’d advise you to say nothing. Not one damn word, got it?”

  “I got nothing to say,” said Ives. “I am innocent.” He leaned against the log wall, his coat collar raised against the cold air seeping through the broken chinking. Chains rattled as he folded his arms across his chest. “It’s all a story, Sanders, and it don’t assay pure metal. Fool’s gold is what you’ve got there. I ask you, if I’d done a thing like that, I sure as hell wouldn’t lay up there at Long John’s nice and cozy waiting for someone to catch me, now, would I? I’d have been long gone.”

  One of the guards said in a weary voice, “Shut up, Ives. You been panning that claim all night, and it’s all played out.”

  Cozy? Dan wanted to laugh. A brush wickiup or a bedroll in the snow? Cozy? He had his own perfectly good cabin, not half a mile –. Then, as if a kaleidoscope turned and threw its colored pieces into a new pattern, he saw Ives’s actions differently. If Ives had wanted to hide from the consequences of a crime, he wouldn’t stay home. He’d go where he could expect someone to give him an alibi. But what crime had he been hiding from when Nick rode in?

 
* * *

  “I can’t help thinking it could be important.” Warming himself at the bonfire, Dan hoped no one but Sanders and Hereford could hear him speak over the noise of the fire. “Why was Ives at Long John’s place?”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?” Hereford’s frown seemed to draw his close-set eyes even closer together. “However he came to be there, he was there.”

  “Agreed.” Sanders spread his hands to the heat. “Could he have been visiting? He’s often away, including being at Rattlesnake, drunk, in the middle of the night, trying to kill me.”

  “He did?” Hereford had not heard the story.

  Sanders turned his back to the fire. “I thought so. At least I wasn’t about to await the outcome. I grabbed a shotgun and forced a stalemate.”

  Dan hardly heard him. An idea pecked at the back of his mind, but until it had broken through, he saw no way to explain his instinct that it could be important to know why Ives came to be at Long John’s ranch.