God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  “Your uncle Edgerton?” Bagg asked. “The Territorial Chief Justice?”

  Thurmond laughed, one short, angry syllable. “That radical abolitionist. Rabble rouser. Lincoln’s appointee.” He spat, and Dan seized Sanders’s upper arm, under the cape of his blue greatcoat, and felt hard muscles tensed for action.

  Bagg said, “We’re in a legal vacuum. We have no governing body of law by which to conduct a case.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Smith.

  Feeling Sanders relax, Dan let him go. “As I see it, we’re marooned, so to speak, by both the mountains and by Congress’s oversight. We can’t send a man to Lewiston, five hundred miles across the Divide in winter, to wait for the Legislature to go into session and rule on this.”

  “We can’t hold the prisoners here for weeks while they argue about which set of laws we operate under.” Bagg shook his head as if regretting the situation. “Why, the California boys would want to put in an alcalde and go by Spanish law.” He inclined toward Thurmond. “Seems hardly fair to your clients.” When Thurmond would have blustered, Bagg’s voice, under silken sails, cruised by him. “I consider we should try them by Common Law. Of late we in the South have had considerable experience with it.”

  “What in hell does this mean?” Fitch demanded.

  Dan whispered an explanation behind his hand. “When the South repudiated the U.S. Constitution, they set up the Common Law in its place until they could write their own governing paper. It is the foundation of the Confederate Constitution.” He had no intention of telling Fitch, or letting on to any Secessionist that while using the Common Law appeared to give the defense the advantage, it underlay the U. S. Constitution as well. Union lawyers were likely to be as well versed in it as the Confederates.

  Thurmond began to argue for postponing the trial until the Legislature should have met. Smith and Davis led him aside. Dan watched them gesture at each other, Smith touching his lips to his bottle, Thurmond’s arms flailing the air, Davis gesturing with his hands palms down, go quietly.

  Fitch ended the argument. “The hell with this,” he roared at Thurmond. “My boy lies in his grave, and my friend sits accused. Bagg is one of us. Get this trial going!”

  “All right!” shouted Thurmond. “We’ll use the Common Law. It’s as close to the Confederate Constitution as we can get.”

  The crowd cheered, as much because the trial was about to get under way at last as because the Confederates appeared to have the advantage. Under the noise, Dan thought fast. Fitch had been able to end the stalemate because he was known as a friend of Ives, and apparently the defense did not know of his change of heart. Dan resolved to talk to him, privately, just to feel him out. Perhaps Fitch knew or could learn something more of Ives’s activities. Not that they would be admissible unless the defense opened the door, but it would be useful to know more about the charming gentleman Ives seemed to be. For Dan, out of his own inner certainty, thought of Pemberton and other respectable men who believed in Ives’s innocence. He had a hunch there might be two George Ives, and he wanted to know more of the other one.

  * * *

  In measured fashion, as of an academic procession at Harvard College, or a promenade of dignitaries of the State, armed guards cleaved the cheering crowd to make way for Ives, a prince in stately progress greeting his subjects, who shuffled forward, light logging chains on his ankles, carrying the loose ends in his hands, like the ghost of Jacob Marley.

  People shouted after him: “We’ll get you out of this, George!” “Never fear, Georgie!” “Hey, George, stiff upper lip!”

  How could Ives act so nonchalant? Didn’t he understand the danger? Or could he simply not believe in it? Did he think these people would free him? Dan swore inwardly: Perhaps they would do just that.

  A steady muttering of obscenities sounded in Dan’s ear. He must speak with Fitch. Drawing him off toward the crossed wagon tongues, Dan spoke softly. “You found out about the alibi. Could you and X find anyone else who has reason to hate Ives?”

  “Why?” Fitch turned his head to spit, but his eyes never left Dan’s face.

  “Because most people seem to believe he’s a good fellow. But I have a hunch that there’s a lot about Mr. Ives that people aren’t telling.”

  While Fitch thought about it, a fancy woman called out, “Come see me when you’re free, Georgie! I’ll show you a real good time!”

  Fitch was watching over Dan’s shoulder, but Dan did not turn around as Ives’s voice came to them. “I’ll be there, honey. Hey, Tom, get ready to lose that poke to me when this is over! Bob, you old son of a bitch, you came for the show, did you? You still got that hat you borrowed? I’ll need it when we’re done here.”

  “They make me sick,” Fitch said. “I’ll do it, and I’ll set X to it, too.” About to step over the small barrier, he paused. “What if I can’t find anybody?”

  “You will. Ives has extorted money from men at gunpoint. He calls it a loan, only he never pays it back.”

  Fitch sucked on a tooth. “Sounds like highway robbery to me.”

  “It is, but no one has had the guts to make him pay it back.” Ives never pays for anything. “He’s done it in town, on Wallace Street, in front of people.”

  “And nobody did anything? What, did all the cowards in the country come here?”

  He was no better than any of them. Dan gazed into the fire, and saw his own cowardice dancing in the flames. “Maybe some people think there are more important things than proving their courage.”

  “Yeah? Such as what, perchance?” Fitch’s voice held a contempt rich and thick as butter.

  “Survival, maybe.” Dan was telling himself that to take the gold home to the family was the supreme duty. Survive so that the family would survive after Father had destroyed it along with himself. Beside that, what did his personal courage, or cowardice, matter?

  “Hell.” Fitch spat yellow-brown tobacco juice through a gap in his lower teeth. “Cowards don’t survive. Survival takes courage, and the sooner folks learn that, the better.”

  * * *

  Dan watched the group around Ives, who half-turned to smile at Johnny Gibbons, bent over him, with his hand on Ives’s shoulder. Gallagher brooded over them both, glanced from friend to guard to friend, as if gauging the chances of a rescue. His face settled into downward lines, and dark pouches sagged under his eyes. His open coat revealed the thumb of his right hand hooked over his pistol grip. McDowell loomed beside him, shoulders hunched in a fighter’s pose, his chin thrust out. His hatred leaped out to scorch Dan like an errant flame escaping the fire, and he lifted his middle finger. Gallagher smiled.

  Dan’s blood seemed to thicken in his veins, and everything moved as through gumbo – men walking, Judge Wilson beckoning to Sheriff Hereford, Bagg scratching through his mop of hair, Pemberton peering at his ink bottle to see if the ink were dry or frozen. Not McDowell, but Gallagher. Dan feared Gallagher’s smile more than McDowell’s finger. No one had ever hated him so much before. Gallagher would kill him the first chance he got. An open challenge, a bullet through a window.

  Gibbons laughed. “I hear old Morris has got his windows fixed. You can try my horse, George, see he’s trained as good as yours.”

  “Wasn’t that just a sight?” Ives chortled. “Damn kike run out like his ass was burning. Wanted me to pay for the goddam windows!”

  Sanders asked Dan a question. Dan had to ask him to repeat it, made himself concentrate on it and on his answer while Ives and his pals laughed. George Ives never paid for broken windows, never paid back loans extorted at gun point. George Ives never paid for anything.

  Until now, Dan promised Nick. Until now.

  Yet he watched Ives’s pals swagger, thumbs hooked in their belts to hold their coats open and show their pistols and knives, and amid the fluttering in his belly he wondered, if Ives hanged, would any of Nick’s friends live? He shook his head. Too late to think of that. It had already been too late when he looked on Nick’s dr
eadful dead face.

  * * *

  Judge Byam climbed into the green wagon, and shook the cowbell to begin the trial. The prosecutors walked to the wagon’s front wheel. Dan’s right triceps twitched and would not be still. He paused at the recorders’ flimsy table to thank them for their service to the cause of justice.

  “Listen up, boys!” Byam’s tenor voice pierced the milling hubbub. The men quieted. “Settle down and let’s get to work.” He beckoned to the three prosecutors to stand in the wagon with him and Judge Wilson.

  No. Dan did not want to stand in that wagon and make himself an easy target. It was different for Sanders and Bagg. They were soldiers, they were accustomed to being shot at. Not him. There were two prosecutors; they did not need a third. He could resign. He would resign. He picked up a fresh stick, and thinking of resignation, he grabbed hold of the armrest on the driver’s box, put his boot on the hub, and leaped up, his legs obeying in spite of him.

  The crowd spread across and up the road and down, swelled and shrank at the edges, as people milled about, edged through to hear better, see better, find their friends, avoid their enemies. Perhaps 1,500 men, with a few women. Little boys played tag through newly melted puddles, their whoops echoing around Dan’s ears. To hide the quivering of his nerves, he brought out his pocket knife, turned the wood over as if looking for a suitable place to begin, scraped off a piece of bird dung, and drew the blade down.

  Byam shouted, “I declare this court in session!”

  Thurmond ran forward. “Not so fast! We got to talk this over. We got a lot of Californians here. We should be fair to them and appoint an alcalde!”

  The son of a bitch had broken their agreement. Dan said to himself, shit, it would be a very long day.

  Bagg stood forward, and his voice carried to the farther edges of the crowd. “Boys, the honorable counsel for the defense says what we got for a miner’s court ain’t good enough. You elected Judge Byam, and Judge Wilson, over in Junction. You want an alcalde to take over this here trial? I say we go by Common Law, the same as the Constitution of the Glorious Confederacy.”

  The crowd cheered. The honorable counsel. Echoes of Marc Antony’s sarcasm at Caesar’s funeral in Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar. Brutus is an honorable man. Bagg’s sarcasm painted Thurmond as honorable as Brutus.

  Judge Byam swung the cowbell. “That settles it! We won’t have an alcalde. Judge Wilson and I preside, and I declare this trial by Common Law.” His chin jutted out, the goatee pointed toward Thurmond: Don’t trifle with me.

  Dan leaned over the sidewall. “Did you get that?” he asked the note-takers. Their hat brims waggled up and down.

  “Hey!” Someone from the crowd stood behind the wagon and called up to Judge Byam, who could not hear him over all the noise. He rang the cowbell, but when the shrill clanging quieted the crowd, the speaker was gone. “Probably wasn’t important.” Raising his voice, he bellowed: “Simmer down, you men! We got to decide on the jury.”

  Smith and Thurmond jumped up. “Jury of the whole!” Ives’s friends took up the cry: “Jury of the whole!” and the crowd made it a chant: “Jury of the whole!”

  Wooden curls accumulated like the questions in Dan’s mind. Jury of the whole? Hell. Mob jury was more like it. Drunks to decide justice for Nick? They must have a formal jury. The crowd would never agree. How to break the impasse, prevent the defense from appealing to the mob? His mind whirled among the questions.

  Thurmond and Smith stalked back and forth, while Davis and the other defense attorneys applauded, and the roughs shouted as if to a drumbeat: “Jury of the whole!”

  Dan’s knife flashed like a distant signal sending a message, and an idea emerged. He drew Sanders and Bagg toward him. This just might work.

  * * *

  Sitting across from each other at Lydia Hudson’s back table, sipping now and then at hot sweet drinks in speckledy tin cups, Martha and Dotty played the alphabet game. Lydia had made it up for them, it pinned letters onto Bible words, starting with A for Almighty all the way to Z for Zachariah. It was Dotty’s turn to recite again, but her mind wasn’t on it, until Martha reminded her that she had to know her letters or Professor Dimsdale wouldn’t take her into his school in January. Didn’t she want to go with her friend Molly Sheehan?

  Dotty began again with a deep sigh.

  Kerosene lamps glowed over their flower-painted bowls, but it was the sounds that comforted Martha: the colored gal and Lydia chopped potatoes and canned beans for tonight’s stew, the puppy’s teeth chawed on a bone, Albert sawed at the hip joint of a frozen elk carcass. Dotty’s voice piped the letters and their words being the tune. Everything blended like the harmony in music, that ran in Martha’s mind, in and out, in and out –

  “Mam? Mam?” The young’un was tapping her hand. “What comes after Q for Queen Esther?”

  Without peeking at the slate, Martha said, “R for Rebecca,” and went on to name all the letters, so’s she would know she knew them, her memory having failed before on M for Martha. Of all things. She wished she could spur her brain on faster.

  Dotty finished saying the letters, and Martha drove her through them one more time before she allowed as to how the young’un could go play with the puppy. Canary growled everyone away when he had a bone, but this little dog welcomed Dotty with happy tail thumps.

  A draft of cold air and a squeak of wood behind Martha told her the door was opening, but by the looks on Tabby’s and Lydia’s faces something wasn’t right. McDowell? Here? Martha scrambled to turn and put her feet on the floor.

  Lydia said, “We are not open.” Her voice, that was mostly warm and welcoming, held no welcome in it, though it was civil enough. “We haven’t begun serving dinner yet.”

  Growling, the puppy abandoned his bone, and stood up, the hairs lifted along his spine.

  “Hold the dog,” Lydia told Tabby, but Dotty already had both arms around the puppy’s neck. Albert rested the cleaver on the rib of the elk. Tabby went on chopping, only faster.

  Them two fancy women, Helen Troy and Isabelle Stevens. Martha put her skirt to rights and kept her seat. The women wore the bright sleazy dresses of their trade, that wouldn’t keep a louse warm. Their faces were pinched and gray.

  “We didn’t come for dinner,” said Helen Troy. “We come for help.”

  Wasn’t for their gray faces Martha might have laughed, at the thought of them two coming to Lydia for anything but a meal.

  The Stevens woman sniffed, and dabbed at her eyes with her bare hand, but tears dropped one by one onto her bosom and stained the shiny fabric. Helen Troy took a clean square of cloth from her net bag and gave it to the Stevens woman, guided her to sit down.

  “What kind of help?” Lydia asked.

  “It’s my boy.” Words struggled against Isabelle Stevens’s sobs. “He’s sick. All of a sudden like. Powerful sick. We can’t find a doctor.” She gulped and covered her face, said in a muffled wail, “He could die!”

  Without them saying it, Martha knew. Typhus. Dear Lord.

  Helen Troy said, “They’re probably over at Nevada City, where they’re fixing to lynch Georgie.” She stared at Martha. “At least your husband went with Gallagher to put a stop to it.”

  So that was why they had come here. On account McDowell drank in her saloon, spent what dust they had to no good, went to Nevada to save a murderer. Martha thought, was she always to be known by her husband’s doings? If George Ives killed poor Nick, he deserved what he got, he’d made his own bed, but these women never figured her to be different from McDowell. On account he went to Nevada. Serve them right, was she to say No.

  No to these no-count women and that nasty boy. No.

  The Stevens woman uncovered her face, tears run through the paint, mixed black and rouge. She hiccupped. “I’d be obliged if you’d look to him.”

  Her sorrow, her terror for her son touched Martha. This – this easy woman was a mother same as her, and the Bible said, Comfort ye the afflicted. Mar
tha shuddered, almost overcome by shame. She wanted to hide under the bench, hide her sinful face so the world didn’t know how she’d had such a thought as to let Jacky Stevens die. Dear Jesus, forgive me. “I’ll come.”

  * * *

  The muttering crowd seethed in the street, shouted an occasional restless opinion. Judge Byam rang the cowbell and yelled for order. “Listen up, all of you!” He coughed. “Drat. If I have to shout all day, I won’t be able to talk for a week.”

  Dan, concentrating on the voices, returned some sort of reply. There was something he should hear, some key to their thinking, that if he could discover it, the prosecutors might unlock their sentiments and turn them toward a result that yielded justice. Because soon they would have a crucial vote on his idea.