God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  Pretending that she had been hesitating over stay or go, Martha said, “All right, but you do the washing up when we get home.”

  X Beidler slid over to make room between him and Mr. Stark. “Sit here, Mrs. McDowell.” So Martha felt she had no choice but to step in between them with a prayer that McDowell or one of his friends would not take a notion to eat at Ma’s tonight, though once she was settled with her cloak folded across her lap, she thought if he did come in it would be worth enduring his wrath just to be feeling the friendly warmth coming from this man whose pain had carved lines from his nose around the corners of his mouth.

  It pleased her how the young’uns, tucking into their pie across the table, looked happy at her staying. They did so like Mr. Stark.

  There wasn’t much conversation, everyone being content with their own thoughts, mostly, until by ones and twos, the Eatery emptied out, and the men around Mr. Stark began to talk about the trial. A word here and there, a grunt from X Beidler, until Martha could tell who had come from the trial, and with a chill up her backbone she realized without anyone having to say it that these men, except Jacob Himmelfarb, were Mr. Stark’s bodyguard. He needed a bodyguard. Or X Beidler thought he did, which amounted to the same thing. And with another of those flashes of understanding like she sometimes got, that had McDowell scoffing that she couldn’t possibly know what she did know, she knew Mr. Stark needed a guard because of Gallagher and McDowell. Her own husband.

  Dear Jesus, what happened there today? For they were both in mortal danger, not of their lives, but in danger of doing something awful. Lord, keep them both. Keep them in Your care.

  A man sitting at the front table called out, “Are you having a second day of it?”

  “Yes, we’re hearing witnesses tomorrow.”

  His companion said, “You’ll never get anyone to testify against George Ives. People are either too scared of him and his crowd, or they just don’t believe he’d do that.”

  “That’s right. Ives couldn’t kill anyone,” said the first man. “All them hijinks he gets up to, that’s all they are. Hijinks. Hell – begging your pardon, Ma’am, he’s just full of high spirits. Boys will be boys, you know.”

  Before she could give him a look that only a mother knew how to give, Tim threw one leg over the bench and snapped, “Maybe some boys would shoot up a dog, mister, or call a holdup a loan, but we ain’t all like that. Nossir.”

  “I think it’s time to go. There’s still work to do.” Mr. Stark got to his feet, and let Jacob Himmelfarb help him with his coat. He held his gloved left hand toward his shoulder.

  Beidler, his chin out, said, “Sanders could testify that he’s capable of murder. Ives almost killed him over at Rattlesnake.”

  “There’s two versions of that story,” said the man who thought Ives’s actions were boyish pranks.

  “There usually are,” Beidler said, “but I’ll take Sanders’s word for it.”

  “Yeah,” said the man, “you Yanks always stick together.”

  “And you Rebs never do?” Beidler took a step toward the man, but Lydia stepped in front of him, said to them both, “Take that outside, do thee hear?” and Albert reached for the pistol he kept by the scales.

  Martha said to Mr. Stark, “You’ve hurt your hand.”

  “Dislocated the thumb, but Dr. Byam put it back.”

  “Mind if I look at it?” She didn’t know why she should, except that with a dislocated thumb back where it belonged, it shouldn’t hurt like it did.

  He hesitated, she knew because taking off the glove would pain him so.

  “Did he put anything on it?” she asked.

  “No, just put the glove on. He said to leave it on till it’s better.” His eyes pleaded with her not to insist, but she braced herself against the necessity to cause him pain, because she had a certainty.

  Lydia said, “I have some unguent that’ll do it good. Help it heal faster.”

  “We’d best bind it up, too, hold it in place,” Martha said.

  He hesitated, and she knew he was trying to decide did he trust her that much, to take off the glove and bind his hand. She felt the heat of him, smelled his clean breath. His eyes were a clear green, like grass in June. Someone coughed. His head snapped up as if he had bent toward her. “Yes, thank you, kind of you.”

  He was sweating, and so was she, but not from the stove’s heat.

  Lydia hurried away, all her flounces bobbing.

  Martha said, “You best sit down while I take this off.”

  He removed his coat, laid it on the bench.

  She sat close beside him, took his arm into her lap. This close to him, she breathed in his smell, that did not make her want to pull away. She guessed he washed oftener than most men, certainly oftener than McDowell. She clamped his arm to her side with her elbow, and started in to work the glove off of his hand as gentle as she could. Her hands felt trembly because it was Mr. Stark and because his friends were watching. The leather was black and supple, and had a soft fur lining. She hoped she would not have to cut it, because how would he get another one, let alone one as good as this? She paused to let him get ready for what came next, and glanced up to see how bad it was for him. Muscles bulged at his lower jaw, but he took a deep breath, held it, and nodded to her. The trust in his eyes, though he knew it would hurt, made her want to weep, but she dared not, for fear of not seeing clear.

  When the glove came away, his chest rose and fell as he let out a slow breath. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be.” Then Martha was conscious of his arm muscle at her breast. Her face was hot, and she could not look at him, though she managed to say, “Bad enough, no doubt.”

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  He was bruised black around the thumb and across the back of his hand and into the palm. There was a bump above the thumb joint where there didn’t ought to be one. Even touching it like a feather, she felt his whole arm stiffen, heard the short indrawn breath.

  She pointed at bump. “That bone’s busted.”

  Lydia was there with a squat brown jar and a roll of bandage. “I can see it. Shall thee put it back or shall I?”

  Martha could not bear to hurt him any more. “Don’t matter. I’m here already, so I’ll hold it and you put it back.” She tightened her grip on his arm and hand, held the hand on her knee. The muscles under his sleeve were so tense they felt like a chunk of wood. “Hold still.” She felt sorry for him, being a man, because men seemed to feel pain more than women did, probably because they were spared birthing babies. She wondered why Dr. Byam hadn’t set this little bone but just put the glove back on, and Lord it was hard to do for a loved one when you had to hurt him, and why did she think of him as a loved one because he never could be never ever but dear God how she hated to give him hurt.

  It was done. She pressed the arm tight to her side and kept his thumb in place while Lydia smeared on the unguent and wrapped it snug real careful, oh as gentle as she could. When it was over, Martha could look at him again. He was pale, and he took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, but his eyes were calm. He was no baby about being hurt.

  His arm relaxed, and he smiled. “That was worse in the anticipation than in the fact.”

  She had let go his hand and relaxed her arm so he could pull away, but he let his hand go on resting on her knee, his arm against her breast. She licked her lips. “Are you wanting the glove on again?”

  “Not yet. If it gets cold, I’ll put it in my pocket. You’ll only be taking it off to check the healing.”

  “Yes,” said Martha, happy knowing she had a ready-made reason to see him again.

  “Keep that hand up.” Lydia reached out a hand, and Jacob Himmelfarb helped her up from where she knelt on the floor. She thanked him and brushed the dirt off her skirts.

  “We’d best make a sling.” Martha lifted her arm, and he pulled away, but she felt like he had hold of her somewheres in such a grip that she’d couldn’t free herself. She’d never known a
nything like this happiness, it was too big inside her, and it was all mixed up with misery. Worst of it was, she could see in his face, the way his mouth relaxed, that he, too, was asking himself, What in God’s name would they do now?

  4: Alder Gulch: Nevada City

  Martha led Tabby down Idaho Street, cut behind a livery, past a small mountain of horse manure, to the Stevens woman’s crib behind Fancy Annie’s. Folks called these small cabins cribs because they were not built for living, just for bedding. Given her druthers, she’d bide to home, but when the Lord gave her the gift to tend the sick, He’d included this boy, whose meanness could someday put his head in a noose.

  Hoping they’d chewed enough juniper berries to guard them against contagion, Martha knocked. The Troy woman opened the door, and a putrid stink flowed out. Martha shrank away. The Troy woman’s eyelids, red as strawberry juice, stood out against her bleached skin. She looked as bad as if the boy was her own, thought Martha, crossing the threshold. With no windows, a lamp standing on an eating table lighted some of the front part, and a candle on a shelf glimmered down onto a brass bed that took up the whole back part.

  Martha made out the Stevens woman holding her boy across her lap while he vomited into a basin on the floor. Her voice could have sawed wood. “Took you long enough. Jacky’s awful bad.”

  Folding her cloak over the back of a chair, Martha took a candle from her ditty bag and lighted it at the lamp. Not until she replaced the chimney could she speak calmly, against her own feelings. “It’s the typhus. Now, you do what I tell you, or he could die.” The woman gasped. Martha put on her biggest apron, that covered most of her dress except the sleeves. As she rolled them up, she frowned at Helen Troy. “You fixin’ to be useful?”

  “Yes. What do I do?” The Troy woman braced herself with one hand on a chair’s back.

  Martha hadn’t seen much of any cooking utensils at all, nor a trunk for storing extras, only a chest of drawers between the table and the wall. Where did the boy go when his mama was – it didn’t bear thinking about. “Boil up a couple buckets of water, and bring us some cook pans and a few jars to put medicines in. Clean blankets and clothes for the boy.”

  “I’ll boil water on the big stove in the saloon, and send someone back with blankets and pots.” Helen Troy paused at the door. “Don’t know about clothes, less some of the men can chip in.”

  “Leave the door open,” Martha said, and when the Stevens woman protested that the boy would catch his death, Martha rounded on her. “We’ll suffocate if we don’t!”

  The boy’s spasm of vomiting ended. Silent tears flowed down his mother’s cheeks, like a small child expecting someone to wipe her face.

  Coughing took the boy, and dark fluid dribbled down his chin, that Martha prayed was not blood. She sorted through her bag, smelled the herbs. Barberry, what Berry Woman called Oregon grape, to stop the bleeding and the runs. Milkweed for coughing. Prince’s pine to make him sweat and get rid of poisons.

  When Tabby thrust a piece of cloth at her, the Stevens woman recoiled. “I don’t want niggers here.”

  “You don’t want niggers?” Tabby dropped the cloth on the bed. “Fine. I got enough work to do.”

  “If she goes, I go, too,” said Martha. “Make up your mind, and hurry up about it.” It was a hard thing to speak so to this scared mama, but Martha needed Tabby’s help.

  The Stevens woman hunched her shoulders. “All right. I guess.”

  “Hmph.” Tabby set to tie on her apron.

  Martha, wrapping her hair in a kerchief, spoke to Tabby, “This will be as ugly as can be, but I’m right happy for you being here.”

  “I seen ugly afore. All slaves do,” Tabby said.

  Martha put a few drops of the juice of crushed juniper berries on three kerchiefs, tied one around her own nose and mouth, and gave the others to Tabby and the mother. “Sit you there.” She pointed to the two chairs at the table, and to her surprise, the Stevens woman did as she was told.

  They weren’t done with hearing her, though. When Martha and Tabby rolled the boy into a less soiled blanket and laid him on the floor next the stove, the mother howled that he wasn’t no dog to lie on the floor. When they dragged the mattress, crawling and soaked with vomit and diarrhea, she screamed, “It’s the only one we got!” When they ripped off the boy’s foul clothing, she shrieked, “You can’t do that!”

  “What do you want?” Martha rounded on her. It was more than a body ought to stand, this place, the disease of filth, and this woman who sold herself to men that used her anyhow. One fist on her hip, she said, “These rags, or your boy? Choose. Now. Or we walk right out that door.”

  Martha astonished herself at being so hard, but the Stevens woman put up her hands. “Jacky. Save Jacky. Save my baby boy.”

  “That’s better.” Begrudging her any comfort, Martha thrust the squirming rags at her. “Burn them.” Timmy had a shirt or two and a pair of trousers he’d outgrown. She’d bring them next time.

  Without speaking, his mother put the rags into the stove. When Martha and Tabby stripped the boy, he covered his parts with his hands, and cursed them for looking at his secrets. Martha mimicked a laugh. “You got no more secrets than a great baby.” She wanted to whale his bare behind, but a sick child –

  His mother jumped from her chair and slapped his face, twice, rocking his head back and forth. “Shut up, you little bastard, and show some respect to someone’s trying to save your ugly life.”

  Martha’s hands trembled so she could hardly shave soap into them, and Tabby dipped water over them and her own before Martha could say, “See where your friend got to, why don’t you?” When the Stevens woman had gone, Martha felt as weary as if she’d been here all day. “No wonder the boy’s mean,” she whispered to Tabby. “Amen,” said the darky.

  Martha wiped the boy’s face with a clean damp rag. “Your mama’s scared. It takes some folks that way. She’s scared because you’re sick, but you’ll be fine if you do what you’re told.” While she washed him, Tabby cut his filthy hair, and he lay staring upward, eyes huge above the marks of his mother’s hand.

  The Stevens woman brought two men who carried buckets of hot water and a pile of blankets. They were not clean, but no one had vomited on them. Or worse. They wrapped the boy up, and he submitted without speaking. Afterwards, the men took away the other blankets, and the Stevens woman crouched by her son, stroked his head, and crooned to him, a wordless song, like he was her baby again.

  While Tabby went outside to burn the mattress, Martha set to work to make the teas, and Helen Troy brought a basket of bottles and jars. “Sorry it took me so long. I washed them up.” When Martha asked if she could read and write, she said, “I know enough to keep track of business.”

  “I’ll tell you the recipes, and you write them down.”

  “I have a ledger book in my office,” said Helen Troy. “I’ll get it and be right back.”

  When the door slammed behind her, the Stevens woman said, “I can do that. You show me how and I can make them. I can’t read or write, but if you tell me I’ll remember.”

  It wouldn’t hurt to tell them both, one to remember and one to write. “You got to recollect them careful-like, on account of the wrong dose might cause more sickness.” Martha peered at her to be sure she understood. “This Oregon grape, now. Use too much of it, and it turns on you and makes everything worse.” She explained all of them, the milkweed, the tonic of prince’s pine, how to make them, when to give them and in what quantities. She finished, “Don’t let him eat food at all until at least two days after he stops throwing up.”

  The Stevens woman offered no arguments, no spitting curses. She asked questions and repeated everything until she had got it all right. “I’ll do it. You just see.”

  “I expect you will, at that.” Martha rummaged in her bag. “These are juniper berries. You chew them, three or four about every three hours, but no more than ten in a day, and they’ll keep the sickness off, but you got t
o clean yourself up, too.”

  “I will,” said the Stevens woman. “Thank you.”

  Martha watched her feed the boy a bit of the prince’s pine tonic. Then, needing air, she left her to watch the teas, and went outside. “You doing all right?” Tabby nodded. Martha lowered the kerchief from her mouth. “This place stinks of sin and sickness, both.”

  “We about done?” Tabby poked at the mattress to make it burn faster. “I ain’t liking it no better.”

  “When the Troy woman comes back and I give her the recipes to copy down and some of the plants. I want to watch the Stevens woman give the teas, too. Maybe another half hour.”

  Tabby poked the mattress. “You took care of them, right enough. Miz Hudson say you ain’t stupid.” Her voice was flat, like telling Martha her petticoat showed, and the remark was so unlooked for that Martha wondered did she hear right. Tabby added, “I guess she’s right.”