“You know that murder on the main road a couple of weeks ago?”
Bending a degree or two more, as if to hear her better, he smelled mint on her breath. Never perfume so fine. “Yes. Long John testified a while ago that Ives did it.”
“He did?”
Her posture changed, shoulders rounded, and her chin dipped to her breastbone, as if she had braced herself for a difficult task, and found it all for nothing. He wanted to put his finger under her chin and kiss away her disappointment, sought something to say, and found himself explaining hearsay to her when that was furthest from his wish.
She stood straight, tipped her face up to look him in the eye. “I don’t know as how this’ll help, but there’s a woman, Tabby and me, we took care of her boy today, what has the typhus. She, uh, works at Fancy Annie’s, name of Isabelle Stevens. She said that George Ives was bragging there that he done that killing. Said he called himself the ‘Bamboo Chief.’”
“Good God. He bragged about it? To her?” Dan’s mind raced along twisting trails of thought. This corroborated Long John’s testimony, but it was hearsay, too. And the trail branched off into another idea: Ives had bragged about that killing. He had bragged about killing Nick. Did he want fame as a corsair of the road? Like a cheap novel? If so, the trial was making him famous. He was getting what he wanted.
“Not to her. She don’t think he knows she heard him. She said he bragged to a, a – ”
She stammered, as if she were embarrassed, thinking how to describe the situation. “A companion?” Dan suggested, to help her. The blood throbbed in his temples, and he hardly dared breathe. If he was right, this was corroboration and it was not hearsay. He pictured how it might have been, one couple on each side of a flimsy partition on the saloon’s second floor, but the Stevens woman had a crib and didn’t have to use one of the rooms upstairs. Or perhaps she and the man had wanted to be quick, so they used one while Ives and his whore had the other.
“Yes, thank you, he bragged to her that he was the ‘Bamboo Chief’ what done it. The Stevens woman won’t speak up. She daren’t.”
“Of course not.” Good God! Corroboration, indeed! That’s what this was, but not admissible in court unless they found the other man, the man who had been making use of Isabelle Stevens. It didn’t matter that the Stevens woman was too frightened to testify. Nick’s friends had banned women from the jury because women, with their infernal sensibility, had wept and cried over hanging Stinson and the others for Dillingham’s murder, and that gave Smith his chance to manipulate the crowd and free them.
“I guess I didn’t need to come, then,” she said.
“No, why do you say that?”
“Because even knowing about this, there’s nothing you can do with it.”
“No, that’s not true. Do you know the name of the man the Stevens woman was consorting with?”
“I think his name was something like Marvin or Martin. Like that.”
“Maybe we can find him and persuade him to testify about it.”
“I best be getting back. I’m sorry I troubled you with something so useless.”
“No, it’s good you came. It corroborates Long John’s testimony. We’ll look for this man.” And then, somehow, persuade him to testify.
“Won’t it be hearsay?”
His face relaxed into a smile. He felt it, and knew why he smiled, because she was intelligent. Uneducated though she was, she understood the concept immediately. “No. His testimony would not be hearsay, because he overheard Ives. Ives did not tell him. It will be admissible. The judge will accept it without question.”
“All right. Then I guess it’s all right I come – came today.”
He allowed himself to touch her upper arm. “Thank you. You have helped a great deal.”
“I have? I thought you’d – ” She broke off. “Morton. Pete Morton. That’s the man.”
“Thank you!” He could have hugged her, but did not dare because he would not be able to stop himself, the hug, the kiss, the – “I think you are a very courageous woman, and I’m honored to have your acquaintance.” The formal sentence bumped off his tongue, a pale shadow of what he wanted to tell her, as his brief touch had been a mild and unsatisfactory hint of his wishes.
“I should go out first.” As she passed by him, she reached for his arm, as if to steady herself, and her fingers trailed down his sleeve, set fire to his arm. She touched the bandage. “You take care of that, now.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” He waited a time, enough for them to be gone, before he left the barn through the small front door where Jacob waited. His thoughts spun, as if some centrifugal force would throw them from his brain. The flame at her fingertips, why Ives was at Long John’s place, corroboration for Long John’s statement, her small strong arm in his hand, why the trial did not frighten Ives. Because of Thurmond’s error, they could bring in Ives’s previous crimes, and now they had the name of a witness to find. Pete Morton.
Thanks to Martha McDowell.
* * *
Dan and Jacob pushed through the throng in the City Bakery to the counter where meat pies steamed the rounded glass case, and found Fitch waiting for his beef pie to be wrapped in newspaper. Dan said, “Newspaper’s expensive. You could rent that sheet out.”
“Hell, everybody’s read it or they know what’s in it.” A drop dangled at the end of the spindly counter man’s nose. Just when Dan considered that he’d rather go hungry, the man twisted his head and wiped the drop on his shoulder. Another drop formed. “It’s from May 1861. The Rebs fired on Fort Sumter.” He finished wrapping the pie and handed it to Fitch. “I got it memorized, you want to know what happened.”
“I think we know that already.” Dan said.
“Yeah,” the counter man said. “Figured as much.”
Fitch said, “You Yanks should have quit right there.” He gave his poke to a man sitting at a table that held a keg of beer and the scales. The man said, “Not in here, boys. This here’s neutral territory.” He drew beer into a large tin mug.
“I’ll be outside.” Fitch retrieved his poke. A man sitting at a table near the door shouted after him, “Close the goddam door, will ya?” And then got up and slammed it, mumbling, “Born in a barn.” He spat tobacco juice on the floor.
Balancing pie and beer, Dan did not wait for Jacob, but managed the door latch and pulled the door shut on the voice inside, “Shut the … .”
Fitch, standing with some other men around an empty beer barrel, beckoned to Dan. Dan maneuvered pie and beer onto the top of the barrel, folded the paper back from his pie. When he said his name, a corpulent man who wore a well brushed coat at odds with his muddy boots, said, “We know who you are. The prosecutor.”
“Only one of three,” Dan said.
“What happened to your hand?” asked Fitch.
“Stupid accident. Broke my thumb. It’ll be all right in a few days.” Dan took a swig of the beer. “That’s good beer.”
“Yeah,” said the plump man. “Charley Beehrer makes it. His brewery’s just up the road.”
Dan bit into the pie. The air around Fitch and the other men seemed charged, as in the early stages of a thunderstorm, before the turmoil in the clouds has worked itself up, and he wondered if they were Secesh.
Jacob emerged from the Bakery carrying a gray stein of beer. He drank, licked the thick dun-colored foam from his mustache. “Is good beer. Good country, having such good beer.” He beamed at the men, at Fitch, who all smiled and drank to good beer.
“I’d like to talk to you,” said the corpulent man. “I hope you hang Ives.” His chins wobbled as he told a story of robbery at gunpoint in the guise of a “loan,” and threats of death if he ever talked. Another man chimed in, “Wait a minute, there, Ives robbed me, too.” Talk buzzed as men pushed closer to Dan, jostled each other, excited to find other victims of Ives and his friends, spoke at once so that Dan, by now scrawling notes in his pocketbook, called out, “One at a time,” and each man contributed details of strip
es on the blankets that cloaked the robbers and swathed their mounts, horses’ markings: a white coronet on an off hind, a black tail and two white hooves; a notch in a near fore hoof, sure it could have got another notch as its hooves wore, but it also had a crescent of white hairs on the off fore knee. They described the riders’ boots, hats, saddles, and agreed that a man would not give up a hundred-dollar saddle as easy as a twenty-dollar horse. See the saddle and find the man.
Dan recalled the robbery that had been his introduction to the Gulch, and details like pictures came back, above all, a saddle with a metal horn showing through the leather, two broken saddle strings on the skirt and a high Spanish cantle. That saddle was already in his book, more than once.
Scribbling as fast as he could, his pie forgotten, Dan took names, dashed down mnemonics to prod his memory later. He asked each man, “Would you testify?” They shook their heads. The habit of silence was too strong, their fear of the roughs too great, and they were still afraid to talk, to stand up in the witness wagon and be identified.
Walking with Jacob back to court, Dan glanced around him at the crowd. Who was Pete Morton, and would he ever find him, and finding him, would he agree to testify?
* * *
Dan met Sanders and Bagg by the crossed tongues and made a summary report in hushed tones, afraid the defense might overhear. He showed them the pocketbook, the scribbled pages.
“That explains it,” Sanders said, and when Dan raised an inquiring eyebrow, he said, “Listen.”
Voices. Men talking in twos and threes, now and then an exclamation, a curse, bubbling to the surface. The tyger had become merely men who compared notes, kept watch for listeners, spoke in near whispers, but as men had not dared to confide in each other since Discovery brought together thousands of strangers, any of whom might be criminals, who were criminals.
Dan patted the pocket where his notebook rested. Evidence. A prosecutor’s dream.
Sanders said, “We have to meet, later.”
For Judge Byam rang the cowbell, and court was again in session. Dan tried to breathe. Now they must break the alibi. Fitch walked away with George Brown, whom Dan disliked on sight for his air of self-importance.
Dan said, “I need a stick,” and Bagg found him one, opened the knife for him, and relieved him of the Spencer. Curls collected at the end of the stick while Honest Whiskey Joe took the oath. He and George Brown had played cards all day with Ives and Carter and some others when Nick was murdered, on the sixth of December. Ives hadn’t even “pissed by himself,” and he earned a laugh, a small shriek from a woman, and a reprimand from Judge Byam: “We’ll have no gutter language.”
At last Smith said, “Your witness,” and Dan’s mouth dried and a muscle quivered in his thigh as he climbed into the wagon. McDowell swung the shotgun toward him and showed his teeth. Dan swallowed to open his tight throat, and his mind went blank. To gain time, he laid his knife blade against the stick, and made a slice, then another, and men quieted. Listening to the silence spread, Dan sliced a third thin curl, and his mind lurched into motion.
“You testified that you and some other men played cards with George Ives all day.”
“That’s right.”
“Never left him alone for a second.” He concentrated on the stick, on carving the thinnest curls possible.
“That’s right.”
“He didn’t even piss by himself?” Dan smiled and winked at Joe, just us boys here, Joe, we don’t give a damn what the judge says, and Joe lost some of his wariness, came out of his slight defensive posture.
“That’s right.”
“What about you?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
The wink, the smile. “Did you piss by yourself?” Without waiting he asked, “You and Ives always do that together? Look a little odd, wouldn’t it?”
“What? Hell, no. Yeah, I mean, uh, maybe. I guess so. Sure”
“Speak up. Maybe? What do you mean, maybe? Did you do that by yourself or not?” Louder, not looking at Joe.
“Yeah, damn right.”
“Then you didn’t watch Ives all day, every minute, did you? What game were you playing?” The knife stroked the stick, and the curls gathered, and he thought he’d cut them off, one by one.
“Um, stud poker.”
“How many cards?” The curls collected midway from the end.
“Seven.”
“Seven-card stud?” As if it didn’t matter, merely a curiosity on his part.
“Yup. Seven-card stud.”
“You’ve got a good memory.” An expansive gesture with the stick let everyone see the curls bunched at the end. While he waved the stick around and let Joe tell him how good his memory was, Dan considered his strategy. Most wouldn’t know seven-card lingo, so he’d have to explain, but they’d understand the question, and if he explained it to Joe, they’d understand the term, and they’d know that Joe lied, because he’d have to know the lingo to play the game. If he lied.
Dan lied, help me out here, I’m just a poor dumb lawyer. “I don’t know much about seven-card. Five-card stud is my game.”
From the direction of Ives’s log, “Not for long, it ain’t!” Gallagher, or McDowell.
Joe stretched his neck and lifted his chin, preening himself. “Go ahead.”
“Thank you. What is the best combination of hole cards and door card, do you think?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Um, maybe –” He trailed off.
“You don’t know. Do you know what a door card is?”
“Uh, sure. It’s, uh, well, it’s the card that lets you in the door, into the game.”
Dan chopped off a curl. He could feel the silence gather around him. “It’s the first card to show face up. How many cards are dealt before that one?”
“One.”
“You’re wrong. It’s two in seven-card stud. Two hole cards.” Dan whacked off two more curls. “All right, maybe you don’t know the lingo. Doesn’t matter. What was your highest bet?”
The witness shifted his feet, his head sank into his coat collar. “Five dollars?”
“Are you asking me? I wasn’t there. Tell me, what was your highest bet?”
“Five dollars, I guess.”
“You guess? You guess? You can afford to lose five dollars on one bet? You’re a richer man than I am. How many hole cards in seven-card stud?”
“Two, like you said. Two.”
“Wrong again.” Another curl floated downward. “Three. There are three. Three hole cards. When is the third hole card dealt?”
A shrug, and silence.
“On the last deal. The fifth. How much did you win?” Dan cut off two curls. If he didn’t slow down, he’d run out of curls.
“I forget.”
“You forget? I never forget how much I win. Or lose.” Dan waited for laughter to fade. “Did you win?” He hacked off a curl.
“I lost.” Honest Whiskey Joe mumbled.
“You lost?” Dan almost shouted. “You lost, but you stayed in that poker game all day? Why not fold?”
“I won some.”
“Glad to hear it. How much did you win?” Another curl lopped off.
“I don’t know. I didn’t count it.”
“You don’t know how much you won? You didn’t count it? Not once, these last two weeks?”
“I lost it again.”
“Did you even play?” The knife slashed at the curls, and Dan yelled, “You don’t know how many hole cards are in seven-card stud. You don’t know what a door card is, though you played seven-card stud all day. You don’t know if you won or lost! I say you’re lying about all this!”
“I ain’t lying! I played cards. Maybe not seven-card stud, but something else.”
“Tell us! What did you play? Come on, tell us.”
“I – Maybe five-card stud.”
“How many hole cards in that game?”
“Uh, two.”
“Wrong, there’s only one. How many cards are dealt?”
/>
“Five. Yeah, five.”
“What’s the highest hand you can have?” He cut another curl.
“A flush.”
“Wrong. You don’t remember what you played, you don’t know anything about the games you say you did play.” Dan sliced off the last curl. He could feel all the eyes on him, and he shouted, “What were you doing on December seventh?”
“What?”
“December seventh. What were you doing?”
Honest Whiskey Joe craned his neck to make eye contact with the defense, but Dan shifted, and the knife gashed at the stick. His world contracted into thirty-six square feet of wagon bed, and the wood chips dropping fast as rain.
God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana Page 19
