God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  “Why?” Dan slung the rifle. Beside him Jacob’s hoarse breath scraped out and in.

  “On account you in need of guarding, we figure. Folks mostly think twice about messing with me.” He moved forward, in the moonlight looking even larger than he was, a black man six feet tall, who could carry on his shoulder a barrel that Dan would have to roll on edge.

  A bullet is so small a thing to bring down a man sizeable as an oak. Thinking that, Dan wondered where he had read it. “Thank you, Albert.”

  “You welcome, sir,” Albert said.

  Albert would never know how welcome his help was. Dan, to his shame, was afraid. Not because of threats and evil gestures, though those were frightening enough. But something unseen, unheard? Blake’s tyger. An unidentified evil. Unrealized until last night’s meeting in John Creighton’s store, when Dan and Sanders had pooled their information while Creighton and another merchant, Paris Pfouts, asked hard questions. Creighton had sketched a chart of dates and locations of armed robberies and known murders, and they had noted descriptions of blankets, gloves, horses’ markings, types of weapons, features of tack. Listed places where corpses had been found. Organized a list of men whose friends missed them, whose families had written to inquire for them. When the work was done, they saw how blankets, saddles, markings recurred, and they had reached an awful conclusion: A criminal conspiracy operated in the region. Somehow well informed, the robbers knew who would travel with gold and when.

  But how? Who was involved? They needed hard evidence. Leroy Southmayde had identified a pistol taken from Long John’s wickiup as belonging to him. It had been stolen in November, during the armed robbery of his wagon train, and both he and the merchant who sold it to him identified it from the serial number and markings on the handle. But who were the robbers? Who put it there? The owner of the stolen greenbacks identified them from his list of numbers, but who stashed them? Finding pistol and greenbacks and other items might show that Long John’s place was a drop for stolen goods, or a center of criminal activity. Again, who were the criminals?

  Knowing about the conspiracy, finding stolen goods, did not give them the criminals. This evidence, their certainty, would not hang anyone. God help them if they hanged a wrong man.

  To destroy such a murderous conspiracy, they needed men not afraid to talk, and a force strong enough to protect the witnesses and root out the conspirators.

  For the first time, Dan had heard the words, Vigilance Committee.

  * * *

  The Star Bakery did a brisk business in meat pies and beer, and coffee. Real coffee. Dan bought pie and beer for all three of them, and coffee for himself. At these prices, he told himself, he’d soon have to dip into his going-home cache. He sipped the coffee, his first taste in three months. As its warmth settled into his stomach, a surge of hope washed through him, that perhaps he might live to go home. Home. To Grandfather, the Firm, Miss Dean. His mood plummeted.

  They carried their food toward the court, where the guards’ eyes widened at the sight of Albert, his coat sagging on one side with the weight of a pistol in his pocket. When Dan said, “He’s with me,” they stood aside. It’s a new world, Dan thought. An armed Negro can walk into a court. Let someone now say that Albert is not a person. In this Territory, Albert was free.

  The advisory jurymen were taking their places. Lawyers and judges stood together by the fire where Smith regaled them with a story about a mishap in court when he was a young lawyer. When he finished, they all laughed, except for Davis, and Sanders was merely polite. Byam’s lips moved as if committing the story to memory. They greeted Dan in friendly fashion, and Sanders offered his hand to Albert, who stared at it as if he could not recognize it. He held up his own hands laden with pies and beer.

  Nodding, Sanders withdrew his hand with a smile. “I’m Wilbur Sanders.”

  “Albert Rose here, sir.” Albert ducked his head.

  “No need for the ‘sir’ business, Mr. Rose. I’m not in the Army any more.”

  Someone in the crowd yelled, “Nigger lover! Union bastard brought a nigger to court!”

  Thurmond snarled, “This is an outrage! Get that damn nigger out of here.”

  Dan ground his teeth. “Albert is with me. To protect me from your client’s friends.”

  “I insist –” Thurmond began, but Smith interrupted. “Speaking of our client, here he is.” Ives, carrying his chains, walked through the perimeter, head up, with an air of walking onto a stage. The defense attorneys gathered around him. The minions greeting their prince, thought Dan.

  “Curtain going up.” Bagg rubbed his hands together and smiled.

  “Yes,” Sanders said. “It feels the same, doesn’t it? Keyed up.”

  “Yes,” Bagg said, “exactly like battle. Win or die.”

  The phrase resonated in Dan’s ears. He and Sanders exchanged a look of understanding. Bagg did not know how true he spoke. Win or die.

  Behind Ives stood Gallagher and McDowell just as on the previous two days. Gallagher raised his middle finger at Dan. McDowell stroked the barrel of his shotgun. Dan thought of the schoolhouse good morning song, but with different words: We’re all in our places with sneers on our faces. He almost laughed, but a sudden thought stopped him: Were these two part of the conspiracy? God forbid, for her sake.

  A delegation of miners collected behind the crossed wagon tongues. One of them, with hair to his waist, was the spokesman. They had come to demand the trial end by three o’clock, because tomorrow their claims could be jumped.

  A man whose ragged trousers barely covered his anatomy chimed in, “Three days is plenty time for a trial. You can’t make up your minds in three days, let him go.”

  “Right,” said Hairy. “Besides, now he’s been caught once, he won’t do nothing like that again. You could just let him go.”

  “We’ll do our best,” Judge Byam said, but they weren’t satisfied until Bagg spoke up. “Don’t worry, boys, I have a claim in Junction that I ain’t about to lose hold of.”

  “See to it, then.” Muttering among themselves, the group turned away.

  Dan suggested passing a rule that no claim could be jumped during the trial, but both judges shook their heads. “By the time our sheriffs posted a notice for a miners meeting,” said Wilson, “and we get the boys together to vote on a new rule, claims would have been jumped already, and getting them back would be hell. The claim jumpers would say the claims was theirs to start with, and sometimes that might be true.” He scratched under his collar.

  Byam added, “Better we get done.”

  Thurmond, thrusting himself forward, had a sure-fire way to end the trial. “Let the jury vote now.” He should have known, Dan told himself.

  “Not on your tintype,” said Judge Byam, as Judge Wilson added, “We’ll play this out.” Byam rang the cowbell, and as sunrise glowed behind the mountains, court was in session.

  And Dan, who had set his pie on the ground and forgotten it, saw that a dog had dragged it under the witness wagon and now licked the plate. “We’ll get you another one, sir.” Albert walked away with Jacob before Dan could emulate Sanders and tell him to drop the sir. He had never been in the Army.

  * * *

  The defense brought on witnesses to vouch for Ives’s good character. Sanders whispered, “Of course. They failed to prove an alibi, so now they have to prove his character.”

  Bagg harrumphed. “They can’t prove a negative.” The prosecutors laughed, but to Dan the laughter sounded forced.

  The witnesses’ statements had a rehearsed quality, as they told how Ives had helped them with money in their hour of need, how he sent gold home to his widowed mother and sisters. The witnesses wiped their eyes. Behind their hands, their glances were sly. One man blew his nose on a handkerchief that did not quite hide his smile.

  Sanders asked, “Have you ever known George Ives to threaten another man’s life?”

  The witness answered, “No, damn it.”

  Bagg asked about th
e time Ives backed his horse into the Morris brothers’ windows, the man said, “Oh, that was a boyish prank. You know, just for fun.”

  “Did he ever pay damages?”

  “Not yet, but he will, soon as he gets some money.”

  “How will he get the money? Borrow it?”

  “I don’t know nothing about that. It’s none of my business.”

  A tall, strong-looking man in a plaid coat stood at the crossed tongues, arguing with a guard who took Sanders aside, and then left him talking to the man.

  How the hell would they refute these witnesses? There was no chink in the testimony they could use for a handhold to breach the stories they told. True, the man whose dog had been shot could testify to that, and one or two of the witnesses to Ives’s “loans” would talk. One man, who had tried to get Ives to pay back his “loan” would testify that Ives had pulled out his pistol and said he’d kill the man if he didn’t leave him alone. But would it be enough?

  Dan sank into a black mood. Damn. So far from proving that Ives had murdered Nick, they had not shown that he could kill anyone even in self-defense, and a killing in self-defense – if they knew of one – would not be held against him. Any man was capable of killing another to defend his own life, the lives of his loved ones. But a cold-blooded killing? To take another man’s life as he had killed Nick? To point the pistol and face the terror, the pleading, of a fellow man, and then to pull the trigger and watch as life flowed red from his wounds? People would not believe Ives capable of such evil. Ives’s friends would not say it, and his victims would be dead, or too frightened to get up into that wagon.

  God, if they could only find Pete Morton. And then, if he would testify.

  Dan reckoned they had lost the trial. As he listened to another witness, he watched and listened to the crowd, and saw hardened miners wipe tears from their eyes. Who would not be moved at the thought of three helpless women depending on their absent son and brother for financial support? The story made him slightly sick.

  Someone in the crowd wondered aloud where Plummer was. Dan’s silent laugh was sour in his mouth. The way the trial was going, Plummer would not be needed.

  Jacob, followed by Albert, brought Dan his replacement pie and a beer. “Thank you!” Dan bit into it and realized he was ravenous, so hungry he would have found his boot sole tasty. The sun shone from near its winter zenith, and he’d had nothing to eat since a few bites of jerky amid the press of business last night. Remembering that business, the meeting, his notebook felt heavy in his breast pocket. How to find hard evidence of the conspiracy? It seemed hopeless. When Albert and Jacob stood aside, Dan realized a new witness had taken the stand for Ives.

  Like the others, this witness described Ives’s generosity, his kindness – which drew shouts of protest from Nevada men who had seen him shoot up the dog. Idly, Dan wondered what the man’s name was, not that it mattered, for he was just one more defense liar. Idly curious, he whispered to Bagg, “What’s his name?”

  Bagg said, “Pete Morton.”

  Dusty stripes of sunlight. A woman’s caped silhouette. She had come to him with her news. She had said, ‘Pete Morton.’

  A spasm stabbed his clenched left fist. The bite of pie was a lump of coal on his tongue. He looked for a place to set the plate aside, and young Pemberton took it. “I’ll guard it from dogs.”

  Dan stood the rifle against the wagon’s sidewall, and picked up a stick. “I’ll take the cross.”

  “You know something.” It was a statement, not a question. Bagg reached for the knife in Dan’s hand and opened it for him.

  “Yes. I have an idea.” Seeing that Bagg looked as if he might want to consult with Sanders, still listening to Plaid Coat, Dan said, “You’ve been mining in Junction District, and Sanders is from Bannack. Neither of you know Virginia as well as I do. This is a Virginia man.”

  Dan took the first cut at the stick. Bagg said, “When you get to carving, something’s up.” He waited, perhaps expecting an explanation. “Go to it, then.”

  “Your witness.” Judge Byam sounded impatient. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  Dan climbed into the wagon. He felt as if he’d been dealt an ace for a hole card and would have to play it just right. Use it to get the crowd, the mob jury, on his side. After a swift glance at the witness, Dan watched the knife. A thin strip of wood floated to the ground.

  Seldom had Dan seen an uglier man. A large mole disfigured his nose, two vertical creases folded the skin between his eyes, and his mouth was pinched together. A face women would turn from. Good, Dan thought. The knife stroked the wood, long and slow, almost lovingly cut away another thin strip. He waited through yet one more long, slow slice while he listened to the crowd’s silence. Silence. Expectation. Expectation of what?

  “I don’t think I’ve seen you around Virginia?”

  “You would’ve if you’d been looking.” The man spat over the sidewall.

  Keeping his face blank, Dan let his gaze begin at the man’s left shoulder, slide past his face, to the other shoulder. Suspicion narrowed the man’s eyes. Inwardly, Dan rejoiced. He wanted Morton suspicious, wanted him to wonder what Dan might be up to, where the trap was. He did not want this witness to think about the questions. Morton would not willingly testify against Ives, but he would, in the end. Oh, yes. He would.

  In this trial that had turned into a poker game, Morton’s hole card was the knowledge of the Bamboo Chief. He thought that was a secret, but knowing that secret was Dan’s hole card. He kept his voice mild but clear, his questions bland.

  “You’re a friend of George Ives, aren’t you?”

  “Damn right. So what?” The witness scowled.

  “Just getting the feel of things. George Ives has many friends in the Gulch, doesn’t he?” Moving toward the wagon’s tailgate, Dan tossed the question over his shoulder like a pinch of salt.

  “Yeah. ’Course he does.”

  Dan faced the witness, and named some whose names he recollected from his notebook, named them one by one as friends of George Ives, and to each name the witness said, “Yeah, sure, guess so,” or “What of it?” or “So what?” His suspicion grew with every name. Dan watched the men by the log from his peripheral vision: the defense attorneys ready to pounce, McDowell glaring, Gallagher frowning, puzzled. On impulse, he named Gallagher, then McDowell, and to each name Morton responded, “Yeah.”

  Was anyone aware that not one name belonged to a respectable member of the community? That each name carried its burden of suspicion and brought knowing looks and wise nods from honest men? By leading the witness down the trail of Ives’s friends, Dan knew he would be thought to play into the defense hand, but no one else knew his hole card, and he did not name Boone Helm. Nobody wanted to be known as the pal of a cannibal. At last, Dan sensed that men were about to lose patience, and a defender might jump up and object that this was going nowhere.

  Feeling like he was jumping from the quarry’s edge into the water, Dan named the last friend.

  “How about Helen Troy?”

  “Hell, that’s no secret. Miss Troy is popular around town.”

  Thurmond was ready to launch upwards with an objection, perhaps thinking that Dan meant to denounce George Ives by his friendship with a notorious madam, but Dan dodged his expectation. “Miss Troy is a successful businesswoman, is she not?” He could sense everyone’s surprise, even bewilderment. Had no one noticed that the madam ran a business? Dan thought of Betty, the madam to whom his father had introduced him on his fourteenth birthday with instructions to find his son a clean girl. But Betty had taken him under her own wing: I like ’em young, sweetie pie, and I’m as clean as they come. If Betty had been a man, she could have run a railroad.

  The witness stared at Dan from under his brows. “Yeah, she owns Fancy Annie’s, but what does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

  Some of Ives’s friends laughed, and the witness peered around with a smirk, proud of himself for scor
ing one off the prosecutor.

  Dan let him enjoy his moment before he asked, “Are you a friend of Miss Troy?”

  “Yeah, sure.” The witness squared his shoulders, and his chin made a small circle. “Not like Georgie, but yeah.”

  From a pace away, Dan put admiration into his voice, “You’re quite a man for the ladies, I’m sure.” The knife’s rhythm quickened, the shortened strokes cut deeper, and Dan ignored the pain in his left hand.

  “Yeah, I can be.”

  “The ladies at Fancy Annie’s?”

  “Sure. I been there lots of times.”

  Where would he get the money, this man who owned no claim, no ranch, held no job? “You go with the defendant, don’t you?” The witness stared at Dan. “I mean with George Ives.”

  “Sure, I do. Me and Georgie’s pals.”

  Dan sliced off the next question: “Fancy Annie’s is a saloon, is it not?”