God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  “Yeah. But –”

  “And a house of ill repute?”

  “Yeah. Well, what do you mean?”

  “Come, come, we all know what a house of ill repute is. We’re men of the world here.”

  When Morton said nothing, Dan asked, “It’s also a brothel, isn’t it?” Morton didn’t speak. Dan, thinking they hadn’t coached him for this, shouted, “Isn’t it a whorehouse?”

  The crowd laughed, and Dan, celebrating inside because he had got the mob jury to laugh, bowed to the judges, “Begging your pardon.” He pretended to ignore the laughter.

  “Yeah.” The man nodded. “I guess so. Upstairs.”

  “Have you ever been up there?”

  “Sure, I have. Lots of times.” Reminding everyone that the prosecutor had called him a man for the ladies, forgetting that he was an ugly man who had to pay.

  They were circling closer to the hole card, and he plummeted toward the cold, cold water in the quarry, but as he stepped closer to Morton, Dan kept the knife cutting in a steady rhythm, and Morton stared at the blade flashing in the sun. Dan, about to change the angle of the blade, let it be. “Have you been up there with Mr. Ives?”

  “Well, not with him, you know, but – ”

  “Of course. Let me rephrase that.” Dan took a step back. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Thurmond gather his feet under him. Dan hurried on. “At the same time, let’s say.” The knife made another sweet stroke, and Dan risked a glance at Morton, who seemed mesmerized by it. “Well?”

  “Yeah, I been up there at the same time.”

  This was it. Dan felt as if his toes touched water, as if he now called the defense bet, that they would ever show that Ives was capable of cold-blooded murder. The knife cut deep: “Have you ever heard Ives refer to himself as the ‘Bamboo Chief?’”

  Morton was startled into truth: “Yes!”

  Davis and Thurmond bolted up. “You can’t introduce that now! There’s no foundation for it! None whatever! Your Honor, you can’t let that in. It’s hearsay!”

  “What’s wrong with it?” Dan pivoted to look down at them. “A Bamboo Chief is a leader among men, isn’t he? Wouldn’t you like your client to be known as a leader? Any man would like to be thought of as a Bamboo Chief. Wouldn’t he?” He paused for two beats. “Or why not?”

  “Yes, why not?” Judge Byam stroked the long hairs of his goatee. “What about it, boys? Can he ask about this ‘Bamboo Chief’ or not? Seems harmless to me.”

  Thurmond had no basis for an objection, other than Dan had brought in a new phrase. To insist on having it thrown out would be to give it undue importance. He slapped his hands against his thighs. “Oh, the hell with it. Go ahead.” Parting his coat skirt, he sat down.

  Dan wanted to wipe away the sweat trickling down behind his ear. If Thurmond had not quit just then, his clean dive would be a belly flop, his hole card useless. “I ask you again, have you ever heard the term, ‘Bamboo Chief’?”

  As Morton stood without speaking, Byam ordered him, “Answer the question.”

  “Sure,” he said. “That’s what Georgie calls hisself sometimes.”

  “Is it, indeed? What does it mean, exactly?” Dan stepped closer to Morton, stared at the mole.

  Morton could not find a place for his hands, let them dangle at his sides, clasped them in front of him, behind his back. “Like you said, a head man, like chief of a –”

  Dan interrupted, “Does Mr. Ives call himself that often?”

  “Only when he’s done something special. Like –“

  “Like backing his horse into the Morrises’ windows?”

  “Yeah, like that, I guess, only he never – I mean, that was just –”

  “Just in fun? You were there then, too, were you not?”

  “Sure, I was. Me and the boys, it was –”

  “And when he rode into the saloon and let his horse do its business on the floor and kick over tables and break up the place, you were there?”

  “Yeah, but it was all in –”

  “Yes, we know, just in fun. Right? What about the loans?”

  “Yeah, well, Georgie sometimes gets a loan when he’s out of cash.”

  “At gunpoint?”

  “Once or twice, maybe. But it’s just –”

  “Just in fun? Boys will be boys?” Dan let the sarcasm drip from his voice like a relentless drop on stone, and then his mind stumbled on a new understanding. We. Morton had said, We. The witness had admitted being present during armed robbery. Robberies. This witness, maybe all of the defense witnesses, were George Ives’s accomplices? Participated in robberies? Murders? God damn them, were they part of the conspiracy?

  “Yeah, you know, a joke.”

  “A joke?” Dan let his anger rise, show in his voice. A joke to demand money at gun point, a joke to kill an unarmed boy? “You think destroying property is a joke? Demanding money at gunpoint is a joke? Just good clean fun?”

  The witness stammered, could not think of an answer, and Dan’s feet slid into the water, and he laid his hand over the hole card. “So it was all in fun.” The witness nodded, agreed, and Dan pushed on, “All the other pranks we’ve heard of. Just fun?” His voice could be heard everywhere.

  “Yeah, yeah, like I said. Just fun.”

  Amid a still calm, Dan turned over his hole card. “George Ives bragged in Fancy Annie’s that he was the Bamboo Chief, right?” His left hand hurt like hell now. He stopped whittling and pocketed the knife. Taking the stick in his right hand, he gestured with it as if it were an extension of his index finger, each question stabbing at Morton.

  “Yeah, you know –”

  “The Bamboo Chief that killed that traveler on the road. Right?”

  “Yeah, hey – Wait! I mean –”

  “Was that in fun, too?”

  “Yeah, no, I mean –”

  Thurmond, Davis, Smith jumped up, shouted objections. Dan yelled across them, “You’re right! That was not in fun. The man was going to peach on him, wasn’t he? George Ives is the Bamboo Chief, isn’t he? A Bamboo Chief wouldn’t let someone peach, he’d do something about it, wouldn’t he? That’s what a Bamboo Chief would do. Isn’t that right? Isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but – ”

  “That man was killed on the main road, in broad daylight, with people coming from both directions, and the killer got away scot free.” Thurmond and Smith and Davis were shouting, and Byam held the cowbell but did not ring it, and while Pemberton and his colleague scratched furiously over their papers, and the advisory jurymen craned forward to hear, Dan bellowed, “Any man that could murder someone like that and get away, he’d be the Bamboo Chief, wouldn’t he? You heard him, didn’t you? You were on the other side of the canvas, weren’t you? You and your whore? You heard him, didn’t you? Didn’t you? You can’t lie in court, you have to answer, you did hear it. Didn’t you?” With each question, Dan inched closer to the witness, poked the stick into the air. He fired each question a little faster, and the witness leaned back farther and farther until he trapped himself against the driver’s seat, and still Dan shuffled closer, the stick stabbing each question.

  Morton broke. “Yeah, goddammit, I heard it!” he screamed.

  “Heard what?”

  “George Ives said he was the Bamboo Chief that killed that traveler on the road!”

  “Thank you.” Panting, Dan stepped back. “A man who could shoot a man down in broad daylight, he could kill Nicholas Tbalt, couldn’t he, and feel sure he’d get away with that, too, wouldn’t he?”

  Morton said nothing, but he didn’t need to, and Dan did not care. He had done what he set out to do. He gathered up his cards. He understood that the yelling must have gone on for some time, he hadn’t heard it, he’d concentrated on breaking Morton. Had anyone heard Morton admit to Ives’s confession?

  “Objection!” Thurmond screamed, and, and Smith shouted, “Hearsay!” and stamped his foot, and Davis stood in front of the witness table and yelled, “Strike that!
Strike that!” All of the defense lawyers clamored at the judges, at the recorders, to strike the entire line of questioning, they objected, they objected, while Gallagher and McDowell, and Ives’s other friends raged at Dan, and in the calm center of the vocal storm, Dan looked Morton in the eye and let his anger and contempt show.

  “You tricked me!” Morton shook his fist at Dan. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Bullshit!” said Dan. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll ride out of here before Ives’s friends get after you.”

  The cowbell clanged. The judges yelled for order, and more voices, now from the crowd, shouted for quiet, yelled at others to shut the hell up.

  Dan’s thoughts flew, clouds in a brisk wind. If the law was war, cross-examination was a battle. High stakes poker. A deer hunt, without bullets, and for the biggest game of all – criminals. The law had the joy of the kill, the exhilaration of firing the killing shot, turned over the winning card, when he asked the telling question. Father must have felt it, but perhaps only in the gamble, yet for him, his father’s son, all the rest – the hunt, the game – paled beside asking the telling question, when the witness must answer and could never take his answer back, for it was in the record.

  If they had heard it.

  His exhilaration evaporated like a puddle in a drought. They must have heard. Did Pemberton and the other recorder hear? Or was it all for nothing? Christ, no.

  The judges had brought the clamoring voices under control, and the last echoes of the cowbell were dying in the cold.

  Thurmond, body cocked forward at the hips, arms outspread with fists clenched, demanded that the judges have Dan’s entire line of questioning stricken from the record.

  Sanders planted his feet wide and thrust his chin at the taller man and asked, “On what grounds?” to which Thurmond yelled “Hearsay!” and Sanders at the top of his voice, “Hearsay, hell!” Bagg chipped in that it was not hearsay but admission contrary to interest, another type of confession. Byam leaned down to the recorders, asked for clarification.

  The crowd, and Dan, who felt a muscle fluttering in his triceps, waited Pemberton searched back through his notebook, and at last read, “The confession rule means that if someone tells you he did something wrong, you can’t say so in court, but if he tells someone else and you overhear him, then you can. If he tells you, it’s hearsay. If he tells someone else, it’s an admission contrary to interest. A confession.”

  “Okay.” Byam stroked his beard flat against his coat. “I think I got this right.” He turned to Dan. “You didn’t ask what Ives told him, you asked him to tell you what Ives said to the woman?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And that’s an admission contrary to interest? Is that right?”

  “That’s correct.” Sweat trickled behind Dan’s ear, but he forced himself not to wipe it, not to give away how scared he was that all his work might be in vain if Pemberton or the other recorder had not heard. “This man is a character witness, in the defense’s misbegotten attempt to prove that George Ives is a man of good character. By bringing him in to prove that, they left the door open for the prosecution to prove the opposite.”

  “Is that so?” Byam asked Thurmond.

  “I protest! It’s not fair!”

  “Murder ain’t fair, either,” said Bagg.

  “You all step back a ways.” Byam and Wilson held a short conference behind their hands, and then Byam beckoned the eight attorneys to come closer to the green wagon. “We say it’s all right for the prosecution to ask those questions. That rule is correct, as we understand it–” waving down an interruption from Thurmond “– so we’re letting all of this man’s testimony stand.” He leaned down to the two recorders. “You two getting this?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pemberton.

  As he retrieved his pie from Pemberton, Dan asked, “Did you hear everything all right?”

  Pemberton said, “It was a little noisy, so we might have missed some questions, but we both got the big one.” He turned over a page in the notebook and read: “Question: ‘Heard what?’ Answer: ‘George Ives said he was the Bamboo Chief that killed that traveler on the road!’”

  “Thank you,” Dan said, and added to himself, Thank God. He bit into the pie, congealed now after its long wait on the recorders’ table, the crust thickened and hard, fat in grey lumps, but delicious. No conquering Roman emperor ever ate such a feast in celebration of his victory.

  Thurmond threw his hands up. “All right, damn it. The defense rests.” He yelled, “Let the record show the defense rests under protest. You’re railroading an innocent man!” He bent over the table and watched the recorders write as fast as they could dip their pens. When they finished, he flung away from the table, nearly upsetting the ink. “You wait! You just wait till Sheriff Plummer gets here. He’ll fix your wagon, but good.”

  A man near the crossed tongues, who craned his neck to see over the shoulders of the guards, yelled, “Quit your palavering! It’s afternoon, already. This trial’s about played out.”

  “Good work.” Sanders beamed at him, and Bagg clapped him on the back.

  “Thank you. But all I did was pull a thread.”

  “You pulled it hard enough to hang Ives with.” Bagg’s face was rosy.

  “How did you know it was there in the first place?” Sanders kept an eye on the defense attorneys, now with their heads together.

  “A little bird told me.” A little sparrow of a woman. Martha McDowell. Silhouetted in shafts of dust-sparkled sunlight. She had braved her husband’s wrath to meet him secretly, and without that he would not have defeated Pete Morton, or known this soaring lightness of joy, that he loved the law. Loved the law? The knowledge blindsided him, and he reeled from it. He had practiced law for six years and thought he hated it, so how did he love it now?

  Trial work. He loved the hunt, the gamble of a trial. A criminal trial. He had never known such a thrill outside the hunt, away from the poker table, except in –

  If it had not been for Martha McDowell’s courage, he would not have known this joy, this love of the law. He loved Martha McDowell for her courage. God help him, he loved her.

  * * *

  “Call Anton Holter!”

  Dan barely noticed when Plaid Coat walked to the wagon. Love Martha McDowell? No. Never. A married woman, with children? It could not be. He was promised to return to New York. Grandfather. The family. Harriet Dean. Harriet, his reward for suffering through the fear, the grinding loneliness, the over-crowding. The jeers of the roughs. He dreamed of Harriet, their wedding night, her voluptuous body in his bed, his reward for bringing home the gold. She would not marry for love alone. Her father would never let her go to a man cloaked in poverty, with the taint of embezzlement and suicide thick about him. Father’s legacy.

  The Devil perched on his shoulder, whispered, If McDowell were out of the way – No! God no! He could not be David, coveting Bathsheba, arranging the death of Uriah the Hittite to get his wife. He had to leave. Tomorrow. Early. No, after the trial of Long John and Hilderman.

  Fitch shouldered his way between the guards. “Damn cold in these mountains.”

  “Wasn’t it cold on Pike’s Peak?” A dog sat in hope by the witness wagon. Dan flung the rest of the pie to it, and the animal snapped it up. Dan’s mind was still reeling. He didn’t want to love her. He had not been searching for a woman, but discovered her, as Bill Fairweather discovered gold in Alder Gulch, accidentally. A woman he had never imagined, a woman of courage. He loved her. His body ached with it. He must not love her. She was married. Her husband stood behind Ives, shared a bottle with Gallagher. Dan’s gorge rose, and he coughed.

  “Yeah, cold enough to freeze your piss. Why the hell does God always put gold in mountains? He should put it in Florida. Or on the Platte.” His jaws worked on a chaw. “Good work with that bastard Morton, by the way. How’d you know about that Bamboo Chief business?”

  “A little bird told me.” Martha, t
he little brown sparrow. Martha. God help him.

  Bagg sidled over to them, rubbed his hands together. “This Norsky has got guts, standing up to Ives.” He was referring to the man in the plaid coat, who stood in the witness wagon. “We’ll see some fireworks now, all right.”

  “So what? I’d rather see Ives swing,” Fitch grumbled.

  Anton Holter spoke with a heavy Norwegian accent. He could not pronounce some English sounds, in his mouth a “j” was a “y,” and a “th” became a “t.”

  When Judge Byam swore him in, he laid his hand on the Bible and said, “Yah, I do it.”

  “Very well. You may tell the jury what you know.”