God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  The big upper room was lighted by a single candle burning on a table near the unlighted stove. Struck by their stillness, save for men’s quick breathing, Dan whispered, too, as his feet felt their way to the other men. “Cold in here.”

  A rich voice answered, “We don’t dare start a fire. Someone outside might wonder why.”

  Dan stood the rifle on the floor and took a chair. Some of the men around the table surprised him. Besides Sanders, an abolitionist like himself, there was Paris Pfouts, the outspoken Secesh. John Creighton was a leader of the Catholics in Virginia, but Pfouts and Sanders were Masons, and Dan recalled that the Order had a reputation for being anti-Catholic. Or maybe the Catholics were anti-Mason. Merchants like Nye, Creighton, and John Lott from Nevada, who had spoken out against trying Ives in Virginia. A clerk from one of the shops, who knew of the Vigilantes in San Francisco and how they worked. War veterans with the rank of Captain, Major, Colonel – from both sides. Noncombatants like himself.

  What could this small number hope to do against a conspiracy of fierce men like Stinson and Gallagher, and the crowd of roughs like Helm and McDowell who surrounded them? He caressed the barrel of the rifle standing in the crook of his elbow.

  “Do you carry that thing everywhere?” one asked.

  “Yes.” Dan wiped sweat from his forehead. “It seems a sensible precaution these days.” He added, “I don’t want it stolen. It’s the only Spencer repeating rifle in five hundred miles.”

  Another man spoke with a flat twang. “You carry the rifle, Sanders carries pistols in his pockets. Creighton keeps a loaded shotgun under the counter.”

  “Just last night, I nearly had to use it against another man,” said Creighton.

  Sanders’s breath came broken into a soundless wheezing, and Dan realized that he had not heard Sanders laugh before. “Fellow came into Creighton’s store with the firm intention of shooting me, but Creighton persuaded him otherwise.”

  “I and one or two others,” Creighton said. “It’s no laughing matter. Damn it, this must not be allowed to continue.”

  “Shhh,” someone said. “Softly, softly.”

  “How can we possibly succeed?” whispered one of the men.

  “We can, and we must.” Dan surprised himself by speaking. “Consider the alternative. Do we go on as we are and prove ourselves cowards?” The fingers of his left hand played with his coat buttons. “The trial of George Ives has showed us how much there is to do. Men talked, in whispers, and a few in open testimony, and now we know how widespread the rule of crime is.”

  “And how difficult it will be to root out.” Lott’s sharp voice cut into the darkness and brought anxious shushing noises from one or two others. “Yet we must. We have no choice.”

  “Either we root out crime, or we die and this community dies with us.”

  Dan was not sure who spoke, but the word community made him think of Martha McDowell. Maybe he could not have her, but he could help her by making this place safe to rear her children. Safe for her. “We must make it safe for those who cannot act for themselves. For families.”

  “Amen,” said Sanders, whose wife and small sons awaited him in Bannack.

  * * *

  How to begin?

  A Vigilance Committee, Dan had always thought, was fearless, though secret, but he had never stopped to think that its secrecy was bred in fear. We’re afraid, he said to himself. Frightened of meeting sudden death. Terrified that Nick’s end will be ours. Yesterday Sanders was almost killed, and I faced down Boone Helm. So far from being discouraged by the death of Ives, his faction seemed angrier, more bent on getting even.

  Aside from the clerk from California, they had no experience in this. They made it up, and everything was subject to discussion, even argument, because each man had his independent ideas. Through the long cold evening hours they talked about the structure of the group, ground rules. They agreed the clerk would write the bye-laws and bring them to the next meeting.

  “We need an oath,” said Pfouts. “This is such a dangerous undertaking, we must bind ourselves to the task in the sternest possible way.” In the candlelight his dark eyes had a hawk’s ferocious glare.

  “Agreed.” Sanders thought for a moment, while the others waited. “We here tonight pledge our sacred honor to be true to the principles of law and order and justice and to be true to each other, never to violate the sacred trust we give each other or the trust we seek to deserve from the good citizens of this region. So help us God.”

  “So help us God.” Dan raised his right hand as the others raised theirs. He felt disconnected, that the oath was wildly out of keeping with the reality, fewer than ten men who sat in a dark room. Almost, he thought, like small boys in a clubhouse, remembering the hollow in the shrubberies, the little cut on his thumb, bloody prints on a stone. Except that the rifle leaning against his arm comforted him.

  Having taken the oath, he was struck by a realization: He was a Vigilante. He, who had always taken for granted the supremacy of the law, the rightness of those in power, because power was granted by the people.

  Again that strange disconnected sensation, as the discussion moved to the mundane – how to pay for their efforts because men would have to take time from their businesses, their jobs. They would have to pledge their own funds, dun the honest citizens. Only fair, said one, impatient because some objected to soliciting money. We’re taking the greatest risks. Besides, added another man, everyone in the Gulch should pay something for their safety, as they do in civilized places. A kind of minimal taxation.

  Agreed.

  Who would be members? They would be democratic, would exclude no one who was not a criminal, or suspected of being one.

  Agreed.

  Deciding guilt or innocence could be as unwieldy as the jury of the whole, so they established an Executive Committee composed of one representative from each mining district, and four from Virginia, in addition to their elected officers.

  Dan counted on his fingers. “If the officers are a president, secretary, treasurer and prosecutor, that would make fifteen as I count it.”

  “We won’t need a secretary,” Lott said. “We will keep no written records. None at all.”

  A pause followed, and Dan felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. Paper could be lost, misplaced, stolen. It was safer that way, but it would leave them nothing to defend themselves with, should it ever become necessary. Yet he joined his voice to the others: Agreed.

  Lott said, “The exception must be a record of collections and disbursements. We must be accurate in our accounting of funds.”

  Agreed.

  The Major, or perhaps Sanders, who outranked him as a military man, put in that the whole organization, as it grew, should have a structure also. They debated for a time, until Pfouts called for the question and they voted on a quasi-military structure: companies of a hundred men, one from each mining district, each company to elect its own commander.

  All evening, Dan thought, they avoided the crux of the matter, their purpose. However they cloaked it in fancy words and rounded phrases, they were talking about men trying other men in secret and hanging them. “How do we find the guilty men? How do we make sure of their guilt? And what punishments do we administer?”

  “We’ll need a group to ferret out the guilty ones,” Sanders said. “Someone to take what evidence we have and investigate.”

  “A ferreting committee,” said one, who leaned against the back of his chair, his face in shadow, outside the circle of candlelight.

  “Exactly,” Creighton said. “Because we are trying men in secret, we must be absolutely certain of their guilt.”

  Dan thought he detected a grim humor when Sanders said, “Agreed. They must be guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  Dan leaned his cheek on the rifle’s cold steel barrel. “We are talking about trying men in secret and hanging them. Even though our case against Ives was thin, I am convinced we did the right thing. I always will be.” He pause
d to marshal his thoughts, his eyes fastened on Sanders. “Ives was found guilty and sentenced to hang by the men themselves. He had as much due process as we were capable of. He faced his accusers, he was represented by counsel, the verdict was delivered by no less than three juries of his peers. We protected his Constitutional rights as well as we were able.”

  “Yes.” Sanders held Dan’s gaze as if he understood that Dan was saying, be careful, we’re treading dangerous ground. “Considering that the Constitution failed us.”

  “Failed us?” That Dan had not expected. “How?”

  “Failed us. Because the Constitution – either one,” he said with a nod to Pfouts and the other Secessionists, “does not apply here, it cannot protect us. Despite the Ives trial, we still have no law. We invoked the Common Law for that occasion only. We are left with the miners court rules and the moral influence of the Ten Commandments. And where men flout the miners court and are blind and deaf to the Commandments, there is nothing. We have to put all that in place.”

  For the first time, Dan had heard someone speak of the tasks that remained for them once they had broken the power of the criminals. “We cannot do it while ruffians rule.”

  “Precisely. How many more times can we assemble a jury? How many more times will the miners agree to take time off from their claims to attend a trial? Had we not finished in three days, we would have had no jury but the roughs. And who can blame them? No work can be done with six feet of snow on the ground. They must work hard now, while they can.”

  “That means,” said another man, “that if we try men in open court, the juries will be made up of the roughs themselves.”

  “You are uncomfortable with the idea of a secret tribunal, aren’t you?” Sanders asked.

  “Yes,” Dan said. “I understand what you’re saying, and I agree. You know I do. But it’s one thing to have a majority in the miners court and quite another to have a majority in a secret tribunal. There is more danger of a miscarriage of justice.”

  “Yes,” said Creighton and Sanders almost together. “We’re all uncomfortable with this,” Sanders added, “but consider the alternative.”

  The alternative was the rifle resting against his right arm, and even it was no protection against the odd random shot meant for another target, or the purposeful bullet from a window or a shadowed doorway. Having helped to prosecute Ives, he had made bad enemies who would kill him if they could. Remembering Boone Helm’s promise to eat his balls, Dan had no doubt.

  “We will carefully consider all the evidence available to us,” said Creighton. “If we need more evidence to be certain beyond a reasonable doubt, we will wait until we have it.”

  Agreed.

  “We shall administer only one punishment,” Sanders said, paused. “Death.”

  Dan joined his voice in the combined whisper like a stirring of the air: “Agreed.”

  * * *

  Martha lived on tiptoe, afraid almost to think wrong for fear McDowell would know it and explode with that awful battle-rage of his. Since George Ives was hung, McDowell went around like a thundercloud that you never knew for sure where the lightning would come from. He booted Canary in the ribs for nothing more than jumping up like always to say how do. Now when he saw McDowell the dog put his tail between his legs and slunk away. Plumb made her sick, because how the dog acted was how she and the young’uns felt. Like they had so much love for him that he’d just kicked away. None of them, especially the young’uns, had ever done nothing but love him.

  Such willing young’uns, they were, too. Potato peelings dropped into the slop bucket set between her and Dotty, and she smiled at the child, who sat facing her by the table. They had a kind of contest, who could peel the most potatoes the fastest, and the child was almost winning. Martha slowed her knife just a tiny bit, and sure enough, Dotty finished first. The young’un sat back with a satisfied smiled on her face.

  “That’s the first time I won, Mam. I done better’n you.”

  “You sure did.” Martha cut the potatoes into chunks before she dropped them in the pan of cold water. “You had the bigger tater that time, too.” It wasn’t strict truth, but she figured young’uns needed encouragement to do their best, not just thumping and scolding. Sometimes they needed that, too, but not when you wanted them to learn something from you besides thumping and scolding.

  Dotty was looking tired, so Martha said, “I could use some tea. What about you?”

  “Yes, Mam.”

  Martha raised an eyebrow.

  “Oh.” Sighing like life was just too hard, she got up. “You want me to make it.”

  Martha smiled to herself as she opened the trunk, pulled out the extra quilts her bones told her they’d be needing soon. Her was head upside down in the trunk when Dotty said, “Mam, I’m missing Mr. Stark something terrible. Do you think he’ll ever come back to us?”

  Her hands were on the dulcimer, but Martha pretended she was still looking for something so as she could hide the redness creeping into her face and give herself time to allow as how to she missed him, too, without the child reading anything into that. Dotty was plumb too smart for her sometimes. Holding the dulcimer like a baby, she sat with it across her lap. “Child, I’m afraid he won’t be back on account of your Pap don’t want him here.” She plucked the dulcimer’s strings and listened, tightened them. When the thrumming stopped, she’d know it was in tune. McDowell liked its music, too. She’d always been able to count on it gentling him, and these days he needed gentling.

  Dotty said, “Mr. Stark helped hang that George Ives, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. They had them a trial over to Nevada, and most folks agreed George Ives done what Mr. Stark and them others said he did. So they hung him.”

  “Was George Ives a friend of Pap’s?”

  “Seems like. I don’t know who all his friends are.”

  “I don’t like Pap’s friends. They’re nasty.”

  The thrumming stopped. Martha took up the pick and let the fingers of her right hand roam over the strings while her left hand moved up and down the neck, stopping some strings at different places. The sweet sounds, like clear water flowing over colored pebbles, carried her into another place, where rolling hills flamed with red and yellow and gold, and the air smelled like flowers. She didn’t know when the child set a cup of hot tea next to her, or got up to dance. A warm sun shone on Martha, from someplace inside her because her fingers had not forgotten. When she rested, she sipped some of the warm tea. Her fingertips resting on the sound box brought back the smell of the wood under her own Pap’s plane and her breathless fear that she’d made the top too thick or too thin for the music in her heart, but it turned out just right. She played on, and the stream bubbled over blue stones, foamed around snags, down white falls, and she didn’t hear footsteps approach the cabin. The stream rushed on into a pool, and quieted because ice at the sides was creeping out into the middle, and all the flow was under the surface of the water.

  The door slammed open. Martha’s hands clutched the instrument, and it twanged out a loud discord. Only Timmy. Her hands relaxed. She smiled at him, but nonetheless she tucked the dulcimer into the trunk and closed the lid. High time she cooked up dinner, anyway, and why were there tears on Dotty’s face? She hugged the child.

  “That was so beautiful, Mam,” Dotty said.

  “I’ll teach you any time you want.” She smoothed away the child’s tears with a thumb.

  “Mam, you’ll never guess what’s happened!” A smile spread all across Timmy’s face, but he didn’t say any more until he hung up his coat and set a pail of beer on the counter.

  “Set that on the floor, if you don’t mind.” Martha went about fixing dinner. If she didn’t press him, he’d tell her sooner.

  He did as she asked and filled a dipper of beer for himself, gulped it down and dipped out more. “Boy, was I thirsty!” He swallowed more. “Mr. Dance offered me a job. I start right after New Year’s.”

  The spoon slipped fr
om Martha’s hand. Tim swooped to catch it before it clattered on the floor.

  “Oh, Lordy, no.” Martha shook her head. “No.” She pictured McDowell’s rage, his big ready hand striking at Tim. “No. No, you mustn’t. Your Pap, he’ll –”

  “He’ll tell me I have to go on working the claim, Mam. He’ll tell me to keep digging, go on freezing my ass in that icy water, and –” He stopped to catch his breath. “Pap oughta work the claim. I can make decent wages in a store, and stay warm. That hunkering down in cold water makes my bones ache.”

  Martha wanted to say more, but she stopped herself. The boy had the right of it. McDowell only drank up the dust, or gambled it away, while Timmy hunkered down in that cold dark water. What McDowell was doing to Tim was wrong. Dead wrong.