God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  “There’s better ways of getting rich, Mam. I like Mr. Dance’s way, and the other storekeepers. They call it speculating, and I aim to do some.”

  “What that?” Martha gave him a little pat to get out of her way.

  He set the dipper of beer in the pail, and pulled out a chair. “It works this way. You buy something, flour or shoes or maybe window panes, have it freighted up from Salt Lake, and sell it here for more’n it cost you, including the freight. Then you got what they call a profit.”

  “Can you get pretty hats?” asked Dotty.

  “You can get whatever will sell,” her brother replied. “Yeah, I could maybe get you a pretty hat, when you’ve growed up some.”

  “I’ll grow up fast,” Dotty said. “I have to before the styles change or I won’t know what to buy.”

  “You can’t grow up that fast!” hooted Tim.

  “Can, too!” Dotty put out her tongue at her brother.

  Martha headed off the borning argument. “There’ll always be pretty things to buy.” She glanced at the square dark opening in the logs where the previous owner had set oiled paper instead of glass. “What if no one wants windowpanes?” There was never enough light.

  “Life’s always a risk. Farming, ranching, mining. You just got to figure what risks to take.”

  Martha dipped out a little beer for her and Dotty. What a growed up young man he was getting to be, talking about risks and profits and such like. “How’d you get such a wise head on you?”

  He glanced down at his feet and moved his shoulders, the self-same squirm he give for praise since before he could walk. “Dunno. I been listening to the storekeepers. They make sense.”

  The latch rose and McDowell flung the door open, hung up his coat and hat. “What’s for supper?” Dotty quick poured him a beer, and he glared over the rim of the glass at his son. “What are you doing here? Where’s the dust?”

  “I can’t work no more, Pap. It’s full dark out. And – “ He licked his lips. “I didn’t make no dust today.”

  “You can’t have worked very hard, damn it.” McDowell frowned at his son, and his voice was a growl deep in his throat. Martha made ready to snatch Dotty out of harm’s way, but she went on laying the knives like there was no storm building in the room.

  “I did, Pap, only I had to break up country rock, but I didn’t get done before dark.”

  Martha imagined him swinging the pick against the boulders under the surface of the water, and the icy water splashing up on him. His hands were red and chapped, the fingertips cracked and bleeding. They had to hurt, but he’d never said nothing. She’d put tallow on them after supper. He didn’t ought to have to live like that. It wasn’t right.

  Half rising from his seat, McDowell leaned both hands on the table. “You useless, good-for-nothing, you dam that creek when I tell you to.”

  “No, damn it. You want it dammed, you do it. I’m going to work in a store.”

  “The hell you are, you – ” McDowell stopped himself from using an ugly word against his own son, but it was only a hitch in his get along because he went right on shouting while Martha held Dotty, shielding her against his rising voice. “You ain’t going to work in no store. Next thing, you’ll wanting to be learning to read and write, and all them pansy things. No real man does that, is that what you’re telling me, you’re a pansy like Dan Stark, him and them others that hung George Ives?”

  When someone pounded on the door, McDowell hollered to walk on in, and Gallagher hung up his coat on the usual peg and sat down without so much as a how-do to her or the young’uns.

  “A little family discussion?” Gallagher’s eyes were dark with pain, and if Martha hadn’t been sure that Ives needed hanging, she’d’ve felt sorry for him. A terrible hard thing to fight so hard for a friend’s life and see him put to death without nothing to do about it.

  “Trying to teach this damn stubborn son of mine what a real man is.” McDowell drained his beer, held the glass out for Martha to pour more. “Damn it, woman, pour Jack some beer.”

  It was on her tongue to say she couldn’t pour all the beer and tend dinner, too, but she kept quiet and poured. The mood these men were in, it was best to walk real soft.

  Gallagher hardly noticed when she set beer down. “What do you think we’d best do about them stranglers?” His voice held a mort of hate, hard as he tried to make it sound like a common question.

  “They’re gathering, for sure, and they mean business. We’ll have to show them who’s boss around here.”

  Martha set bowls of stew in front of them, withdrew beyond the lamplight to pour her own and Dotty’s. She was relieved that they appeared to have forgotten Tim, quiet as could be, even as he blew on his own stew.

  Gallagher spooned up a healthy bite of stew to chew on, washed it down with a swallow of beer and smiled in a way that gave Martha a tingle of fear. “I guess we will at that. Starting with that goddam Dan Stark.”

  McDowell laughed, his anger gone like mist in sunshine. “We’ll sure do that, yessir. We sure as hell will.” He pointed his spoon at Timmy. “And you! You better damn well pan out twice as much dust to make up for today. You ain’t too big for me to take a strap to.”

  Dotty lifted frightened eyes to her Mam, and Martha smiled and shook her head to let the child know she didn’t think McDowell meant it, but she knew Dotty wasn’t fooled, no more than she would be. McDowell’s threat sliced through her heart. Timmy didn’t need a strap to work hard, or do the right thing, but the boy couldn’t spend his life knee-deep in icy water.

  After the men left, Martha tackled the washing up. Timmy went outside, and a draft of cold air brought back the Nevada City barn, the smells of hay dust and warm, fuzzy horses. And Mr. Stark. He’d inclined to her, like he’d wanted to touch her, though he didn’t, except for a light brush at her arm. He had feelings for her. Like she did for him. Nothing to do about it, but the knowing gave her a sweet place to go in her feelings. Like the music. It was enough. It had to be.

  Dotty, for once without much to say, set to drying the dishes. Martha poured the dirty wash water into the slop pail, and set the dishpan with clean water on the stove to heat. Where could she put the box of contracts where Fitch couldn’t find it?

  Tim put his face in his hands. “What am I to do, Mam? I can’t go on this a way.” His voice was muffled.

  Martha took down the jar of tallow and a soft rag that had once been part of a skirt of hers before the cloth thinned out too much for patching. Pulling a chair close, she took one of her son’s hands in her own. A cold hand. Funny how she’d been fixing men’s hands lately. First Mr. Stark, and now Timmy. “Tell me again about this speculating.”

  She didn’t need to listen, because she’d got the idea when he first told her. She dipped her fingers into the tallow, and rubbed it into his skin. His hands were callused and rough and cracked and bigger’n his size. He’d be a big man when he got his growth, but there was a sweetness in him that she needed to protect. Though he’d probably never show it much, it had to be there for the right woman to know about inside herself.

  She had dust banked with Lydia. She could let Tim have some. McDowell would be dead against it, and she couldn’t have him finding out, but she’d do it because Tim was her son. A wife shouldn’t go against her husband, but a mother had to take care of her young’uns.

  * * *

  A Christmas tree, festive with candles and shining red and gold ornaments turning on small movements of the candle-lit air. Fresh logs on the fire, the smell of sweet pitch burning. Father singing Silent Night. One of the tree branches grew, thickened, extended from the tree, and its ornament changed shape from a ball, elongated, became a doll, a man, hanging, and he was hanging, choking, and the rope cut his throat so the blood spurted over Dan. Father sang of moonlit silence and snow, and the Holy Infant, raised the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  Dan thrashed about and sat up wiping blood and brain matter from his face with both han
ds. He awoke to know that someone was singing, but it was not a song he knew.

  The fringes of Jacob’s prayer shawl flung out as he swung around with wide eyes, his fingers clutched the shawl about his shoulders. He had lighted one candle on the Menorah, as he called the seven-branched candelabra.

  “It’s all right, Jacob.” Dan gazed at his hands. They were clean. His face was clean. He rubbed his jaw and felt the bristles of his beard, sandpaper on his palms. “Just a nightmare. Sorry I disturbed you.”

  “Nu, is nothing.” He turned his back and resumed singing his morning prayers in their odd minor key.

  Lying back, Dan closed his eyes and listened to Jacob singing softly to his God the ancient indecipherable words. He imagined hundreds of Jews singing so in Bethlehem as they waited for their Messiah.

  He lay in the welter of blankets. Christmas Eve. The nightmare encompassed everything. Last Christmas, at home, before life went to hell. This Christmas he was in a place that did not exist then. Virginia City. Last Christmas. In New York City he knew no Jews. Would cross the street to avoid meeting one. Today he shared quarters with a Jew. Last Christmas, as Father sang, they had all stood spellbound in a moment of pure beauty. He had never loved Father more than at that moment. Last Christmas he had been, if not happy, at least content. If not content, at least resigned to his future as a lawyer. Because of Harriet Dean.

  Last Christmas they had waltzed under her father’s glare, her tightly laced body close in his arms as he dreamed of how it would be to hold that body without the stays under his hand. Just the silk sliding against her skin, or perhaps no silk, just the skin.

  Dan took his upper lip in his teeth to quell the groan that threatened to break loose. Last Christmas he had danced with Harriet, and soon, when all this was over, he would put most of a continent between himself and this place. If she had waited for him, in spite of her father, he would marry her and be a reasonably good husband to her, because he had promised, and a man’s word was his bond. Eventually, he might forget that he loved another man’s wife.

  He might even forget his newly discovered love of criminal law, the joy of battle in defeating an enemy who would cheat the law. He might find a similar pleasure in torts, in the preservation of capital through contract law, for wasn’t the law a constant war against an enemy, and weren’t all cases battles in that war?

  Jacob’s prayers ended.

  In the meantime, before he could leave this hell hole, he was a Vigilante.

  Dan flung back the blankets and stood up. Tomorrow was Christmas. John Creighton and the other Catholics, like Peter Ronan and the Sheehans, would have prayers at the Sheehans’ cabin, and he would join other Protestants at Nick Wall’s house where Sanders was staying. After that, he’d signed up for dinner at the Eatery. Even here, hundreds of miles from any church, there would be Christmas.

  But in the afternoon, the Vigilantes would meet to approve the bye-laws.

  “Good morning, Jacob,” he said. “Happy Hanukah to you.”

  “Ach, ja.” Jacob was folding his prayer shawl carefully into its box. “Und you also. Merry Christmas? Is that how you say? Merry Christmas?”

  “Yes, Jacob. You have it correctly. Merry Christmas. But it’s tomorrow.”

  The swelling in his left hand was down, though he still wanted to groan when he let it drop down, but the bandage Mrs. McDowell had wrapped to hold the bone in place made it impossible to put on a glove. Jacob helped him with the sling, and the hand burrowed into it like a small animal into a den. When the two men stepped outside and pulled the latch string through, Dan slung the rifle on his shoulder. In civilized places a man did not wear his rifle as he wore his coat, as part of his everyday attire out of doors. He used his teeth to pull on his fur-lined right glove. The temperature was dropping rapidly. How cold did it get here? Large dry snowflakes drifted down from a white sky on light currents of air. “Winter’s here.” A flake landed on his sleeve, and he marveled at its intricacy. Already the snow was whitening Virginia City, settling on the roofs and covering the rounded shapes of horse manure in the road, that Dan had learned to call road apples.

  Jacob, who knew winter from Eastern Europe, said, “Ja. Means businesses.” He smiled, proud of his mastery of an idiom, and Dan did not correct him.

  They crossed Idaho. From the Melodeon Hall fiddle music and laughter leaked into the street. From somewhere else a fight was in progress. Crooked columns of gray wood smoke rose from chimneys to mingle with the smells of tobacco, and beer and whiskey. It was cold enough to have stifled the smell of old manure. People were friendly, in a good mood, and wished them both a Merry Christmas. More than once a man would stop to congratulate Dan: “You’re on a good undertaking,” or, “Keep up the good work.” Dan didn’t know if they meant the trials or the Vigilantes, but he knew the word was going around that a Vigilance Committee had formed.

  A tall man in a Union greatcoat cut through Solomon Content’s vacant lot at the corner of Wallace and Jackson and walked toward them. He was whistling “Slavery is a Hard Foe to Battle,” and the sound pierced the cold air. Seeing them, he stopped whistling and stood still, as if waiting. He opened his coat so that it swung free.

  Dan slowed his steps. He felt the air coming and going through his nostrils on short clouds, and deliberately took deeper breaths. People spotted the coming confrontation and waited to see what he would do. What Gallagher would do. If he and Jacob crossed the street to avoid Gallagher, men would see it not as prudently avoiding an unpleasant encounter, but as cowardice. If he had not prosecuted Ives, if he were not a Vigilante, they could do it, perhaps, though they were two men and Gallagher was alone. No, he had to brave the meeting. The roughs could not have bragging rights. Not now. Not ever again. As with Boone Helm, only Gallagher was no empty braggart. Dan walked on, Jacob beside him. “Get behind me, Jacob.” He had eyes only for Gallagher, but he knew men gathered themselves to leap out of a bullet’s path. They were torn between the excitement of a pending fight and fear for their own safety.

  Jacob did not drop back.

  Gallagher waited for them. His hat brim was pulled low on his forehead, so that he had to tilt his face up to see them. His eyes were narrow, the brows drawn nearly together over his long, straight nose.

  About ten feet away, Dan stopped. Gallagher would have to come to him if he wanted them closer. He needed room to swing the rifle if he needed to. “Jacob, please move to my left.”

  Jacob crossed behind him and stood at his left shoulder.

  All up and down the street, some men ducked into doorways, ran for the Melodeon Hall. Music and laughter died, and a hush fell on Jackson Street, among those men who stayed out to see the action.

  Dan’s right thumb flicked repeatedly at the rifle stock. It felt like waiting to see if a bear would charge or back away. He called, “Merry Christmas, Jack. May we see a Union victory in sixty-four.” Gallagher seemed taken aback, silent for a second, not knowing what to say, off balance. Ha! Dan told him silently. Got you, didn’t I? You didn’t expect that, you son of a bitch, did you? The Deputy wanted a provocation, wanted a challenge from Dan, but instead he got a friendly greeting, a reminder of the season of peace on earth. Union beliefs in common. A muscle tensed in Gallagher’s jaw, and Dan imagined him grinding his teeth in frustration. Asshole.

  When Gallagher spoke, his voice had a whine to it that almost made Dan laugh. “Damn it, Stark, you got a hell of a nerve. You owe me money from that game a week ago, and you been too busy strangling good men to pay up.”

  “I don’t owe you a God damn thing, Jack,” Dan said. “I won fair and square, and Con Orem will back me up, and so will anybody who was there.”

  “McDowell won’t. He was in the game, too, and he saw you.”

  Dan saw Gallagher as through a curtain of mist. He forced himself to seize his temper, to ride it because to let it ride him was to lose. Start a fight he could not win, and then Gallagher could claim self-defense. Yet Gallagher had stopped short of o
utright accusing him of cheating.

  The mist cleared. Gallagher stood waiting, and Dan let the moment stretch. You God damn bastard, Dan told him silently. You want me to push this so you can say you never started it. Like hell I’ll do that. Dan raised his voice so that everyone on the street could hear.

  “Tell you what, Jack. I’ll let you get even. How about another game, say on New Year’s Eve? At the Melodeon Hall. That’ll be a good way to bring in the New Year.” So many men heard him, it would guarantee the Hall would be packed. He would have friends there. As many as Gallagher. Maybe more. Men who were not afraid any more. He might even survive the game. In the next breath Dan could not believe he had put himself in harm’s way, had set himself up to be killed. Sweat trickled down his back, though he could feel the temperature drop each minute they stood here.

  “No, I want this game to be at Cy Skinner’s place.”