God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  The boy hunkered down in front of her. Dotty was rubbing her back, and Canary sat watching her with his tail beating on the floor. His tongue lolled out the side of his mouth and he smiled a wide doggy grin that made Martha laugh and rumple his ears. She took out a rag from her sleeve and wiped her eyes, blew her nose.

  Tim took her hands in his own. “I ain’t coming home, Mam.” His man’s deep voice.

  His forelock hung almost into his eyes, like always, even when he was a baby. She brushed it aside in the old gesture, and it felt about as soft as ever. Even knowing how it would be like he said, she couldn’t speak, just nodded, trying to hide her despair in the joy of finding him safe. Her family had broke up and they’d never be together like she’d hoped. “I know.”

  Tim went on like he hadn’t heard her. “I can’t come home while Pap’s there. I won’t be a slavey to him and work his claims for no wages. I’ll go to work for Mr. Dance stocking shelves, and I’ll do like you and learn to read and write and cipher, and do some speculating. And when I get enough money put by, I’ll go to school and learn something, and I’ll raise horses. There’s a need for good horses here. Something besides Mustangs all the time.”

  “Where’ll you live?”

  “Mr. Stark says I can live with him and Mr. Himmelfarb as long as I want.”

  Dotty sat on the other chair and fondled the dog’s long soft ears.

  Tears stung Martha’s eyes. “I was so afraid you was lost in the storm.”

  “I was, Ma, but Canary brung me here, and they took me in.” He paused. “Especially Mr. Stark.”

  Martha said, “I need to thank them, personal.”

  “Especially Mr. Stark,” Tim said.

  “Yes. Especially Mr. Stark.”

  Tim went to the door and called to him. Mr. Stark stood the shovel in the snow and come in. He stripped off his wraps and hung them all up neat. With the four of them inside, Martha felt how small this cabin was. How could her boy stay here? It was hardly big enough for two men, let alone three, yet they were willing to make room, somehow.

  Martha stood up. “I’ll never be able to thank you for what you done.” When he spread his hands, seeming about to say it was nothing, she stamped her foot. “It ain’t nothing. You done sheltered my boy, and you’re willing to keep on until he don’t need it no more.”

  “Your Tim is a good boy, Mrs. McDowell. It’s no trouble to me, or Jacob, to help him.”

  She gave him her hand to shake like a man would do. “Mr. Stark, I think you have a good heart. Thank you.”

  He was standing in a patch of sunshine from the window over the wash stand, and she watched the red come in his face. He held her hand like he’d never let it go. “You’re welcome.”

  She glanced at his left hand, resting in the sling. The swelling was down. “I see your thumb is better.”

  “Yes, thanks to you.”

  Conscious that the young’uns were watching, afraid they’d see too plain how she felt about him, Martha groped in her mind for something to say, but found only a calm silence. When she pulled her hand free, his fingertips slid along her palm, and a flame kindled in her belly. “We’d best be getting on,” she said just as he spoke: “I’ll look for a bigger cabin.” They stood there, not touching, just smiling at each other like they shared a happy secret.

  * * *

  Dan’s bowels were jelly. Fool. Damn fool. He might be committing suicide tonight. For Christ’s sake, whatever had possessed him to challenge Gallagher? All he had done was to postpone Jack’s murderous intent. And by taking in Tim, he’d earned McDowell’s greater hatred. This night, he’d warned the boy and Jacob that he might not walk home. He’d told the boy to take care of the Spencer; if he didn’t come back, the rifle belonged to Tim, and now, without its weight, he felt lopsided. The pistol in his coat pocket wasn’t the same.

  Jacob walked with him, but he’d forbidden Tim to come. The night was colder than the word cold would bear, and everyone went about with scarves across their noses and mouths, even for short distances, like road agents, nothing showing but their eyes. If he hadn’t challenged Gallagher, he thought as they crossed to the Melodeon Hall, there would be no end to the power of the roughs. Like Anton Holter and the other witnesses, he had to stand up before men. He had helped to prosecute Ives, and it did not matter that his gut clenched and sweat trickled down his back. The job was not over. He could not do otherwise than walk through the door of the saloon.

  Just inside, Dan paused. “Gallagher’s not here yet.” He had to shout over the fiddles, the squeeze box, the piano, the boots and the hollow laughter of men trying to pretend they were having fun, and not far from home.

  Jacob still looked worried. “How do you know?” he screamed into Dan’s ear.

  “I can’t smell him.” Dan ignored Jacob’s stare, that said he was crazy. Later he’d explain. The peculiar malevolence of a man who wants you dead carries an odor strong as a wolverine.

  Con Orem waved. Dan and Jacob threaded their way among the poker tables to the bar. Maybe a beer would settle his nerves. Con was nearly through the first draw when Dan put a foot on the rail. “Charlie Beehrer makes the best beer in the Territory, but damn, it’s slow.” The dark German brew had a thick tan-colored head that Orem blew off three times before sliding the pewter stein over to Dan.

  “Keep your dust,” the saloonkeeper said. “Happy New Year.”

  Dan licked foam off his upper lip. “Thanks. And Happy New Year to you, too.”

  Orem cocked an eyebrow at Jacob, who said, “Ja. Please.” Jacob reached for his poke, but Orem shook his head.

  “Danke,” Jacob said. “Ein glűckliches Neues Jahr.”

  “Same to you, Jake,” Con said.

  Dan laid his poke on the bar. “Have one on me.” The poke held his stake for tonight’s game. He’d better win because he would not stake more.

  “Save your dust.” Orem drew himself a beer in his own stein, and set it on the bar while he rolled up his sleeves. Heavy muscle corded his forearms. He leaned on the bar, and in his hands the stein was reduced to a coffee cup. “You know, at first I never figured you for a gambling man. Thought you were just a tenderfoot.”

  “The old man started teaching me before I went to school. I thought you counted one through ten, jack, queen, ace.” He had managed a joke, though his stomach rumbled.

  Orem laughed. “That’s a good one.” His glance roamed the room, where his men strolled about, on the lookout to stop trouble before it started. “So you’re giving Gallagher and McDowell a rematch tonight.”

  His mouth full of beer, Dan nodded. His stomach lurched, and he almost could not swallow.

  “I’ll see it stays on the up and up.” The brown eyes, hard now as marbles, slid to Dan. “I don’t like trouble in my place.”

  “That’s why we’re here. You run an honest game.”

  “A two-edged sword, ain’t it?” Orem nodded toward a front table. “That game’s breaking up. Two of them are going to find better pickings.”

  Dan and Jacob carried their beers over to the table. Dan stood behind an empty chair that held a smelly buffalo coat. Another empty chair, between two windows, separated the coat’s owner from another player, who had a wild head of dark curly hair. Dan recalled the coat and the smell, rank and sharp, but what was the man’s name? Across from him a man sweated in a brightly striped Hudson’s Bay coat. Dan kept a blank face, lest a player read on it something about the cards he was watching. Sloan. Jim Sloan. That was it. Only Sloan and Hudson’s Bay counted as players.

  “Fold.” Curly turned his cards face down, and wiped his cuff at the ice on one of the windows. Dan wanted to yell at him to stop. He didn’t want anyone to see in.

  Where was Gallagher? Maybe they wouldn’t come. The cards slapped down, the players said, “Raise.” “Call.” Round it went until one said, “See you.” The hand ended, Sloan gathered in the pot.

  One of the losers threw down his cards. “I’m out.” He gathered up
his things and left.

  “I need a beer, gentlemen, if you’ll excuse me,” said Curly.

  “Well, well,” Sloan said. “If it ain’t the card sharp. You going to give me another chance to clean you out, Counselor?”

  So Sloan knew he’d prosecuted Ives. What did he think of that? “Why not?” Dan said. “It’s New Year’s Eve. You might as well help me celebrate.”

  Sloan laughed. “I’ll do the celebrating.” He looked past Dan at Jacob. “What about you, pal?”

  Jacob shook his head. “I watch only.”

  Dan said, “His English isn’t so good yet.”

  “Hoo!” said Sloan. “Don’t need much English for raise, call, check. Fold.”

  Hudson’s Bay stood up and smiled at Jacob. “We’ve plenty of room, old chap.” There was a tear in one coat pocket.

  “It’s worth it just to hear Bob talk,” Sloan said. “I ain’t never heard nothing like him.”

  “I’m English, dear boy.” Bob folded his coat over the back of his chair. His plaid wool shirt had two small round holes in the left pocket. “Always happy to provide entertainment.”

  He’d bought a dead man’s shirt. “Does that shirt bring you luck?” asked Dan.

  “I rather like to think so.” Bob smiled winningly, and Dan’s suspicions rose. The man was a gambler. A professional, despite the holed shirt and torn coat.

  Dan took the chair between Sloan and Curly. Between the two windows, his back to a solid wall. “What’s the game?” Sloan’s stink made his eyes water, but no one could outflank him. Jacob had taken up a station slightly to Sloan’s left and behind him. Thick ice clouding the windows in spite of Curly’s efforts prevented anyone from telling who sat there.

  “How about five-card stud, aces high, dollar bets?” said Sloan.

  “Suits me,” Dan said.

  Bob held out his hand. “Butler’s the name. Benjamin O. Butler. Folks call me Bob. The initials, you see.” An unlit pipe lay beside his pile of chips.

  Dan shook it and spoke his name. “Glad to know you.”

  Bob rubbed his hands together. “Well, now, that remains to be seen, does it not?”

  Curly came back carrying two beers. Setting both down at his place, he wiped moisture from his hand and held it out for Dan to shake. “Name’s Tony Morelli, Anthony Charles Morelli, and before you ask, yes, I’m a wop, but my people have been American as long as yours.”

  As he shook Morelli’s hand, Dan thought of his Mayflower ancestor and said his own name. Then he forgot Morelli.

  The door creaked open and two men walked in on a draft of frigid air. Dan’s vision narrowed, darkened, and Gallagher and McDowell appeared as at the end of a tunnel, in a spot of light, and the jolly laughter and music faded into a rushing sound like breakers in the ocean. Gallagher’s head turned, he saw Dan, said something to McDowell, who laughed. The laughter and music rose, and everything around Dan took on a sharp edge. He had never seen anything to clearly: Con Orem coming to point, his hands sliding off the bar, one of his men giving his beer stein to a customer waiting to dance. Jacob sucked in a breath.

  Gallagher and McDowell.

  Dan wished himself at home. In New York. Anywhere but here. His right biceps quivered and would not stop when as if casually, with a steady hand, he raised the beer to lips grown suddenly stiff. He curled the fingers of his left hand into his sling to hide their trembling.

  “How do, boys,” said Gallagher.

  McDowell grunted.

  “Happy New Year, Jack. Sam.” Dan set down the mug without rattling it on the table. He hoped they couldn’t see his shaking.

  “Care to sit in? There’s room,” Sloan said.

  “The more the better. Have a seat,” Bob said.

  “You three know you’re playing with a strangler?” asked McDowell.

  “Hell,” Sloan said, “everybody in the Gulch knows about Dan Stark, friend. His dust weighs out the same as anyone’s.”

  Dan felt the smooth wooden grip of the hand gun, Samuel Colt’s latest model Navy revolver, in his pocket. God save him from having to pull the thing out. Yet he should be ready. He laid it across his lap. “Mind if they sit in?” Forcing a smile, and looking into Gallagher’s eyes, he said, “I cleaned their clocks the day Nick Tbalt’s body was brought in.”

  “That’s right, he did.” Sloan barked out a short laugh. “Cleaned mine, too.”

  “You don’t say.” A frown creased Morelli’s face, but his dark eyes were shining with mischief. “Maybe I better drop out now while I still have some dust.”

  “What about it, Counselor? Think you can do it again?” Sloan scratched his head.

  “Depends on the cards.” Dan forced himself not to think about what lived in Sloan’s hair.

  Gallagher shook himself out of his topcoat, laid it on top of Sloan’s buffalo coat, then thought better of that and draped it carefully over the back of the chair next to Bob. “What’s the game?”

  Curly took the mug away from his mouth. “Five-card stud, aces high, dollar bets, five-dollar limit.”

  “Five-dollar limit? Sounds penny-ante to me,” said Gallagher.

  “We don’t want to start the New Year broke.”

  “What the hell. It’ll just take longer to skin Stark, that’s all. We’ll get a beer and be with you.”

  As they walked off, Sloan said, “Those two are after more than your dust. They want your hide.”

  “I know.” Dan flexed his fingers. “If you want to fold now, nobody’d blame you.”

  Sloan stretched, reached his hands high over his head. “I wouldn’t miss this. I ain’t been having much excitement lately.”

  “I’ll stay, too,” Morelli said. “Just to see what happens.”

  “If you chaps stay, I suppose I might as well.” Bob riffled the deck, first one side, then turned it over and riffled the same side, but it looked like a different side because he had turned it over. “I’ve never thought I liked Gallagher much.”

  Dan didn’t hear him. Fool. He laid his right hand on the table, willed it not to shake, tried to look calm, as if he merely waited for his cards. Fool. The room was filling with men, and the buzz of talk rose. Men glanced at him, quick looks that ricocheted off and darted back. He thought they were judging his toughness, choosing their bets. Fool.

  “He’s crazy,” Morelli told Sloan, and Dan wanted to agree with him.

  “He’s better off here than in any other saloon,” Sloan said. “He’s got friends here. Con Orem’s no friend to the roughs. He won’t have Boone Helm in the place.”

  Bob laid the cards aside and put the long, curving pipe stem in his mouth, chewed at it, then began the business of lighting it.

  A crowd gathered around the table. Dan recognized the two brothers who had asked to join the Vigilantes the day he challenged Gallagher. They nodded, smiled, gave him a thumbs up signal. Both men carried sawed-off shotguns. Men made way for Gallagher and McDowell, who took a chair and shoved it between Sloan and Sloan’s coat. “Christ,” he said. “When did you kill that thing? Yesterday?”

  Gallagher said, “Get the damn thing away from me.”

  “Hey,” Sloan protested. “That critter never done you no harm. Don’t insult it. It has to be somewhere.”

  “Oh, hell.” Gallagher shrugged. The coat stayed where it was, but he shifted his chair closer to Bob, who said, “We’ve all been treated to its delicious aroma this evening.”

  Gallagher let out a snort of laughter.

  “Delicious aroma? Like apple pie, maybe?” Dan joked, and in the next breath cursed his stupidity.

  “Apple pie? Like my wife makes? What do you mean by that? You carrying on behind my back, you and her?” McDowell leaned forward, a knife in his fist. Sloan pushed his chair back, and a leg came down on Jacob’s foot, who shouted at the sudden pain.

  “Sorry,” Sloan lifted the chair leg off Jacob’s foot and slid it forward. “Damn it, are we playing cards or tiddly winks tonight?”

  McDowell sai
d. “Being in the same room with that thing is bad. My lungs will never be the same.”

  Bob tamped tobacco into the pipe bowl. “If you fear for your lungs, I recommend you take up pipe smoking. Fumigates a room and your lungs at the same time. Very beneficial.”

  As if Gallagher and McDowell had not come to kill Dan, they began to negotiate the pot limit, the values of the different colored chips, the value of a dollar in gold dust. Dan kept himself from squirming, held his tongue between his teeth to keep from shouting, Let’s play cards, dammit. He broke into one argument on the price of gold by saying, “The price of gold, last I checked, was $18.00 an ounce.” At last the wrangling was done, and everyone agreed on the value of the chips: white for a dollar, blue for five, yellow for ten, each man to start with a hundred dollars worth of chips.