God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  Thompson said, “Good God!”

  “What?” Sanders asked.

  “We forgot the rope.”

  Stinson laughed.

  “I have plenty.” George Chrisman beckoned to his slave, a Negro perhaps 30 years old also named George, as if Chrisman did not think enough of him to give him a name of his own. “Boy, run to the store and bring back enough rope to hang three men.”

  Dan stood close enough to Sanders to hear him grinding his teeth. “First things first,” he whispered. After they had destroyed the conspiracy of crime, they would enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, keep the Territory free.

  Plummer shouted, “No! It can’t be! I’m innocent! Innocent, I tell you!”

  “Shut up, goddammit,” said Stinson.

  Across the Bannack Ditch, intended as a giant sluice to bring water for dry claims, they turned left, onto the Virginia City road. The sluice ran uphill, an engineering miscalculation. Dan concentrated on the error, come from an incorrect calculation, or misreading of the elevations? A flaw in the instruments? He did not want to think of what they were about.

  The third group joined them at the next corner. Fitch had one of Ned Ray’s arms over his shoulders; another Vigilante prodded Ray along with a cudgel.

  “Son of a bitch is drunk,” Fitch said. “We found him passed out on a pool table.”

  Seeing Ray, Plummer yanked against their hands. “No! I am innocent, I tell you! I am innocent!” The gang’s watchword, Yeager had said, to bring immediate help. People, curious, came out, or stood at their windows. The Negro George among them carried three coils of rope. People trailed after them as they turned uphill again. Dan’s breath came shorter, from the incline or the anticipation? He did not know. Past a barn, the gallows, erected by Plummer to hang a horse thief on, loomed up against the snowy hillside. Dan caught his breath.

  Plummer begged, “Cut off my arms, cut off my legs. I can’t do anything then! Just let me live!” His tears glistened in the torchlight. “Sanders, can’t you do something for me? I’ve always been friendly to you. Help me now!”

  “I can’t do it,” Sanders said. “No one can feel worse about this than I do, but there’s nothing I can do. The weight of evidence is against you.”

  “Then at least give me a jury trial, like you did Ives. Surely I deserve that much. Chain me down in my own jail until you can get it done. Please! I’m begging you here. Please!” The last word was a scream.

  “No,” said Sanders, at his most formal. “Your pals would pack the jury. You’ve been tried and found guilty of being the leader of the road agents. Red Yeager gave us a list, and we’ve gathered a great deal of evidence against you. You’ve been identified in numerous armed robberies, and you’ve killed a number of men in gunfights both here and in Virginia. It won’t do, Henry. It just won’t do.”

  “No, please!” shrieked Plummer.

  Thompson’s young clerk, who had come out to see what was the fuss, burst from the thickening crowd to wrap his arms around Plummer. “You can’t do this! He’s done nothing wrong! Frank, dammit, you’re his friend, you can’t do this. You can’t!”

  Dan poked the rifle barrel between the young man and Plummer. Fitch pulled one arm away, and Beidler pried the other arm loose. Thompson said, “Someone take him over to my store and keep him there until our business is done.”

  Plummer wept and shook so that two of the Vigilantes had to hold him upright.

  “Shut the hell up, Plummer!” Buck Stinson yelled. “Live or die, it don’t matter.”

  Ned Ray said, “We’ll all burn in hell anyway.”

  “No, we won’t burn in any damn hell.” Stinson squirted tobacco juice through a space in his bottom teeth. “There’s no God to reward anyone or punish us. That’s a damn fairy tale. There’s nothing out there.”

  “Oh, shut up. You don’t know for sure. Nobody does,” Ned Ray said. “This ain’t no time for talk.” He said to Sanders, “Let’s get this over with. Take me first.”

  Plummer said, “I need time to pray. I can’t meet my Maker this way.”

  “Certainly,” said Sanders. “That we can do. We’ll take these two first.”

  A woman shrieked, pleaded to let Ray go. She struggled through the crowd, demanding to embrace him one last time. “That’s his doxie,” Beidler whispered. “She whores out of –” he named a saloon, that Dan did not hear.

  Plummer knelt, prayed partly to God and partly to the Vigilantes. “Oh, God, forgive me, forgive me. Oh, God, forgive me. I am too wicked to die. Let me live. I’ll pay it all back, I’ll pay everyone back. God, forgive me.”

  “Better just pray for your soul.” Dan didn’t think Plummer heard.

  The Negro had piled all the ropes at Beidler’s feet and stood aside. Beidler’s short thick fingers wrapped the end of a rope around and around itself in a hangman’s knot. He slipped the loop over Ray’s head, worked the long knot behind Ray’s left ear.

  Sanders motioned to Dan. “You’re tall enough. We need help with this. You and him.” He gestured at a Bannack man about Dan’s height.

  Dan gave the rifle to Sanders and ground his boots into the snow to gain purchase. When he was ready, three men lifted Ray up, but he struggled and squirmed and they could not make him stand. After several sweaty moments, they lowered him to the ground and one of the men said, “You can go easy, or you can go hard. You can die quick by jumping off these men’s shoulders, or we can hoist you up by the neck and let you strangle. Up to you. Now which is it to be?”

  “I’ll jump.” Ray said, and soon he was standing on their shoulders, while men held his legs. Ray wobbled, his boot heel gouged into the point of Dan’s shoulder. How had he earned this, Dan asked himself as he sought to balance Ray’s weight. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons, to the third and fourth generations. Was he paying for Father’s dereliction, by standing as a drop for a hanging? Beidler took up the slack in the rope, tied the end around an upright. Dan wished he would hurry, then repented; he had no wish to shorten Ray’s life.

  “Do your duty, boys,” said Sanders.

  Dan leaped aside, slipped in the snow and fell to his knees. Ray plunged down, feet flailing, and a beat of air puffed at Dan’s cheek. He rolled away and stood up. Ray had forced his fingers between the rope and his neck, and he thrashed about, gargling and choking. His face swelled, turned blue, his eyes bulged from their sockets and his tongue, swollen and purple, escaped from between his teeth. The woman, held firmly back, sobbed. As Ray died with one final wild kick, her shrieks clawed at the night.

  The stench of voided bowels stained the air. Dan tightened his jaw against the convulsions of his stomach. He stooped to retrieve his hat, and tasted bile.

  Beidler said, “I won’t let that happen again.”

  Stinson’s mouth ran streams of curses like dirty melting snow. “You sons of bitches, you goddam fucking bastards….” He kicked at them when they tried to raise him up, and someone punched him in the jaw, but he fought too much to stand on their shoulders, so the Vigilantes seated him there and held his ankles, but still his heel hammered on Dan’s chest, and he twisted his head so that the noose caught under his chin and when they dropped him, he dangled, kicking and strangling.

  He was killing three men. Dan thought he should have felt something, some horror at the sight of men dying hard by his hand, but his feelings were as numb as his toes. They had earned their deaths.

  Plummer rose from his prayers seeming a different man. “All I ask, boys, is give me a good drop. I want it to be quick.” He bent his head to receive the noose, like a well trained horse puts its nose in the halter.

  Tears ran down Thompson’s cheeks. Chrisman stood someplace back in the crowd. Fitch at Dan’s back helped Plummer balance, while Beidler tied the rope around an upright, tugged it tight. Dan imagined Plummer taking his last look at the rounded hills, juniper trees jutting up through the snow, their conical shadows black and sharp-pointed, the town below with snow piled on the r
oofs. A little town lying still.

  “Stop! No! You can’t do this!” A man stumbled up the slope.

  “Good God, it’s Vail.” Thompson swung away from Plummer. “He must have just come in on the stage.”

  “Please, you can’t,” Vail shouted, “let him go, he’s innocent, he’s innocent, he committed no crime, goddam you let him go, let him go.” Thompson caught him, held him back, other men seized his arms, his coat, and he struggled and shouted, but no one could stop him screaming Plummer was innocent, damn you all, innocent.

  Biedler signaled and Dan leaped aside, ready to dodge Plummer’s feet, but he dropped straight down, hit the end of the rope with a jerk. A loud crack and he was gone.

  “Oh, God, no! Murderers!” Vail turned away, sobbing, Thompson’s arm around his shoulders. “Murderers!”

  Thompson said, “I’ll take care of him and break the news to Mrs. Vail.”

  It was done. Dan retrieved the Spencer from Sanders, Vail’s cry ringing in his ears: Murderer.

  * * *

  Together with Biedler and Fitch, Dan ate breakfast in a restaurant where other men smiled and pointed their chins at them, whispered, “Vigilanters,” stopped to shake their hands before they left the establishment. Fitch and Beidler preened themselves, but for Dan, pushing the fried bread and venison around on his plate, Vail’s accusation drowned out their thanks: Murderer.

  He had heard it all night.

  Fitch aimed his knife at Dan. “You’re death at a party, Blue. We done good work.”

  “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.” Dan chewed on a piece of tough venison.

  Beidler lifted his coffee cup to his mouth. “It’s a dirty job, cleaning up criminals. You oughta be proud you’re one of them as has the balls to do it.”

  Around a chunk of fried bread, Fitch said, “He died game in the end.”

  They all knew he meant Plummer. “Not a bad epitaph,” Dan said, but the venison tasted like boot soles, and the bread had been fried in axle grease. He pushed away his plate. “I’ll be at Chrisman’s.”

  Maybe he should be proud, Dan thought as he crossed Main Street toward Chrisman’s store, but he could find no cause for pride in helping to hang men. Besides, how many thank-you’s were sincere, and how many were sucking up to power? For the balance of power in the region had shifted, too small a word for the revolution they had wrought. They had taken power from the criminals, the ruffians, the roughs.

  In the middle of the street he gave way as three riders, leading a pack mule, trotted out of town. One of them spat in his direction, and another raised his middle finger.

  His face hot, Dan watched them ride into a white world, the snow-covered hills blending into a white sky without a horizon. He walked on. In the flat light, it was hard to see the ruts.

  Chrisman’s store occupied a large, false-fronted building that seemed to break in the middle, as if two small log cabins had been pushed together end to end and not matched well. Near the tall front windows Chrisman and Sanders listened to a miner, who stopped talking when Dan pushed open the door.

  The miner thrust out his right hand toward Dan and said his name, which Dan instantly forgot. “I been telling these gentlemen, you fellas done good work last night. For months we been scared even to walk around in broad daylight, or have a drink in a saloon, or eat in a restaurant. One of them gets drunk, he’s picking a fight, maybe he don’t like how I part my hair. I had to tell Stinson I was too much of a coward to fight.” He stared into the back of the store, his jaw muscles working. “Goddammit, I ain’t no coward, but I was outgunned. I’d have murdered myself if I’d have fought him.” He turned toward the door, but not before Dan had seen the sheen of tears in his eyes.

  Sanders said, “I’ve made a tactical retreat from time to time myself.”

  The miner nodded, pulled the door open and was gone. For a moment, none of the three Vigilantes could think of anything to say.

  Two more men rode by, on their way out of town. “They’re leaving,” said Dan.

  “In droves,” Sanders said.

  “Good riddance.” Chrisman sat on a stool behind the counter. “I was always scared when some of them came in here to talk to Plummer.”

  Dan, thinking to change the subject, waved at the loaded shelves lining the long windowless walls. “You have a veritable R. H. Macy’s here.”

  He didn’t think the Southerner heard him. “I can’t get used to him being gone.” Chrisman stared toward the back of the store, where Plummer’s desk and chair stood between two windows set at eye level in the back wall. Dan walked back, nodded to the Negro, who was unpacking a box of canned beans. What did he think of last night’s events, of having to fetch the rope for a hanging, when his people were lynched in the South? Dan wanted to say, It’s not the same.

  He looked out one of the windows. Some twenty-five feet behind the store stood the little jail Plummer had built. It had two doors, so two rooms, each one not much larger than a three-hole outhouse. What had his idea been? To keep suspects a few hours until trial in front of the miners court? It was no prison. Boot heels thumped across the floor.

  “How are the Vails?” Dan asked Sanders.

  Sanders shook his head. “It was a horrible shock to them. I doubt they’ll ever get over it. Thompson is with them now, and my wife. Mrs. Vail fainted when Thompson told her. They’ll bury him tomorrow.”

  “A dreadful business.” Dan’s shoulder ached where Stinson’s boot heel had dug in. He would have to find a seamstress to mend a tear in his coat.

  Sanders’s brows drew together. “You never served as a soldier, did you?”

  “No. My grandfather paid a substitute.” Grandfather, at dinner, jabbing the air with his fork: This War is illegal! Some wars, Dan would tell him, we have to fight. Legal or not. Communal self-defense.

  “You’d have seen far worse, on the battlefield,” said Sanders. “A soldier is frightened all the time, and the fear makes him ferocious to the enemy. At least in this War our cause is just, as our cause is just in this little war against lawlessness. Keep in mind that we did what we had to do, that if we had done nothing the robberies and murders would continue.”

  “We are soldiers in a righteous cause,” Dan said, “but I regret the necessity.”

  “So do I, but they could have mended their ways a dozen times.”

  “Yes, I understand that. They made their own wrong decisions.” If only they had not chosen the easy way of getting the gold.

  “Exactly.” Sanders squeezed his sore shoulder, and Dan managed not to flinch. “We have to talk to Pizanthia.” His footsteps receded toward the front of the store, where men were gathering. Dan stood a few seconds longer at the window. He was not seeing the empty jail, but the round white hills beyond, and heard a sparrow of a woman say: You got to be God’s thunderbolt.

  Martha, my dear, would you say we are doing God’s work now?

  * * *

  Joe Pizanthia’s cabin lay down a small slope near the creek bed, behind the Bannack Bakery and a saloon. Smoke rose from the mud chimney.

  Sanders cupped his hands around his mouth. “Pizanthia, come out. We want to talk to you.”

  No response from the cabin.

  “Maybe he ain’t there,” a man said.

  Another said, “He’s there. He ain’t stupid enough to go off and leave a fire burning.”

  Sanders bellowed, “Pizanthia, come out! We want to talk.”

  Snow fell into the rising smoke, but no sign came that Pizanthia had heard Sanders. Yet how could he not have heard him, or the crowd’s jeers and shouts?

  Two men volunteered to go down and knock on the door. One man, George Copley, said, “I’ve had fairly friendly dealings with him. He’s rough, but you can’t condemn a man merely because he has the wrong friends. I think I can talk to him. Convince him we just want to question him.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Dan said.

  A voice hollered, “Be careful, George. You don’t know what y
ou’ll find.”

  “Yeah, we don’t want to lose any good men,” came another shout.

  Copley held his hands out to his sides, and the other man, Smith Ball, held his shotgun in both hands, low and in front of him, uncocked, pointed leftward toward the ground. Dan carried the Spencer slung on his shoulder.

  When they stood in front of the door, Copley shouted, “Pizanthia, we want to ask you some questions.” Big snowflakes drifted down, as if aimlessly, but more thickly, and Dan blinked them away. Amid the silence of the snow, the crowd, grown to more than a hundred men, watched. Copley raised his fist and pounded on the door. “Come out, Pizanthia, we want to ask you – ”