God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  Another man muttered, “Die, damn you, die, you son of a bitch.”

  Dan wanted to turn away, back out of the building, run back to Virginia City and bury his mind in calculations, in sine and cosine, and his body in Martha’s arms. But there was no escape from this futile battle against death.

  At last, the feet slowed, the shoulders relaxed, and the air was stained with the outhouse stench of death. The corpse turned, swung, and sank toward the floor as the rope stretched.

  10: Alder Gulch: Virginia City

  If there were degrees of hell, Dan thought, then he was down around level three, though after a couple of days the wound was not festering, and he could limp with a stick. The journey back by way of the express stage was not much better than if he’d ridden a horse. The coach’s leather shades protected him and his companions somewhat from wind, but the springless coach jolted them over ruts of frozen snow. More than once Dan landed on his wounded leg. To keep from yelling, he said, “Damn, it’s not cold enough. My leg isn’t numb yet.” Beidler laughed, and Fitch eyed him with something like respect. Each time they stopped to change horses, Fitch and Beidler helped him into the ranch house where he warmed himself by a fire and took hot food, or whiskey. Underway again, the warmth soon leaked out of him, leaving him colder than before. A level of hell only slightly above Dr. Glick’s treatment.

  Fitch’s attitude toward him had changed some, maybe from the night of Plummer’s hanging, the night that left his shoulder so sore he could yet hardly sling the rifle. There were no more jibes. Though the Southerner still called him “Blue,” he had a different tone in his voice. Shortly after they passed through Junction, Dan pinned down the difference. The sneer was gone.

  When they arrived back in Virginia, he found himself in a much lower stratum of hell. Tim insisted on going for his mother, and Dan tried to stop him with as much success as if he’d tried to stop the snow.

  “Ain’t nobody better’n Mam with hurts,” the boy said.

  Which was why he came to be lying naked except for his wool shirt, the quilt covering him up to the armpits, his right leg exposed to her while she tended to the wound. He hadn’t shaved, he stank, he couldn’t have her, he wanted her to go away, he wanted her to never go away, the touch of her fingers on his thigh was cool, unbelievably intimate, he wanted her to stay, wanted the others to go away. Oh, God, he wanted her. He put his arm over his eyes.

  * * *

  Martha’s breath fluttered in her throat, but her hands held the scissors nice and steady, snipping away the blood-crusted bandage from Mr. Stark’s thigh. She shouldn’t ought to be here, see him like this, yet she should be tending to him like she’d tended to others in the recovery with bullet holes in them, only not in this man’s leg and seeing what this man was made of, strong muscles and the light hair on him, and lying back with his arm across his eyes and nary a twitch as she peeled away the bandage and sniffed at the wound. It bled some more, but it was clean. Like the man himself. Even unshaved, needing a bath, his smell was clean to her.

  “You’re lucky.” She couldn’t keep the quiver out of her voice, but it didn’t seem like he noticed, on account of he took his arm away and smiled. And so am I, she told him silently, because whatever would I do if they’d buried you out there? It was that shook her so, knowing how close she’d come to seeing him no more, like seeing him now and again was the most important thing in her life. Dear God, was that how it was?

  “So I’m told,” he said.

  She felt him watching her as she put on a poultice and wrapped the leg again. She kept her eyes on her hands so’s she wouldn’t see what she shouldn’t, but she knew anyways what was happening, his body speaking its own language, telling her what he felt for her. He shifted under the blanket, turning away some.

  “Tim shouldn’t have bothered you with this.” His face was bright red.

  She pretended like she thought maybe it was windburn. Only a decent man would blush now. She felt her own skin heating up.

  Her son sat in a chair behind her, and Martha glanced over her shoulder. “No, he done the right thing.” To fill the silence, she said, “This poultice is lily-of-the-valley. Berry Woman give it to me.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  * * *

  “We must not trifle with men’s lives.” Paris Pfouts’s small mouth set in a line like mortar between bricks. The Vigilante president’s fingers toyed with a piece of paper, a list of names. Yeager’s list, and others. Members of the Executive Committee discussed the names, voted, and Pfouts tore off a scrap, put it in his coat pocket or in the stove. Crumbled to black ash, the names disappeared. Only a few were left, but Beidler and Fitch, allies since Bannack, wanted to cut discussion short, get out of Kiskadden’s upper room, that was too big for the stove to warm. Two lamps crowded the darkness back, but not far enough.

  “Damn it,” Beidler said, “when did they ever care where their bullets went?”

  “Yean, hang the bastards,” Fitch said.

  On the street, horses whinnied, men called out to each other. Whips cracked, sounding too much like gunshots. A mule brayed. Somewhere, out-of-tune fiddles challenged a jolly piano. Outside, the sun shone, though the mercury stayed frozen in the thermometers.

  Nobody wanted this over with more than Dan did. In the night he had dreamed of Pizanthia’s corpse flung onto the bonfire, and Dutch John’s boots thrashed about, and he had awakened, sweating. He’d be damn sure that if he stepped in blood, it would be unavoidable. Necessary. Not because he wanted a death, even if he did.

  Something like a fist clenched in his stomach. God. Gallagher. It could have been different.

  Pathways of time. He must have read it someplace. “What we do here will track us forever,” Dan said. “You want history to charge you with murder?”

  “Not me,” Williams said. “I want my grandchildren to hold their heads up when they say, My grandfather was a Vigilante, and not be afraid to look anyone in the eye.”

  “I don’t give a damn about posterity,” Fitch said. “Or history. Hell, I won’t be here.”

  Beidler said, “We ain’t got all day. Let’s get on with it.”

  “Thank you.” Pfouts was sarcastic. “With your permission, we’ll proceed.”

  Dan’s leg, propped on a chair, throbbed. Martha McDowell’s face shone in his mind, her touch soothing him, but when he recalled his own response, his face felt hot.

  Pfouts read from the paper: “Jack Gallagher.”

  “Aw, hell,” said Beidler. “Gallagher shot George Temple, and he helped Dillingham’s killers!” His feet in lumpy, cracked boots swung like a child’s, and with each swing, his chair creaked, a small, irritating noise. Snow buried his signs: Graves For Rent.

  Dan’s mind was full of memories: Gallagher’s hand on his shoulder – the Chief Deputy advising the tenderfoot, Be careful, choose your friends right. Gallagher smiling, charming, handsome, a magnetic personality. A Union sympathizer. Noble-looking, as someone said, as if the phrenologists were right, that a man’s looks revealed his character. But villains could charm your socks off, and likable people could murder you.

  It could have been different. God, Jack, we could have been friends. Dan held up his fist, raised his index finger. “One. Gallagher has to be part of the gang. He was too close to Plummer not be part of whatever Plummer was doing.” He raised his middle finger. “Two. He has shot and killed several men.” The fourth finger. “Three,” a nod toward Beidler, “Temple was damn lucky the bullet in his neck didn’t cut the artery or his spine. Attempted murder.” The little finger. “Dillingham.” He swallowed, held out his thumb. “He tried to set me up for murder. If I hadn’t challenged him to that card game, he’d have shot me down.”

  Pfouts smiled. “From what I hear, with that rifle of yours, a man would be a fool to try that. Anything in Gallagher’s defense?”

  Several men shook their heads. Fitch called for the question.

  Voting was quick. “Guilty.” Pfouts tore
off Gallagher’s name, put it in his pocket, squinted at the list. The paper was nearly a scrap itself. “George Lane.” He looked each man in the eye. “I know, this is a tough one, gentlemen. We’ve all pitied Club Foot George, and admired his willingness to earn his own living shining shoes.”

  Dan rubbed the back of his neck. He didn’t see the difficulty. A club-footed man could be as wicked as a man with two good feet. Had he been coerced? He could have talked to Walter Dance, as good a man as God ever made, and tough. The roughs let Dance be. No, Lane was on Yeager’s list as a road agent, and he was an accessory before the fact. He had assisted the robbers by marking the stages that carried valuables, knowing that his marks could lead to murder.

  Pfouts was saying, “With travelers buying tickets at Dance and Stuart, Club-Foot George’s shoeshine stand is an excellent place for a robbers’ lookout.”

  Williams said, “Don’t forget he’s the one Gallagher sent to get Plummer when we arrested Ives. His foot don’t stop him riding a horse.”

  Another man said, “You know, when I took the stage over to Bannack, when we got held up, you know when I’m talking about, right? Well, when I got my bag off the stage, I noticed it had a funny mark on it. Kind of a circle with a X inside. I asked Ives when I got back, and he said it was just a counter, that they had to be careful not to overload the coach. Only there weren’t no danger of that, that time. We only had three passengers.” He sighed. “Shit, the bastards got all the gold I dug out of my claim for six months. Now I got to start over.”

  The guilty verdict came quickly. Pfouts put Club-Foot George’s name in his pocket.

  Dan squirmed. His backside felt squashed, his leg ached, and he was desperate for sleep. Fortunately, the next names went quickly: Boone Helm, though not on Yeager’s list, openly bragged of eating human flesh and made dire, frightening threats. His name went into Pfouts’s pocket, as did those of Hayes Lyons, the second of John Dillingham’s murderers, and Frank Parish, who was on Yeager’s list as a road agent and horse thief besides having been identified by victims in robberies with violence. Ed French had collected suspicion about himself as a wheel gathers thick clay mud after rain. No wonder they call it gumbo, Dan thought.

  “Sam McDowell.”

  “What?” Dan’s skin prickled, and the hairs on his forearms stood up. Martha, widowed. Martha, available. Martha, his. He saw himself comforting her in her grief, and recoiled from the thought. David and Bathsheba again? He would not.

  If he helped to hang her husband she would never be with him, never forgive him.

  “I put McDowell on the list,” Fitch said. “He helped Gallagher set you up.”

  “Wait a God damn minute.” Dan’s mind roiled around. “McDowell’s chimney needs sweeping, but he wasn’t there when I challenged Gallagher to the poker game.”

  “For Christ’s sake!” Fitch nearly shouted. “Sometimes you ain’t got the sense of a louse. You can only carry Christianity so far, you know.”

  “I never claimed to be a Christian!” Dan started to say more, but Fitch cut him off.

  “McDowell hates you. He was pals with Ives, and you go and prosecute Ives. He thinks you’re sweet on his wife. His boy runs to you when the old man throws him out. He’s pals with Gallagher and Boone Helm and them boys. And he’s always out on the trail. Prospecting. Or so he says. We all know how close he sails to the truth.”

  “God damn it!” Dan pounded his fist on the counter. “You know damn well he’s prospecting, because you grubstake him. There are contracts between you and him for claims he’s staked out.”

  “Good story, ain’t it?” Fitch spat tobacco juice in the general direction of a bucket. “I ain’t never seen one of them claims. Did he ever ask you to survey one?”

  “No,” Dan said, “but that may be because he’s afraid someone will jump them.”

  Another man spoke up. “That don’t wash. You find a promising claim, you register it first thing, with a survey, on account of we have a surveyor now. Then you work it so’s you can keep it. If you have more than one claim, you make damn sure someone don’t jump the others while you’re working one. Maybe hire somebody on shares.”

  Another man said, “Or get your boy. What I hear, is Tim don’t like hard work.”

  “I don’t believe you’d pay out good money without seeing a return,” Dan said. “Not you.” Fitch was too close with his dust not to know exactly what he paid for.

  The Southerner said, “I’ve got written contracts giving me half shares and general locations, and when the snow melts, you can be damn sure I’ll have surveys done on ever’ damn one.” He turned his head and spat again, and another man yanked back his feet just in time to avoid the gob. Only the fire’s crackle disturbed the silence.

  “Well, well.” Pfouts blew out air. “I’d like a motion that we bring McDowell in with the rest tomorrow morning. We’ll get at the truth then.”

  “I so move,” Fitch said. “When you talk to him, you’ll see I’m right.”

  “Second.” The only way out of this, Dan thought, was to bring in McDowell and clear him.

  “Good.” Pfouts said when his motion had carried. He put McDowell’s name in his pocket. “Now, about tomorrow.”

  Dan’s throat clogged. He wanted Martha, God knew how much, but never over her husband’s dead body. Never by murder. He had joined the Vigilantes to stop murder for gain. Oh, God. A new fear shivered through him. Christ, if we knowingly hang an innocent man, what separates us from Plummer, or Stinson, or Gallagher?

  * * *

  In the night a sudden warm wind had come up, melted much of the snow, and layered gumbo over ice. Feeling the warmer moist air, Martha cheered up some. She took the deep cold hard, even in winter back home she’d never knowed such cold.

  Outside, the dog set to barking, and Martha, ladling flapjack batter into the frying pan, started, jerked the ladle and splattered batter sizzling onto the stove. Running steps sounded up the path, more steps than one man. McDowell jumped up from his place at the table and grabbed his shotgun off its pegs. Dotty slid from her chair and crouched in her safe corner behind the stove. The running stopped.

  “McDowell,” shouted a deep voice, “I want to talk to you. Come out and shut the damn dog up.”

  “It’s the stranglers.” McDowell laid down the gun across the table and leaned both hands on it. His eyes, black in his blanched face, stared at something unseen. He wiped his mouth on the back of his trembling hand. “Why are they here? Why do they want me? I ain’t done nothing.”

  “Come out, McDowell,” another voice shouted. “Now!”

  Stranglers. A word like a wool blanket thrown over her, dark and stifling, and she was frantic to get clear of it, it lay on her, and she couldn’t beat it off, but it thinned out so she could see McDowell as through gauze, a long ways off. His mouth changed shape, he was making words, but she couldn’t hear him proper, and she couldn’t breathe right.

  Dotty’s scream shredded the gauze. “Pap! Please, Pap! They’ll hurt Canary!”

  The bowl slipped out of Martha’s hands and smashed on the floor, and she gasped for air, and she heard everything – the dog barking, Dotty crying, McDowell trying to make himself heard, his hands reaching out to her.

  “You got to believe me.” His eyes begged her. “I never done nothing. No matter what, you got to believe I never done nothing!”

  He was her husband again, the father to her young’uns. No matter that he ranged far from her, or didn’t want the burden of them. He was their Pap. She might not love him no more, but she couldn’t desert their father.

  “I believe you,” she said, and found it was true. Wild though he’d turned, and some violent, he was no murderer, no thief. “I do believe you. I truly do.”

  “McDowell!” came the shout again. “Come out with your hands up, or we’ll shoot the goddam dog.”

  “Pap!” Dotty screamed. “Pap!”

  “You care more for the dog than you do your Pap!” he said, with a
look in his eyes like he’d seen a truth, then he squared his shoulders, and grabbed his coat. “I’m coming.” He blew a kiss to Dotty and walked out the door.

  From the doorway, Martha held Dotty to her and watched the armed men receive him. They patted McDowell’s pockets, his trousers, his arms and legs, tied his hands behind his back, and marched him away in the middle of their group, head and shoulders over most of the men. He did not look back.

  The dog broke loose and charged after them, making no sound, head lowered, the fur along his back standing straight up. The child squirmed out of her mother’s arms and ran after him, shouting for the dog to come back, and Martha raced after her with no time to breathe, let alone think, and as one of them raised his pistol and cocked it to shoot Canary, Dotty flung herself onto the dog and drove him down into a pile of melting snow. Martha felt her heart squeezed like someone had grabbed hold of it. The man yanked the pistol up, so it pointed into the air, and his finger came off the trigger as Martha crouched over the squirming pile of child and dog, shielding them both. She and the man looked into each other’s eyes.