God's Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana

by Carol Buchanan

  He bent over her and she wanted to bolt, but she stayed put on the chair, held fast to the seat. She’d been so happy he wasn’t hung, hoped during the long waiting that coming so close to death might have changed him, but no, it just made him worse. He didn’t want a family, a home, he wanted to be free except she could earn money for him.

  She tipped her head back so she could look him in the eye, and all her frustration and the pent up anger that she’d stored these last months erupted. “No! You stay here, and stop drinking and gambling in the saloons, because I won’t leave.”

  The blow struck her fast as a snake, knocked her to the floor, someone was screaming, and McDowell was shouting, “You whore, you’re staying with that bastard Stark, he’s hanging my friends and he nearly hung me, and he’s been having you behind my back.” Half-stunned she could not fight him, even if she could have fought against the strength of him. She heard her dress rip as he straddled her, and her head rocked back and forth as he slapped her.

  Boots thundered across the floor, and she heard a clang, McDowell lifted off her, and then a man’s shriek. Timmy was shouting, “Yellow bastard, hit Mam will you, get out of here, I’ll kill you next time I see you, I swear I will even you are my own Pap, I’ll kill you so help me God, I will.”

  Dotty kneeling over her, crying, Martha barely aware when Timmy said, “I’ll fetch Miz Hudson. And Tabby.” She wanted to tell him not to leave her, but the darkness was fast coming over her, and she had to yield to it, let it come. She couldn’t fight it off.

  * * *

  There should have been drums. Men walking to their execution should march to drums beating a slow cadence marking the solemn occasion of death amid an awestruck silence. Five men about to die. Dan, limping behind the Vigilantes holding on to Gallagher, the Spencer ready to cock and fire, heard again their sentences, in Paris Pfouts’s precise, dry words, echoing where drums should roll:

  Boone Helm, public nuisance, self-confessed murderer, and cannibal.

  Frank Parish, road agent, stage robber; specifically, robbing the stage on the thirteenth of November; co-conspirator with Henry Plummer.

  Club-Foot George Lane, road agent, co-conspirator, telegraph agent for the Plummer gang, warning gang members when valuables were being carried on a stage.

  Hayes Lyons, road agent, guilty of robbery and murders, specifically the murder of John Dillingham.

  Jack Gallagher, co-conspirator, accessory before and after the fact of robbery and murder, specifically covering up the murder of John Dillingham by cleaning one pistol and shuffling them all so that no one could tell which had been the actual murder weapon; and finally, attempted murder on the person of George Temple on December 31st.

  But there were no drums. No awestruck silence from the people on the street, who called to their friends while armed Vigilantes scattered throughout the crowd kept order.

  The procession halted while men ran ahead to prepare the place of execution, a new building on the corner of Wallace and Van Buren streets, the next street beyond Jackson, the future home of Rank’s Drugs. The log walls were up, and the main support beam was in place. A good place for a hanging. The beam would hold the weight.

  Walter Dance came out of his store and stood among the crowd, his head in the clear above the other men. Club-Foot George called to him. “Mr. Dance, can’t you help me? I’m innocent. I swear I am.”

  Dance shook his head. “I’m sorry, George. You’ve been all right to me, but the evidence is overwhelming.”

  He’d heard it from his partner, Jim Stuart, a Vigilante. Which did Dance regret more, Dan wondered, the execution of a man he had befriended or knowing that Club-Foot George had taken so great advantage of his kindness?

  “Then will you pray with me, sir?”

  “Gladly.”

  Dan said, “Let him kneel,” and Fitch, holding one of Club Foot George’s arms, helped him to his knees. Fitch’s face showed his disgust, but he dared not refuse.

  Gallagher said, “Me, too. Take off my hat.”

  Dan swept off Gallagher’s hat, and his guards helped him to kneel in the cold mud.

  “Would you take off my hat?” Hayes Lyons asked the men holding him.

  “Sure thing.” One of them removed Lyons’s hat and held it for him.

  “Obliged.” Lyons did not ask to kneel.

  Frank Parish wept steadily, tears ran down his cheeks and dropped onto his coat. Dan guessed that he might not even know the prayers were being said.

  “Almighty God,” said Dance, “we beseech you in the name of your only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that you forgive these men – ”

  “Hey,” Boone Helm said, “did you hear the one about the traveling drummer who arrives at the farmer’s house –”

  “Shut up,” said Fitch and Dan together as Dan brought up the muzzle of the Spencer. Helm spat at them, muttered under his breath as Dance prayed.

  “– and receive their souls into your everlasting peace and love. Lord, you know we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, but that in your unbounded love of mankind you sent your only Son to die for us.”

  Helm called out to a friend in the crowd of onlookers. “Hey, Bob, they got me this time. Say goodbye to Jim for me, will you?”

  “Shut the hell up,” said Fitch.

  Dance had continued the prayer as if he had not heard them. “Forgive our sins, Lord, and receive these men today into your loving Presence. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”

  The prayer finished, Dan helped Gallagher to his feet and put his hat on again. Dance lifted up Club Foot George and set him on his feet. Lane said, “Thank you, sir. I guess I’ll see you in heaven someday.”

  “I’ll look for you there, George. We’ll meet again.”

  Dan envied them their belief in life after death, of living beyond this life even though the body was left in the dirt, that what was to come would be a world of quiet waters and green pastures.

  “Hey, Jack,” Helm said to Gallagher, “that’s a fine coat you have there. Why don’t you give it to me? You never gave me nothin’ and now’s your last chance.”

  “Damn sight of use you’ll have for it. You won’t need a coat where you’re going.” Gallagher’s eyes were red-rimmed from crying, but his voice was steady though the corners of his lips quivered.

  “Forward!” The procession picked up its march.

  Someday, the building would make a two-room store, but today the condemned men and their executioners crowded through the door to the back room and squeezed themselves into it. Five crates stood in a straight row beneath five ropes that dangled over the main bearing beam. The hangman’s knots were already tied. Sunlight slanted onto a wall through a crack in the clouds, and a breeze, heavy with the threat of snow, touched Dan’s cheek.

  Outside, the crowd shouted, cried out, called for the release of the five, for their deaths, and a woman’s high-pitched wailing sliced through the noise. Vigilantes surrounded the building, guns, like Dan’s own, ready to cock and fire.

  Frank Parish sobbed, and his legs shook so that he seemed to stand in a breeze rippling his trouser legs. X put the noose around Frank Parish’s neck, snugged it against the back of his left ear. Vigilantes boosted him onto the box nearest the west wall and braced him, so he could not slump down and choke himself. When he could muster a few coherent words, he asked for a mask. His own black neckerchief was draped over his head, and it puffed in and out with every breath.

  Next to him stood Boone Helm rigid as a pole while Cap Williams placed the noose and tightened it. “Hey, leave a little slack there,” said Helm. “You want to strangle me?”

  Scrabbling noises from the wall, grunts and gasps, and onlookers’ heads appeared over the topmost log. They did not want to miss a bit of the excitement, and their ghoulish glee turned Dan’s stomach. Even murderers deserved to die with – he could not think of what, and turned his back on them to tend to Gallagher, in the middle.

  Another Vigilante held Dan’s rifle while
he removed Gallagher’s hat, laid it on the box, took the noose in both hands. The rope felt stiff and bristly as a hostile hound’s back, and Gallagher dodged and twisted to avoid the noose until Dan’s patience snapped. “Hold still, damn it, Jack. You’re not gaining anything with these maneuvers.” His hands were so cold he could hardly grasp the rope to widen the loop.

  Gallagher quieted while Dan fitted the loop over his head. The condemned man’s hair, slicked neat as ever, shone black. A drop of sweat trickled down through one sideburn. He said in a low voice that Dan almost did not hear. “It didn’t have to be this way.”

  Dan could not use his left thumb, and both hands shook when he tried to tighten the noose. Did Gallagher mean that he could have been one of them? That Jack would have accepted him then? It would have been so simple, just tell them things – where new claims lay, which ones held promise, which did not. Not much. Just a minor dishonesty here and there, like Club-Foot George had marked the stagecoaches, or Brown had passed on information communicated over a friendly drink, and all of these choices led, on a path as twisted as a deer trail, to this moment on a winter afternoon. In the deep night hours Dan had thought he could never bring himself to hang Jack Gallagher, a man he could like despite everything, but now his anger beat a drum in his ears. Damn Gallagher for bringing them both here. He tugged at the noose, and the knot tightened with a jerk and pain flared in his left hand and with it his anger.

  “God damn it, Jack. You could have done things differently, and you know it. You could have lived an honest life.”

  “You think so? You can let me know someday if it was worth it, walking the straight and narrow.”

  Dan’s laugh held no humor. “I know that now. Look where you’re standing.”

  “You got a point.” Gallagher rubbed his ear against the knot. “That’s a little tight, ain’t it?”

  “You’ll be glad of it soon.” Dan stepped away.

  Two other Vigilantes helped Gallagher onto the box, and another took up the slack in the rope, looped the free end around a log in the back of the building. The sun came out, and cast long afternoon shadows sideways across the floor. “Do you want your hat?” Dan asked, but Gallagher shook his head. “I’m not likely to need it now, am I?”

  Hayes Lyons was begging to have his woman brought so he could say goodbye.

  “You tried that before,” Cap Williams said. “We’ll give her a message, though.”

  Dan remembered that women’s tears had stirred the crowd to free Lyons from hanging for Dillingham’s murder.

  “Tell her – ” Almost, Lyons broke down. His face worked, his eyes squeezed shut, and his lips trembled. Taking hold again, he said in a rush, “Tell her I loved her.”

  Club-Foot George, whose hands were tied in front, dashed his hat to the ground. A Vigilante placed the noose and tightened it, helped Lane onto the box by the east wall.

  When all was ready, Cap Williams said, “Any last requests?”

  Gallagher glared at the Vigilantes. “Yeah, damn it, I’d like a drink. And make it decent whiskey.” Dan had a flask that he uncorked and someone climbed on the box to help him drink from it. “That’s better.” Gallagher said, “I hope forked lightning strikes every God damn strangling one of you sons of bitches before this day is out, because then you’ll join me in hell and I’ll get you there, you bastards.” He looked directly at Dan. “You especially, you son of a bitch.”

  Williams said, “Men, do your duty.”

  As if he had been waiting for that signal, George Lane leaped up and came down at the end of the rope with the sharp crack of a broken neck, and enough force nearly to decapitate him. Blood spurted against the wall, and Dan was reminded of Ives, whose blood had sprayed him. Lane’s body swung free, his boots kicking and twitching a few seconds until at last they stilled.

  Vigilantes snatched the box from under Gallagher’s feet. He dropped, and again there was the bull-whip crack of a broken neck. Dan coughed and stepped aside from the stench, dodged the swinging feet. He had done the job right. Jack died quickly.

  Boone Helm watched Gallagher’s feet. “Kick away, old boy. I’ll be in hell with you in a minute.” He raised his voice: “Hooray for Jeff Davis! Let her rip!” He jumped out high and hard, and the rope twanged as he hit the end of it, and his body swung in a wide arc, his feet knocked against the box.

  “Any last words?” X asked Parish, who shook his head. A corner of the neckerchief fluttered. When X and another man yanked the box away, he dangled, jerking and shuddering for several minutes before he died.

  Hayes Lyons talked nonstop to the Vigilantes and the onlookers peering over the top to see five men hang. “One bad step leads to another, and I never thought I’d end up this way. Tell my woman she’s to see me buried decent, and not leave me hanging here too long, and to take her gold watch, she let me wear, do you promise?” X promised. Hayes said, “I knew you would. You’re a square shooter, X.”

  X said, “Time to go.” He and four Vigilantes jerked the box from under Lyons, who plunged toward the ground, and his neck snapped, his feet dangled quietly.

  “He went easy, at any rate,” said Fitch. Dan started; he had forgotten the Southerner.

  Trying not to inhale the stench of death that fouled the air, Dan watched the bodies sway in ever smaller arcs until they stilled. A bystander called down to X, “Didn’t you feel for the poor boy as you put the rope around his neck?”

  X gave the man a long, considering look. “Yeah, I felt for his left ear.”

  What was there to feel, anyway? Dan asked himself. They had hanged ten road agents. Who among the hanged had given a thought to their victims? As well ask Club-Foot George if he had ever thought that a chalk mark might give someone terror in the night. Or George Ives if he’d felt sorry for Nick when he shot him down. Or Gallagher if he’d felt for George Temple when he nearly killed him, or Hayes Lyons if he’d pitied John Dillingham when he put a slug in his chest. What ye sow, ye shall reap.

  Women’s wailing at a distance told Dan that Gallagher’s woman, and Lyons’s, would shortly claim their bodies for burial. Had those slatterns ever wept for the men whose gold they had been happy to spend?

  He had now helped to kill as many men as some of these men had killed. More, perhaps, and maybe now he was a murderer himself, but someone had to risk his life, risk his soul, for other people’s safety, other people’s lives. Dan wished he could manage not to regret what he had done, but he couldn’t. He regretted it to the bottom of his heart, because it had to be done, and more besides. And he would do it.

  But it was all such a God damn waste.

  * * *

  The five corpses hung, as if their clothes were empty, motionless at the ends of their ropes. The onlookers climbed down from the log walls. Watching men being killed might have some entertainment value, Dan thought, but watching their bodies freeze did not. From time to time someone else boosted himself up to look, but as the sun slid down, the Vigilantes were left alone in the building with their newly made dead.

  Daniel pulled the flask from his coat pocket, mindful that Gallagher’s lips had touched it, but he needed it now, and he took a swig, a good single-malt Scotch he’d bought at Trottman’s liquor store, but it didn’t help to dull the pain of his leg, of Gallagher’s death at his hands. It just made him belch. Someone should say something, there should be some sort of epitaph, but he couldn’t think what it should be. He gave the flask to X, who took a swallow, rolled the single malt around on his tongue, his eyes widening, and passed it to Fitch.

  “They died well,” Pfouts said.

  “Better’n they lived,” X said.

  “Hell.” Fitch gave the flask to Williams. “Dying well doesn’t mean a thing in the balance of their lives. Besides, we’re short a couple.” He thrust his chin out at Dan, who returned Fitch’s glare with a face blank as a wall.

  “Oh, it’s not over,” said Pfouts.

  “Yes.” Dan thought of Aleck Carter and Bill Hunter, and the
others on Yeager’s list. “There’s work to do yet.” The cold congealed the stink of death, and he wanted to go where he would not see five corpses in the thickening gloom. Especially Gallagher, whose handsome face was distorted and bluish pale, all mobility drained away, all the jokes, all the meanness, all the possibilities that had inhabited the man, leaving only inert matter freezing fast. It could have been otherwise. Dan knew that he would grieve for Gallagher even as he regretted the necessity to put the rope around Gallagher’s neck. And he would do it again. Grief, regret, and resolve – together, all his life.

  Outside, men muttered and grumbled together, and women wailed.

  He did not want to listen to that. “They’re on the other side now, if there is one.”

  Fitch said, “If there’s a hell, they’re in it, sure enough.”