Assault of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

  Crystal, Colorado

  The Crystal River, a fast flowing stream that broke white over the rocks, set up a roar that could be heard, twenty-four hours a day, all over the town of Crystal. It was impossible for the streets to run parallel, or at right angles to each other. The result was a swath, cut by the river through the pass, along which a couple roads had been fashioned. On either side of the roads the buildings stood as if hanging on to the side of the mountain.

  An industrious town, supported by the silver that was extracted from two producing mines, the citizens were sure that someday Crystal would be one of the largest communities in Colorado, if not in the entire West.

  Thaddeus Walker, Raleigh Jones, and Emerson Teasdale were having breakfast together at Wilson’s Café. Businessmen, they were vocal advocates of the town, and so convinced of its future they were about to engage in a new venture. They were going to build a hydroelectric plant on the Crystal River. Bringing Crystal into the modern age of electricity would, they believed, not only bring about growth, but insure it would survive far into the future, even if the silver played out.

  They had calculated it would cost ten thousand dollars to build the plant, and they were putting in two thousand dollars each. As soon as the bank opened, they were going to present their plan to the loan officer at the Bank of Crystal, to secure the rest of the money.

  A year earlier Thaddeus had visited his brother in Appleton, Wisconsin, where the first hydroelectric generator had been put in use. He convinced Jones and Teasdale they could not only put in an electric power plant in Crystal, they could sell “electric subscriptions” for enough money to pay them back for their investment, then continue to make money for years to come.

  It had not been a hard sale. Jones, who owned the dairy, and Teasdale, a partner with Walker in a silver mine, were entrepreneurial enough to see the benefits. They walked into the bank to take the final steps to bring it about.

  Unfortunately, Walker, Jones, and Teasdale were not the only entrepreneurs with an eye on Crystal. There were five others who also saw Crystal as the key to a financial windfall, though their entrepreneurial experiment was criminal in its intent. Dinkins, Harley, Parnell, and the two Slater brothers rode down the street to the bank. Leaving Travis and Parnell to hold the horses, Dinkins, Harley, and Frank lifted bandannas to cover the bottom of their faces as they rushed in through the door. There were three customers inside the bank.

  “You three!” Dinkins shouted. “Down on the floor!”

  Frightened by the masked gunmen who had just entered the bank, the three customers did as they were told.

  “You,” Dinkins said, pointing his pistol at the teller. “Listen real careful to what I am goin’ to say. I want you to empty your cash drawer, then I want you to go over to that safe, open it up, and give me all the money in there. If you tell me you can’t open it, I am going to shoot you dead. Now, do you understand me?”

  The teller, who was shaking visibly, nodded.

  “Let me hear you say that you understand what I just told you,” Dinkins said.

  “I-I understand,” the bank teller said, barely able to choke the words out.

  “Good for you.” Dinkins handed a cloth bag to the teller. “Now, empty your cash drawer into this bag, then go over there, open the safe, and empty it as well.”

  With his hands shaking so badly he could scarcely hold on to the money, the bank teller did as he was instructed. When the cash drawer was emptied, he moved over to the big safe and opened it rather easily. Taking bound packets of money from the safe, he dropped them into the cloth bag.

  As he handed the bag of money to Dinkins, there was a loud commotion outside the bank.

  “Don’t go in there!” a voice shouted. Dinkins recognized it as Parnell’s voice.

  “What do you mean, don’t go in there? What the hell is going on here?” another voice yelled gruffly.

  A gunshot followed.

  As Dinkins, Harley, and Frank Slater started toward the front door, distracted by the gunshot outside, Thaddeus Walker pulled his gun. He fired, but missed. Harley spun around, and in three quick shots, killed all three of the bank customers.

  “Let’s go,” Dinkins called.

  Outside, the man Parnell had frightened off by a gunshot was running down the street, away from the bank. The citizens of Crystal, who but a moment earlier had been going about their daily commerce, watched as five horseman galloped out of town, firing their pistols indiscriminately. Most dived to the ground as the bullets flew, but a man stepped out of the gun store, and raising a rifle to his shoulder, fired.

  One of the galloping horses went down, leaving an outlaw without a horse. He yelled at those galloping away, but they didn’t come back for him. Turning, he saw at least a dozen men running toward him, all of them armed. He threw up his hands. “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he shouted. “I give up!”

  “Get a rope!” one of the men shouted. “We’ll string the son of a bitch up right here, and right now!”

  “No!” called a man wearing a badge. “We ain’t goin’ to have no lynchin’s in this town. We’re goin’ to try this man legal!”

  There were several groans, and the outlaw nodded. “Thanks, Sheriff.”

  “Then we’ll hang you,” the sheriff concluded.

  The groans changed to cheers.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Oyez, oyez, oyez, this here court is about to convene, the honorable Judge Thurman Norton presiding,” the sheriff called. “All stand!”

  Sheriff John Dennis was acting as bailiff of the court, and because court was being held in the saloon, he pointed toward the bartender. “Dooley, you make dead certain you don’t serve no liquor durin’ this trial, ’cause if you do, I’ll put whoever bought the drink, and you, in jail.”

  “I ain’t plannin’ on servin’ no liquor, Sheriff.” The bartender pointed to a sign that was on the mirror behind the bar. “As you can see, I got the place posted CLOSED, and I ain’t served a drop for the last half hour.”

  During the discussion between the sheriff and Dooley, the honorable Thurman Norton came out of the back room of the saloon and took a seat at his “bench,” which was the best table in the saloon. The table sat upon a raised platform which had been built just for that purpose. The saloon was the largest, most substantial building in Crystal, and the easiest place to empanel a jury, for it was always crowded. It was easy for the judge to round up twelve sober men, good and true. If it was sometimes difficult to find twelve sober men, the judge could stretch the definition of sobriety thin enough to meet the needs of the court. The “good and true,” however, had to be taken upon faith.

  “You may be seated,” Judge Norton said.

  There was a rustle of clothing and a scrape of chairs as the gallery, which consisted of nearly half the town, took their seats. Though respectable women rarely saw the inside of the saloon, many were present, for by court decree, at the moment, it was not a saloon, it was a courtroom. Out of deference to the ladies, the more objectionable artwork—meaning the nude paintings of women—had been covered.

  “Is the prisoner present?”

  “I’ve got the guilty son of a bitch right here, Judge,” the deputy sheriff said. His remarks generated laughter, and Judge Norton let it be known by the glare in his eyes that he did not appreciate it.

  The saloon grew quiet.

  “Is the accused represented by counsel?”

  “I’m his lawyer, Your Honor,” a man sitting to the right of Cole Parnell said. The lawyer, who was short and chubby, was wearing a suit and cravat. “Daniel Gilman.”

  “Is counsel for the state present?”

  “I am, Your Honor. Michael Thomas.” The prosecutor was tall and thin, with a prominent Adam’s apple. Like Gilman, he was wearing a suit.

  “Voir dire having been completed, are both counselors satisfied with the jury as it now sits?”

  “I am, Your Honor,” Gilman said.

  “As am I,” Thomas add
ed.

  “Very well, Mr. Prosecutor, you may make your case,” the judge said.

  Thomas was so tall that as he stood, it looked like he was unfolding. He walked over to the side of the saloon where the twelve jurors sat. “Gentlemen of the jury, it is a simple case to present. There will be no need for flowery language or lengthy discourse. The simple truth will be all that is necessary to convict. This outlaw”—he pointed to Parnell—“and four of his cohorts robbed the bank. The money they took belonged to you, and to everyone else in this town who had their money on deposit, with the reasonable expectation that it would be safe.

  “And, in robbing the bank, they committed murder, not once, but three times, cutting short the lives of Thaddeus Walker, Raleigh Jones, and Emerson Teasdale. Husbands and fathers, they were all good and upstanding citizens of our community. These three men committed no wrongdoing. They were merely in the bank, conducting business, when Cole Parnell and his partners in crime entered the bank and, in but the wink of an eye, dispatched the souls of all three to eternity.”

  Thomas called as his witness the bank teller, whose name was Clyde Bailey. After the teller was sworn in, Thomas began to question him. “Tell the court, in your own words, what happened yesterday.”

  “Four masked men came into the bank, all four holding guns,” Bailey said. “They made Mr. Walker, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Teasdale lie down on the floor, then they commenced to take all the money from my cashier’s drawer, then all the money from the safe. As they was leavin’, well, Mr. Walker, he shot at them. And that man”—Bailey pointed to Parnell—“turned and shot all three of them. Then they ran out of the bank.”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Gilman said. “If all four men were masked, how does he know which one did the shooting?”

  “Sustained.”

  “How much money did the robbers get?” Thomas asked his witness.

  “They got nearly six thousand dollars.”

  “Six thousand dollars? Is that the total amount of money in the bank?”

  Bailey smiled. “No, sir. All the robbers did was clean out our daily working safe. They had no idea that we keep most of the money in a vault in the back of the bank.”

  “I have no further questions of this witness,” Thomas said.

  “Cross, Mr. Gilman?” the judge asked.

  Gilman stood, but he didn’t approach the witness. “You said my client is the one who shot those three men, but the truth is, you don’t know who did the shooting, do you?”

  “No sir, I guess not.”

  “And if, as you say, all four men were masked, you can’t even testify, with certainty, that Mr. Parnell was one of those who entered the bank, can you?”

  “When they was all ridin’ away, this fella’s horse was shot,” Bailey said. “And they captured him. That proves he was one of the ones in the bank.”

  Gilman held up his hand. “You are conjecturing now. Listen carefully to my question. Can you testify, with certainty, that Mr. Parnell was one of the four in the bank?”

  “Yes, sir. He was wearin’ the same clothes then he’s wearin’ now.”

  “You mean his blue shirt?” Gilman turned toward the gallery. “Like the blue shirt Mr. Engle is wearing ?” He pointed to one of the men in the jury. “Or the blue shirt Mr. Puckett is wearing? Or the blue shirt Sheriff Dennis is wearing?”

  A buzz went through the courtroom, for Gilman had pointed to three men who were wearing a shirt identical to the one being worn by the prisoner. “Should we consider any of those three men, suspects?”

  “No,” the witness replied in a small voice.

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  “Redirect, Mr. Thomas?”

  “No redirect, Your Honor.”

  Thomas then called Frank Tanner, the man who shot the horse Parnell had been riding. Tanner testified that he had heard shots in the bank, and concerned, had grabbed a rifle, then went outside just in time to see the men exiting the bank, mount their horses, and ride away.

  “Do you here testify that the man on trial is one of those who ran from the bank?” Thoams asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I had my eyes on him from the moment he left the bank, until I shot his horse.”

  “No further questions.”

  “Mr. Gilman?” the judge asked.

  “Mr. Tanner, as they were leaving, did you have it in mind to kill the horse Parnell was riding?”

  “No sir, I had it in mind to kill the bank robber, only I missed and hit his horse.”

  “So, your eyesight isn’t all that good, is it? What I mean is, we are supposed to accept your story that you had Mr. Parnell in sight all along, but, with poor eyesight, you might have been wrong.”

  “There ain’t nothin’ a-tall wrong with my eyesight,” Tanner replied, bristling at the question.

  “No further questions, Your Honor.”

  Thomas called two other witnesses who testified they had heard the shots and seen the men run from the bank. They also testified they had no doubt Parnell was one of the four. Thomas also said he could call a dozen more witnesses, but their testimony would be redundant as Parnell’s participation in the robbery had been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt.

  Gilman had no witnesses for the defense, deciding it would not serve Parnell well to testify.

  “Summation, Mr. Gilman,” Judge Norton said.

  “Gentlemen of the jury, what we have here is circumstantial. Mr. Bailey was the only witness to the actual murder and robbery, and in his own words, all the perpetrators were masked. He claimed to identify my defendant by the fact that he is wearing a blue shirt. But that could have been any one of three men in here, including a member of the jury and the sheriff. Since he cannot, with certainty, place my client in the bank at the time of the robbery, it is absolutely impossible for him to say that Parnell is the one who shot the three customers. Remember, in our system of government, you have to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone is guilty, before you find for the prosecution.”

  In Thomas’s closing, he pointed out that there were enough eyewitnesses who heard the shots, saw the robbers leave the bank, then saw one of the robbers unhorsed—the unhorsed rider being Parnell—that there could be no doubt of his guilt.

  “As to who actually fired the shots that took the lives of Mr. Walker, Mr. Jones, and Mr. Teasdale? That is immaterial. The law clearly states that if someone dies as the result of a felony in which you are participating, you are guilty of murder. It does not matter whether you are the one who pulled the trigger or not.”

  The trial took less than an hour. The jury’s deliberation lasted only fifteen minutes. At five minutes after eleven o’clock in the morning, the jury sent word they had reached a verdict, thus causing court to be reconvened—meaning court was called to order again, as no one had left the saloon.

  When the jury filed back in, Judge Norton adjusted the glasses on the end of his nose, then cleared his throat. “Would the foreman of the jury please stand?”

  Mr. White, the druggist, stood.

  “Mr. Foreman, I have been informed that the jury has reached a verdict. Is that true?”

  “It is true, Your Honor.”

  “Would you publish the verdict, please?”

  White looked confused. “Publish, Judge?”

  “Tell the court the verdict,” Judge Norton explained.

  “Oh, yeah. Uh, I mean, yes sir. We the jury find the defendant guilty of bank robbery and guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Foreman and gentlemen of the jury. This jury is dismissed, though you may remain in place during the sentencing phase.”

  Mr. White sat back down.

  “Would the bailiff please bring the prisoner before the bench?”

  Sheriff Dennis, who had been leaning against the piano with his arms folded across his chest, spit a quid of tobacco into the brass spittoon, then walked over to Parnell. “Get up. Pres
ent yourself before the judge.”

  Parnell was not only handcuffed, his legs were shackled together. With the assistance of the deputy sheriff and Mr. Gilman, Parnell stood, then shuffled over to stand in front of the judge.

  Judge Norton took off his glasses and polished them as he studied the prisoner standing before him. Finally he put them back on and stared pointedly at Parnell.

  “Cole Parnell, you have been tried before a jury of your peers and found guilty. Before this court passes sentence, have you anything to say?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. I admit I was one of the men who robbed the bank, but I wasn’t the one who shot them three men. If you want to know who it was that done that, it was Wes Harley. Wes Harley did the shootin’, and that is a fact.”

  The gallery reacted to that, for it was the first time Wes Harley’s name had been mentioned.

  “Wes Harley! He was here?” someone asked.

  “Wes Harley, in our town.”

  “I never thought Wes Harley would do a thing like that.”

  Judge Norton pounded his gavel. “Order! I will have order now, or I will empty this courtroom.”

  The gallery grew quiet.

  Norton glared at Parnell. “Mr. Parnell, by your admission to being one of the robbers, you have just confirmed the jury’s finding. For as Mr. Thomas pointed out, your very participation in the crime, during which someone was killed, makes you guilty of murder, whether you did the actual killing or not.”

  “I didn’t know there was any such law,” Parnell said.

  “Ignorance of the law does not excuse you from its consequences. Cole Parnell, there are three families in this town who are, today, without the family head. Husbands and fathers, Thaddeus Walker, Raleigh Jones, and Emerson Teasdale leave a hole in our community and especially in their families, that cannot be filled because of the most evil deed performed by you and your cohorts in this dastardly crime. Therefore, Mr. Parnell, it is the sentence of this court that you be taken from this place and put in jail long enough to await your execution. At a time to be fixed by the sheriff, you are to be taken from jail and transported to a place where you will be hanged.”