by Rod Miller
“Oh, no, Señor. He is just a friend.”
“Hmmph. That spindly reprobate ain’t got no friends. I oughta lock you up on general principles. I bet I could round up some witnesses that would identify you as his accomplice in any number of criminal activities.”
“Qué?” I asked, feigning confusion. I learned long ago that the easiest way to outsmart a know-it-all gringo is to act stupid.
“Oh, never mind, you ignorant greaser. Whaddya want?”
“I wish a word with mi amigo, por favor.”
“Planning a jailbreak, are you? Got the rest of the gang hiding out waiting for you and Harlow Mackelprang to hatch a plan?”
“Qué?”
“Aw, hell, never mind. Might as well talk to the wall. Got any weapons on you?”
“Nada, señor.”
“I can see you ain’t got any that show. I’ll search you anyway. I ain’t never known a Mex that didn’t have a blade tucked away somewheres.”
He found nothing on me.
“Go on back. And no funny stuff, you hear?”
“Sí, señor. Gracias, señor,” I said, nodding and bowing like a coolie as I walked to the door that passed me through to the back of the building where the lockups were.
As with the marshal, I caught Harlow Mackelprang napping. He was lying on his back, stretched full length on the narrow cot. His hands were folded beneath his head for a pillow, elbows splayed, the heel of one boot resting atop the toe of the other. From all appearances, an unstable arrangement. But it must have suited him.
He was snoring loudly, and it struck me that in the three years I had known him, I had never seen Harlow Mackelprang so still. Normally he fidgeted and squirmed and paced, even tossing and turning in his sleep, as if his long skinny frame could not contain all the energy he generated.
I looked around the jail. There were three cells. Harlow Mackelprang was in the one closest to the door, so the marshal, I supposed, could keep an eye on him from the office. The center cell was empty. The one at the other end was occupied by a short fat man in a rumpled suit, complete with waistcoat and string tie.
“Hey, gordo, has he been sleeping long?” I asked.
He fished a pocket watch the size of a corn tortilla out of his vest and flipped open the lid. “Three hours and forty-two minutes this stretch, to be exact.”
“Aye-yi-yi!”
“Sleeping like a baby! Sleeping the sleep of the innocent!” he said.
I could not help but laugh. “I am afraid you are very much mistaken, Señor.”
“I do not often misjudge human nature. My livelihood depends on it.”
I laughed again. “Judging from the size of the livelihood hanging over your belt buckle, that must be true. What keeps you so well fed?”
“Wealth. Security. Hope for the future.”
“Qué?”
“Investments, sir. I deal in any number of financial instruments and opportunities. Insurance. Stocks. Real estate. Mining. I also dabble in patent medicines and gilt-edged family Bibles with color plates.”
“No wonder you are locked up instead of me. You are clearly the bigger crook.”
“You insult me, sir. My reputation for honest dealing is well known throughout this territory and several states.”
“What is your name, my friend, if you do not mind my asking?”
“Not at all, sir. Just call me Sweeney.”
“So, Sweeney, if you are such an innocent of sterling reputation, what explains your presence in cárcel de Los Santos?”
“A simple misunderstanding, I assure you. One of the fine citizens of this community has accused me of fraudulently selling shares in a railroad incorporated in a distant state, but I assure you his investment is a fully legal and lawful transaction according to the printed terms of the contract. I have every confidence the courts will agree.”
“So how come are you locked up? Why do you not post bond and stay at the hotel while waiting for your trial?”
“That is my wish, I assure you. But the complainant in my case happens to be one of the leading citizens of this burg. Vindictive bastard convinced the marshal to lock me up.”
Again I laughed.
“Mariano, how come you got to make so much noise?”
The voice belonged to Harlow Mackelprang, but he had not stirred.
“Why do you sleep in the middle of the day, jefe?”
“Knock off that Mex talk. I’ve told you that a million times. What the hell else am I supposed to do while I rot in this stinking jail in this stinking town waiting for you stinking idiots to bust me out of here? So what’s the plan?”
“Is it wise to talk of such things with the marshal just there?” I whispered with a nod toward the office.
“Aw, hell, who cares. If we don’t talk about it now, it’ll be too late. In case you forgot, my hangin’s day after tomorrow.”
“Do not worry. I can assure you, we have not forgotten.”
“Tell me one thing, Mariano. Where was you and that stupid McNulty when I came out of that bank?”
“It was the horses, jefe. Your horse got loose from McNulty and was getting away, and mine wanted to go away with him. You did not need me inside the bank, so I help my friend catch the horses. Then the marshal is coming, so we got out of there.”
“So where’s the rest of the fellers? They still around? Everybody here?”
By “everybody” he meant McNulty and Benito—the only two people on the face of the earth, besides me, still willing to ride with the infamous bandido and gunman Harlow Mackelprang. At one time we had been ten men, feared and respected on both sides of the border. Our coffers were always filled with coin; our saddlebags, with mescal; our stomachs, with food; and our jacales, with willing señoritas.
But that was before Harlow Mackelprang showed up that day half-starved and barely able to stay aboard the plow horse he rode. As it happened, Benito was standing guard the day the horse wandered through the gap. By abandoning his post to lead the half-dead man and sorry horse into camp, he aroused the ire of Catlin—Gato as I called him.
“Benito! What the hell you doin’? Who’s watchin’ the gap?” Catlin squalled like a furious feline.
Benito, of course, did not answer. Benito is mute and does not answer anyone. Not to my knowledge at least, and we are cousins and were boys in the same village and have been together all our lives. In all those years I have never heard a sound issue from his mouth, so I feel secure in saying none has ever done so, let alone the complex arrangements of sounds required to form words.
Besides being mute, Benito is slow in the head—not much, you understand, but enough that some will take advantage if allowed to do so. For this reason, I have always acted as something of a protector for mi amigo. So it was I who answered Gato.
“Do not worry about it. No one is looking for this place.”
“Then how’d he get here?” Gato asked, indicating the then-unidentified Harlow Mackelprang.
He sagged in the saddle as if his bones had gone soft. A film of dust covered the man and his mount, thin enough in some places to allow their true colors to show through, but in such thick drifts in the wrinkles and hollows that the pair appeared to be an extension of the desert and could, for all practical purposes, have hidden in plain sight merely by staying still.
“Probably his horse smelled water. She looks like she needs a drink.”
The only water to be found for miles—and miles—trickled out of the spring at the head of our hidden valley. I say “our” because it was used as a hideout by those of us who rode with Gato. We often spent time there after a job to allow things to cool down. It had long been a hideout for thieves, at least since the days when deserters from the conquering armies of the Spanish became bandidos and plundered colonies and rancheros with help from their Indian accomplices.
The place did not appear on any maps of the region—very little of anything appears on those maps, as a matter of fact. Very few people frequented those dry a
nd desolate regions, so its very existence was, for the most part, unknown. No one had even bothered to give the place a proper name. We just called it el prado, for a meadow it was.
As I said, the spring that watered el prado was the only water for miles around. If one could fly with the hawks (or the vultures), one would see this place as a narrow green crescent surrounded by dirt and rocks for as far as the eye could see in every direction; a green-bottomed crack in a brown hill, located just a little farther from any other source of water than most horses could travel before dropping dead.
The entrance was a narrow, twisted gap with sheer rock walls. The trail dropped down slightly as one rode through the gap, so the water from the spring had no outlet. Had there been enough water to form a lake, or even a pond, it would have turned brackish, then salty, and el prado would have strangled itself. But the spring produced only enough to provide for the meadow, the few birds and animals thereabouts, and the few humans and horses who holed up there from time to time. Any surplus was quickly swallowed up by the dry earth or evaporated in the desert air.
Only a steep, narrow trail kept the place from being a box canyon—so while the gap provided the only true means of entering or leaving, if one knew where to find it, a skinny trail blazed by thirsty javelinas climbed the low cliffs near the spring.
El prado had always contributed to the mystery of the bandidos who hid out there. Pursuers told stories of the pursued simply disappearing into thin, hot air. Throughout history Spanish conquistadores, Mexican federales, U.S. cavalry detachments, and posses led by lawmen had suffered mightily and sometimes died for lack of water while attempting to find those who did not wish to be found and who knew how to find the hiding place of the meadow. Many times, manhunters who did find the place were massacred at the gap or allowed to enter el prado and then bottled up inside and wiped out.
But we did not wipe out Harlow Mackelprang. Perhaps it was because he seemed so helpless, barely alive and hardly able to stay mounted on his half-dead horse. Gato resigned himself to the man’s presence and sent Benito back out on watch.
“Sophie!” Gato called. The redhead appeared in the door of a jacal. “Think you can keep this thing alive?”
She walked around the horse, looking the man up and down as if assessing his chances. “I reckon so. But why would I want to?”
“I admit he don’t look like much,” Gato said, “but he might prove to be of some use. Unless he’s already on the wrong side of the law, I doubt he’d be out here.”
It took a few days, but Sophie revived our visitor enough that he could once again speak. Restoring his voice was something we soon grew to regret.
We were told—at great length and with much repetition and, I suspect, much embellishment—of his misdeeds in the town of Los Santos and the killing of the farmer who had owned the horse he rode. He seemed pleased with himself for what he had done. It was as if he had discovered a new side of himself he had not known existed. His exploits, of course, paled in comparison to those of every member of Gato’s band. But we did not attempt to disabuse Harlow Mackelprang’s delusions of himself as a man worthy of our fear.
At the time, we did not believe he was worthy of our fear.
Only later would our opinions change.
Several weeks later, partly because of boredom with the quiet life in el prado and partly to test our guest’s fitness for the outlaw life, Gato rode out to rob a stagecoach. He cared little which coach or what it carried—as I have said, his purpose this time lay elsewhere.
Our destination was the wagon road that led out of the mining district in the Thunder Mountains, in the belief that fortune might smile upon us and the stage would carry a mine payroll or other quantity of cash.
We rode out each leading two spare mounts. With two long days of hard riding ahead, we wanted fresh horses upon which to make our escape. Turning the used-up animals loose along the way back sometimes tended to confuse any posse that might be on our trail, particularly if they were local lawmen riding with reluctant volunteers.
By now, Harlow Mackelprang was well fed and rested, and only Benito escaped the consequences of his recovery. Lacking the ability to talk and showing no interest in listening, he was soon written off. The rest of us were not so fortunate.
Throughout the journey, Harlow Mackelprang rode first beside one of us, then another, assaulting each with questions about the life of the bandido and our experiences outside the law. Even more annoying, though, was his considerable boasting. There was no doubt in his mind that sneaking around Los Santos stealing inconsequential baubles and strutting about intimidating the weak and defenseless proved him muy macho and earned him a place among the hardened thieves and criminals in Gato’s band. In his mind, shooting that unarmed farmer sealed the deal.
We granted him no such dispensation. A place among us would be earned or he would be cast aside like a pot of frijoles gone sour.
Upon reaching the appointed place for stopping stagecoaches on the Thunder Mountain road, Gato made assignments. Harlow Mackelprang was sent up the road to serve as lookout, with instructions to alert us upon the approach of the stagecoach. The rest of us retired to a concealed arroyo to wait, grateful for the quiet of his absence.
A few hours later, my siesta was interrupted by gunfire. Rifle fire—three or four shots at least. Even though the firing was somewhat distant, my guns were instinctively drawn. A minute or so later, another burst of gunfire, this time a pistol.
“Qué pasa?” I said.
Gato and the others looked equally puzzled.
“Damned if I know. We better go see what kind of trouble that mouthy kid is in,” Gato said, so we tightened our cinches and rode into the hills to where we could circle back to the place from which Harlow Mackelprang was keeping watch. He was not there.
“Don’t look like anything has happened here.”
“Aah, but Gato, look. Something has happened down there. That little cabrón decided he did not need us.”
Gato looked where I was pointing. A few hundred yards down the coach road, barely visible through a break in the cedar trees, we could see the overturned coach.
“Damn. Let’s go take a look.”
Harlow Mackelprang sat on a boulder beside the road, poking around in a broken strongbox and counting a stack of greenbacks. He ignored us until Gato reined up so close to where he sat that he could smell the horse’s breath. After a few more seconds of make-believe counting, he looked up at Gato and flashed his stupid grin.
“Mr. Catlin, I believe there’s enough here for us all,” he said.
It was not difficult to reconstruct what had happened. From concealment just a few feet from the road, Harlow Mackelprang had gut-shot the shotgun guard, then put a couple of slugs into the off-wheel horse. Momentum rode the coach over the dead and dragging horse, capsizing it and upending the rest of the team. The pistol shots were apparently for the driver and to finish off the guard. He had not bothered with the horses. Besides the one he had shot to stop the coach, one was killed in the wreck. Another struggled to rise. The fourth horse was on its feet, but stumbling around on a broken leg.
I rode over to the crippled horse and put a bullet in its head.
“Madre de Dios, why do you not put these caballos out of their misery?” I asked, dismounting and shooting the broken animal still down and unable to get out of the tangle of harness and running gear.
“Aw, shit, Mariano. They’re nothing but dumb animals. Why waste ammunition?” Harlow Mackelprang said.
I turned my pistol in his direction and pulled back the hammer. At the sound of the ratcheting metal, Harlow Mackelprang’s eyes widened nearly to the size of silver pesos and his jaw hung loose below his likewise round mouth. I would have shot him had not Gato spoken.
“Put it away, Mariano. We best get out of here. This mess is sure to draw a lot more attention than I bargained for. Harlow Mackelprang, you stupid fool, I’ll deal with you when I get the time.”
The look
of surprise already on Harlow Mackelprang’s face spread, turned to hurt, and then to hate. The burning eyes seemed to smoke from the heat of things to come.
We stuffed our saddlebagsthe dinero from the box and rode away as the rear wheel of the stagecoach turned slowly in the wind. Events set in motion that day would take years to play out, but I sense the conclusion was already as determined as the rotation of that wheel on its hub.
Our only stop was at a remote watering hole to fill up our horses, canteens, and water skins. Harlow Mackelprang said little as we set off on a roundabout route back to el prado, but as the days passed and our destination neared, he boasted more and more of his feat.
“You shoulda seen the look on that shotgun rider’s face,” he said.
“That wheeler went down like a sack of shit,” he said.
“Man, when that stage tipped over and crashed there was stuff a-flyin’ ever-which-way,” he said.
“I couldn’t believe that guard weren’t killed. I got him twice. Right in that big belly both times,” he said.
“Well, he’s sure ’nough dead now,” he said.
“How much money you figger was in that box? Must be twelve, thirteen hunnerd dollars,” he said.
“Looky here at this stubby shotgun. I reckon I’ll be needin’ it more from now on than that fat guard that used to carry it,” he said.
“That driver mighta been dead when he hit the ground, but I didn’t stop to ask. Shot him right in the head, is what I did,” he said.
“Too bad there weren’t any passengers. I coulda used the target practice,” he said.
Laughing.
All the while laughing.
By the time we rode through the gap and into el prado he was in a fine humor and could not wait to share his heroism with those waiting there. But Gato cut his revelry short.
“I’ve heard more than enough about what an outlaw hero you are, Harlow Mackelprang, so you shut up. The truth is, you’re stupid. That was a dumb thing to do and a dumb way to do it.”
“We got the money, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, we got the money. We also got two dead express company men. Which means we probably got a lot more people out looking for us than we need. Robbing a stagecoach don’t attract near as much attention as murder, you idiot.”
