Gallows For a Gunman

by Rod Miller

  “You saying you ain’t never killed nobody?”

  “Hell, yes, I’ve killed people. But sometimes you can get what you want without killing no one, and most times that’s the smart way to do it. I haven’t lasted as long as I have at this outlaw business by shooting people just for the hell of it. And if you want to last with this outfit, Harlow Mackelprang, you’ll do as I say and not pull any more stupid stunts. Otherwise you’ll find out a thing or two about killing that you don’t want to know.” Gato did not wait for a reply, but turned on his heel and walked into his jacal.

  “Catlin thinks he can push me around, he’s got another think comin’,” Harlow Mackelprang said to no one in particular.

  “You mess with Gato, he will skin you alive,” I told him.

  “He messes with me, I’ll kill him. I’ll kill all you bastards if I have to,” he said. “You better show me some respect or I’ll show you.”

  Harlow Mackelprang did not kill all of us bastards. But he did kill some.

  Gato rode out one day with most of us boys to hit a bank in Val Verde. Much to the boys’ chagrin, Harlow Mackelprang was invited to stay behind.

  When we returned to el prado two weeks later, it was to discover a fresh grave filled, we were told, with the remains of one of our compadres, a man named Hayslett. According to Harlow Mackelprang, Hayslett was cheating in a two-handed poker game. When called on it, he drew his gun and Harlow Mackelprang claimed he had no choice but to shoot. There being no witnesses, Gato accepted his word even though he did not believe him.

  Simons, another of our number, soon rode away with the two señoritas, telling Gato he would come back and ride with him again when Harlow Mackelprang was gone—but that he would no longer expose the women to the insults and unwelcome advances of Harlow Mackelprang. Even a whore deserves respect, Simons said.

  Keech left one night without explanation.

  Sent out to help Dempsey and Larson knock off a stagecoach, Harlow Mackelprang came back alone except for the dinero. The story he told was that the shotgun guard had got them both before being killed himself.

  But Gato learned a few days later that the guard died having never fired a shot, and that the posse found Dempsey and Larson shot dead out in the desert. So, instead of ten good men plus Harlow Mackelprang, our gang now numbered only six.

  Gato confronted him about the dead-and-gone robbers.

  “I’m down five men on account of you.”

  “You saying I killed Larson and Dempsey?”

  “They weren’t killed by the guard on the stagecoach. I know that. Maybe you better tell me what you know.”

  “I already told you.”

  “You’re a liar, Harlow Mackelprang. I won’t hold with no man who won’t own up to what he does. You’re nothing but a dangerous coward and I want you gone. You be out of here by morning. Take a spare horse. But be gone.”

  Gato walked away from the shade of the ramada where we sat.

  Had he not embarrassed Harlow Mackelprang in our presence, things might have turned out differently. But I do not think so. The timing may have been different, but the result would have been the same, I think.

  What happened is this: Harlow Mackelprang shot Gato in the back.

  Gato hadn’t walked ten paces before the angry and insulted Harlow Mackelprang scrambled to his feet, pulling and cocking his pistol as he rose. Gato must have heard or at least sensed the commotion. Why he did not react or respond I will never know. Nor will he. He underestimated Harlow Mackelprang—a thing he did not do concerning any other man in all the years I knew him.

  It was a fatal mistake.

  Harlow Mackelprang’s first shot drilled a neat hole between our leader’s shoulder blades. The bullet staggered him, but he did not fall. He started to turn, his benumbed right arm and hand waving uselessly near the butt of his holstered revolver, when a second shot shattered his knee, knocking his pins out from under him. Even as he fell, a third shot rang out, the lead whistling uselessly into the canyon wall as Gato’s nose plowed a furrow in the dust.

  Then the pistol turned on us, pointing alternately at me, Benito, McNulty, and Bucky.

  “Any o’ you bastards want to do anything about it?”

  No one of us offered an answer.

  “Good. I guess that puts me in charge of this outfit. I’ll give the orders around here and you four will follow them. And I’m warning you right now— you show me any disrespect and I’ll shoot you on sight. Harlow Mackelprang ain’t putting up with it no more. You all been hoorawin’ and harassin’ me ever since I been here. No more. Get it?”

  Benito nodded.

  The pistol pointed in turn to McNulty and Bucky, who also nodded. Then it was my turn.

  “How ’bout you Mariano? You get it?”

  “Sí. Comprendo. You will be the new jefe,” I said, looking down the barrel.

  “And that’s another thing. Knock off that Mex talk. I don’t never know what you’re telling Benito when you jabber like that. Now on, we talk American around here.”

  I nodded my approval.

  “Now scratch out a grave and bury Catlin. I don’t want him stinkin’ up this place no more. You got that?”

  I nodded my assent.

  By turns, with an old piece of drill steel and a rusty shovel stolen from one of the mining companies, we hacked out and hollowed a shallow grave at the edge of the growing el prado boneyard. As Bucky and McNulty finished off the final resting place of the famous outlaw who had unexpectedly become our former leader, Benito and I went to fetch the body.

  We rolled his dead weight over onto his back so we could clean out his pockets and salvage anything of value from his person. Even in death, the surprise showed in Gato’s wide-open eyes.

  Bits of grit and grass speckled the surface of the eyeballs. My own eyes blinked without being asked, feeling, imagining, the stinging burn of that irritating foreign matter. Almost, I reached out to flick the bits away from his staring eyes, but did not.

  Nor did I close the eyelids. Gato left this life wide-eyed and wondering, and it seemed to me fitting that he should greet the saints in heaven likewise.

  Or, to say the truth of it, the devil in hell.

  As Benito patted down the final shovelful of dirt on the mounded grave, our new jefe again graced us with his presence to assess the quality of our work.

  “Sonofabitch looks about the same as always,” he said. “Catlin wasn’t worth dirt—and now he is dirt.”

  I had the feeling that Harlow Mackelprang had devoted all his thoughts since the shooting to the work of composing that phrase and practicing the timing of its delivery. He considered it amusing, laughing loud and long at his own cleverness.

  “Now, you sorry bastards, take a good look at your big, bad outlaw leader. And never, never forget that you’ll end up laying beside him if ever you cross Harlow Mackelprang.”

  To say we did not fear Harlow Mackelprang would be a lie. It would be foolish not to fear such a man. I have known many bad men in my life. But this one, this one was more than just bad—he was muy loco. He found insane pleasure in forcing others to his will, whether it was his will for them to be robbed or raped, to bawl and beg, to live or die.

  And he had something that even many of the worst of the bad men lacked: the willingness to kill without thought or hesitation.

  So why would we stay with such a man for more than two years to come? When I say “we,” I speak of McNulty, Benito, and myself. Bucky decided that something better was in store for him, and rode out to the gap for sentry duty one night and kept riding.

  Why did the rest of us not ride away as well?

  I think it was because he feared us as much as we feared him. As I had nearly killed him once before, he knew I would do so should the need arise. He had always been uncomfortable around Benito—one who talked as much as Harlow Mackelprang could not fathom so much quiet in another. That, and the fact that I looked after the simple-minded Benito, prevented him from taking advant
age.

  McNulty was no longer young and cared little about living or dying. Nor did he care to seek out another band to throw in with. His ambivalence concerning his fate, combined with his ability as a pistolero, kept Harlow Mackelprang at bay—for while both had the will to kill, McNulty had the greater skill.

  Thus we hung together in an uncomfortable kind of equilibrium. From time to time we would withdraw funds from a train or a bank or a stagecoach, ranging widely across the region.

  While Gato had protected his anonymity as much as possible, Harlow Mackelprang desired notoriety. And he achieved it through many rash acts of unnecessary killing and cruelty. A collection of wanted posters resided in his saddlebags, and he would often look them over with glee, impressed with his fame as a bandido and murdering gunman.

  This hunger for the limelight allowed the rest of us to remain nameless and faceless for the most part, simply accomplices of Harlow Mackelprang, lurking in the shadows.

  We three spent a good deal of time at el prado, but our jefe was too high-strung for such solitude. He traveled far and wide by himself, sometimes boasting and bullying in cantinas and sometimes sneaking around. He bragged to us often of secretive visits to a “lady friend” in his hometown of Los Santos. And he always showed us the most recent additions to his collection of Harlow Mackelprang reward dodgers.

  His ability to elude capture was impressive. He learned many tricks and invented some of his own. But when he was finally tracked to el prado, making it necessary for Benito to dispatch a determined bounty hunter as he entered the gap, it became clear that Harlow Mackelprang had become too much of a liability.

  There would be no satisfaction in simply killing Harlow Mackelprang. So we devised a plan utilizing his own vanity as a weapon against him.

  “So, jefe, have you visited Los Santos of late?”

  “Stop calling me that, Mariano. It’s been a while since I was there. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing, Señor. Just curious. What do the people of your hometown say about Harlow Mackelprang, the bad hombre?”

  “Damned if I know. I don’t see no one there except for Althea.”

  “Aah, sí. Your ladyfriend, no?”

  “Yep. That she is.”

  “So is she pleased to see you?”

  “Damned if I know. Don’t much care neither. She sees me whether she wants to or not. Makes no never mind to me if she’s happy about it. I slip into town, visit Althea, and I’m gone before anyone else even knows I been there.”

  “Why is that, jefe? Does the notorious bandido fear capture by the law?”

  “Shit!” Harlow Mackelprang said. “Marshal there is so dumb he couldn’t catch his own ass with both hands. He ain’t nothin’ but an old soldier with a gimpy leg.”

  “So you do not respect him then.”

  “Hell, no.”

  “But does he respect you?”

  This gave Harlow Mackelprang cause for consideration, so I left him alone with his thoughts for a time. Another day, our talk of Los Santos continued.

  “We have never visited Los Santos, Señor. Could we not go there and relieve your former neighbors of some of their money?”

  “Ain’t much there. One little bank. Express office at the train station.”

  “We do not need the money. We will do it for the enjoyment. And surely the people of Los Santos would enjoy being robbed by Harlow Mackelprang, the famous bandido from their hometown.”

  “Tell you the truth, Mariano, I wouldn’t mind sticking my pistol up a few noses in that town. Teach them peckerwoods some respect.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps. Ah, but we will probably be captured. The law will be alerted as soon as you are recognized.”

  “I ain’t worried about that. We could be in and out before that gimpy old marshal could limp across the street.”

  “I don’t know, jefe. . . .”

  “I do, Mariano. We’re doin’ it. We’ll rob the bank. Why the hell not? That bank horn-swoggled me one time and it’s about time I settled the account. I’ll make that banker and all them other hoity-toity folks in Los Santos wish they’d never messed with Harlow Mackelprang.”

  His plan was a simple one.

  Benito would wait outside of town with the spare horses.

  Harlow Mackelprang, McNulty, and I would ride into town.

  In the street in front of the bank, Harlow Mackelprang and I would dismount.

  McNulty would lead our horses away, staying nearby but away from the bank to avoid attention.

  Harlow Mackelprang would lead the way into the bank with his sawed-off shotgun and collect the money.

  I would wait inside the door, covering the people in the bank who were not occupied with Harlow Mackelprang.

  A simple plan, as I say, that had worked many times.

  But it was not the plan Benito, McNulty, and I followed.

  This is our plan, and this is what happened.

  When we dismounted in front of the bank, McNulty dropped the reins to ground-tie my horse, then rode down the dusty street to the marshal’s office, where he reported a bank robbery in progress. Once Harlow Mackelprang was about his business inside the bank, I slipped out, mounted up, and rode with McNulty out of town to where Benito awaited, then off into the desert.

  A simple plan, but an effective one. This is the way, I am told, the rest of it happened.

  “C’mon, hurry it up!” Harlow Mackelprang shouted at the frightened clerk. “Get the money in the sack or I’ll blow your damn head off!”

  Behind the clerk, the vice president of the bank stood beside his desk with his hands raised, as instructed. He was a short and skinny man with a bald head with a wispy blond fringe. His neatly trimmed mustache was a darker shade of blond, his suit a shade darker still. He wore a watch chain, a pocket hanky, and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. His name was Tueller.

  “C’mon, dammit! Ain’t you done yet? Hurry it up!”

  “You won’t get away with this, you know,” the clerk stammered as he stuffed coin and currency from the cash drawers into the bag.

  “Shut up. Get finished.”

  “That’s it. That’s all there is.”

  “Now empty that safe.”

  The safe was a small one, sitting on the floor behind where Tueller stood.

  “There isn’t much here,” the clerk said as he transferred the few stacks of bills and some gold coins into the bag. “You won’t get away with this.”

  “Bring it! And shut up.

  “Mariano! We clear? McNulty there?

  “Give me that sack!

  “Mariano!?”

  Harlow Mackelprang cast a quick glance toward the door. I cannot even imagine what thoughts occurred to him when he realized that I was gone and he was alone.

  “Shit! Mariano! Where you at?” he said as he backed slowly toward the door.

  The clerk said, “You won’t get away with this. We know who you are.”

  “Shut up!”

  “You’re Harlow Mackelprang.”

  “Damn right I am! And don’t you forget it!” he screamed as the sawed-off shotgun boomed.

  Tueller winced as bits of gore from the clerk splattered his tan suit, speckled his eyeglasses, and stuck to his face. But he did not move.

  As the robber ran through the open door, the one good leg the marshal possessed lashed out from where the lawman was pressed against the wall, tripping up Harlow Mackelprang, sending the stubby shotgun and money sack tumbling, and leaving the bandit sprawled facedown on the boardwalk.

  He gathered his wits and started to rise, but was forced back down by the barrel of a gun pushed into the back of his head.

  “You even try to get up and I’ll blow you to hell, Harlow Mackelprang,” the Marshal said.

  Our jefe languished in jail for two weeks awaiting the arrival of the circuit judge to conduct the trial, which lasted less than an hour.

  “Harlow Mackelprang, you are a cold-blooded killer who has terrorized this territory for too long. But you h
ave beaten and burned and robbed and stolen and murdered your last. The jury having returned a verdict of guilty in this case, I cheerfully sentence you to die, die, die. One week hence you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. Perhaps the Good Lord will be more kindly disposed to show you mercy than this court is—but I hope not. May you burn in hell for the duration of eternity!” the judge said, and slammed down his gavel.

  Following the bank robbery, Benito, McNulty, and I had waited in the desert, slipping into Los Santos from time to time for news of Harlow Mackelprang. We learned the details of his arrest. We were told of his trial. We knew the day he would die.

  And so it was that yesterday I visited him at the jail, not wanting Harlow Mackelprang’s last days on earth to be without hope.

  “So, what’s the plan?” he asked.

  “Do not worry. All things happen in time.”

  “You coming tonight?”

  “I do not think tonight. Mañana.”

  “Tomorrow then. In daylight? You think that’s a good idea?”

  “Aah, jefe, I think you are right—it is not a good idea. We will not come tomorrow.”

  “Damn. Just like two dumb Mexicans and an old man to leave things until the last minute. Where are the others anyway?”

  “Do not worry. They wait outside of town. You will not see them in Los Santos until the appointed time.”

  “Well, you damn sure better get it right. You mess up and it’s my neck.”

  “Sí, señor, I know that. And now I will go.”

  I have not returned to visit again. I have given him all the hope I can. Now, I can only hope that he will enjoy the supper that just passed by this place, on a tray covered with cloth.

  In the morning he will hang. And when he has climbed the gallows, and after the noose is around his neck, and before the bag is placed over his head, I hope he looks out over the people assembled there. I hope he sees Mariano, Benito, and McNulty sitting quietly on our horses at the far edge of the crowd.

  And I hope the last thing Harlow Mackelprang realizes in this life is that those two stupid Mexicans and that old man waited too long to save him.