Gallows For a Gunman

by Rod Miller

  “McNulty? No, Marshal, can’t say as I know anyone by that name.”

  “Funny. His description on some of these posters in my desk fits you right well.”

  I didn’t bother to reply. You don’t live to be my age without knowing when someone is trying to trip you up.

  “So, Mr. McNulty or McLoney or whatever your name is, what’s your business with my prisoner?”

  “Just wanting to catch up on old times is all, Marshal. If I don’t do it now, I won’t be getting another chance, you know.”

  “I know it. Oh, I know it all right. I trust you ain’t armed?”

  “No, sir, I ain’t,” I say as I unbutton my jacket and spread it out so he can see I ain’t packing. I know full well, of course, that he’ll see the flask tucked in the waistband of my britches. I figure I ain’t got nothing to lose—either he lets me pass it on to Harlow Mackelprang or he confiscates it, and whichever one of them drinks that rotgut makes no never mind to me.

  Sure enough, he spots that flask and flashes me a look that says he knows what I’m up to and don’t care.

  “Go on back and see him. I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  “Yessir,” I says, and heads for the door that connects the office to the lockup. About the time I reach the door, he stops me.

  “One more thing,” the marshal says.

  I turn and look at him, wondering what it is he wants to know now.

  “Where were you about three weeks ago?”

  “Three weeks . . . let me think. I suppose I was over around Meeker’s Mill about that time, seeing if there was any jobs to be had.”

  “You a mill worker, are you?”

  “I’ll set my hand to about any job. Long as it’s honest.”

  “Hmmph. I’ll bet. You don’t happen to know anything about our bank being robbed then?”

  “Read about it in the papers, is all. That’s how I found out Harlow Mackelprang killed that man and was going to hang for it.”

  “A man who looks a lot like you do turned in the alarm. That’s how we caught him.”

  “That right? You offer that man a reward?”

  “Don’t know who he was. He rode away before we could find out. I thought maybe you could tell me who he was.”

  “No, I don’t guess I could tell you that, Marshal,” I says.

  “No, I didn’t suppose you would. Thing is, see, I got a funny feeling that this man and the Mexican he rode away with were in on it. The robbery, I mean.”

  I wait.

  “And I got a feeling that you and one of them Mexicans you been hanging out with over at the saloon might be them two.”

  And I wait.

  “I don’t know why, but I think you fellers pulled a double cross on Harlow Mackelprang.”

  I keep waiting.

  “That right, mister?” the marshal asks.

  “I ain’t got the foggiest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t,” he says, and starts shuffling through some papers on his desk.

  I figure I’ve been dismissed, so I pass on through the door and see Harlow Mackelprang sitting in his cell on a cot, balancing a tray on his spindly knees and shoving food down his throat like there’s no tomorrow. Which, come to think of it, there isn’t for him. He’s so intent on feeding himself, he hasn’t even noticed me standing there. I watch him for a few minutes, then pull out that flask and rattle and bang it between the bars.

  That startles Harlow Mackelprang, and he just about jumps out of his jeans, near about upsetting his dinner all over his lap.

  “Damn you, McNulty! You always have been dumb as a post and I see your brains ain’t improved any in my absence. Fact is, without me around to do your thinking for you, you probably got even dumber.”

  I just smile and wave that shiny little flask back and forth.

  “What the hell you got there?” he asks. “Is that what I think it is? Damn, old man, I could use me a taste of that. You think of bringin’ me that all by yourself?” he asks as he sets his tray aside and unfolds himself up off that cot to walk over to the cell door. I pass the flask through the bars and he twists off the lid and throws back a long pull.

  The effect is just what I hoped for. As soon as that flask left his lips, he let loose with a bout of sputtering and spewing. He coughed and hacked for I guess a full minute and more, wiping his running eyes and dripping nose on his shirt sleeve, all the while trying to catch his breath.

  “Damn!” he finally says, squeaking the word out like that hanging rope was already squeezing his throat. “That’s plumb nasty! Where’d you get that stuff?”

  “Just over there at the saloon. Me and Benito and Mariano been drinking it for two days. Guess you just ain’t used to it no more, what with being locked up in here these weeks.”

  Harlow Mackelprang kept up gasping and coughing and dripping out of every hole in his face, still not able to breathe normally.

  “You gonna be all right?” I ask him. “Maybe I oughta finish that off for you. You want I should?”

  “No. I’ll let this settle a minute and try another round. Ain’t never been whiskey made that Harlow Mackelprang can’t drink.”

  “You sure? I’d be happy to drink it.”

  “Sure I’m sure, you old fool. You and them two dumb greasers got a plan to get me outta here, or do I gotta come up with one?” he says as he sits back down and dives into his supper again.

  “I have to think of everything,” he said around a wad of grub too big to chew. “That’s how I rose to the top of this outfit, ain’t it?”

  “What’s that?”

  He swallowed a half-gnawed gob. “I said, how d’ya think I rose to the top of this sorry outfit.”

  “Couldn’t say. How?”

  “Cream floats.”

  “Huh?”

  “Shovel out your ears, old man. I said, cream floats.”

  I could barely keep from laughing out loud at that one. But I managed to hold it to a silly grin.

  “Well, yeah, sure, Harlow Mackelprang,” I said. “But so do turds.”

  He sputtered out a mouthful of coffee and slopped some more out of the mug when be banged it down on the tray.

  “Shut up, you old fool,” he said. “Now, tell me. You dummies got any ideas about gettin’ me out of here?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry none,” I tell him. “Me and Benito and Mariano been talking it over. Benito, though, he’s only been listening, of course.”

  “So what is it?”

  “What’s what?”

  “The plan, you damn fool! What’s the plan?”

  “Oh, that. Well we’re still working on it. Lots of details to tend to, you know.”

  “Hell, McNulty, we ain’t got all day, you know! They’re fixing to hang me come morning.”

  “I know we ain’t got all day,” I says with a grin. “But we do got all night.”

  “Shit! I can’t believe my neck’s practically in the noose and all I got to save it is you three thickheaded idiots. I’m likely to worry myself to death before they get me hung.”

  “Aah, well, you won’t have to worry too much longer. Just have another drink and relax.”

  “Relax! You relax! I’m nervous as a whore in church.”

  “That’s why I brung you that whiskey. Drink it. It’ll calm you down. And don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  He gives me a dirty look, then takes another pull on the flask, smaller this time. There’s no coughing or hacking; he just screws up his face and squints his eyes, then shakes his face loose.

  “Damn! It might calm me down—if it don’t kill me. That stuff is nasty. So tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “Well, we thought about stringing ropes through the bars on the window, then takin’ a dally and letting our horses pull them bars out.”

  “For one thing, these adobe walls is a foot thick.”

  “Yep, we noticed.”

  “For another thing, the window ain’t even in my cell!”


  “Yep. We noticed that too. So then we decided to just blow a hole in the wall.”

  “How the hell you gonna do that, McNulty? These walls is so damn thick it’d take a ton of dynamite to blow ’em and that’d kill me.”

  “Yep, we thought of that.”

  “Only way you could do it is get a miner to drill you some holes.”

  “Yep. We thought of that.”

  “You idiots! Don’t you suppose that’d maybe attract some attention, a bunch of men hiding out in a back alley goin’ at the wall of the jailhouse with a steel drill and a double jack?”

  “Don’t worry, we thought of that too.”

  “You have any good ideas, doin’ all this thinkin’?” he asks.

  “We thought about maybe just coming through the front door.”

  “Oh, that’s a good one, all right. You wanna know why that one won’t work?”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Here’s why. Soon as that deputy Charlie gets back from having his supper and the marshal leaves, the last thing he’ll do is lock that big heavy door there behind you and take the key with him. So even if you got through the front door and took care of Charlie, you couldn’t get back here. And even if you could bust down them thick planks and get through that door, I’d still be locked in this cell and the marshal will have that key too!”

  “Hmmm. We never thought of that, I got to admit.”

  “Any other bright ideas?”

  “Nope. That’s it. I guess we’ll have to keep on thinking.”

  “Damn. I’m as good as dead.”

  “Oh, don’t worry. You just watch and wait. When the time comes, I’ll give you a sign.”

  “That’s some comfort, McNulty. Some comfort.”

  He takes another swig of the whiskey; this time it don’t seem to bother him none. I guess a feller must build up resistance to that stuff, like they say you do with snake venom.

  He turns his full attention to his dinner for a few minutes before saying more. Then: “Tell me something. You always been dumb, or is it something you’ve learned with age?”

  “I can’t say I ever thought about it. What makes you wonder something like that?”

  “I’s just thinking. If getting older means getting stupid like you, dying young don’t look half bad.”

  Right, I’m thinking. If Harlow Mackelprang was to get dumber with age, he’d be a raving lunatic by the time he hit twenty-five—that’s if he’s twenty-four now, like he says he is. But that ain’t nothing he has to worry about now, is it?

  “Tell me something else then,” he says. “What the hell happened that day we robbed the bank? Mariano ain’t nowhere to be found; then when I come out of the bank, you ain’t there either.”

  I thought, how the hell would you know? Soon as you came out that door, your nose hit that wood sidewalk and you wasn’t seeing nothing but knotholes. That’s what I’m thinking, but that ain’t what I say.

  “I feel real bad about that. Just one of them things. See, once you two went into that bank, that horse of yours started acting up. He was nervous and hanging back on them bridle reins and snortin’ and pawin’ and suchlike. Then that got Mariano’s horse stirred up and he starts into prancing and dancing around, stirring up the dust, which makes things worse. Then that useless hair bag you been using for a horse reared back, and I lost hold of the reins and he started sidestepping and shying down the middle of the street with Mariano’s horse right on his heels.

  “Mariano peeked out that bank door and saw what was up, so he came out to help me gather them up. By the time we had ’em under control, you was shooting off that shotgun and the marshal was there and we figured we better just keep on going.”

  That’s the story I tell him. But that ain’t what happened.

  See, me and Benito and Mariano had all had a bellyful of Harlow Mackelprang. So we more or less goaded him into robbing the Los Santos bank knowing we could queer the deal and get him arrested while we got ourselves off scot-free.

  So what happened really was that I dropped the reins of Mariano’s horse, ground-tying it in front of the bank while I held onto Harlow Mackelprang’s. Truth is, Mariano’s horse wouldn’t be a-scared of anything short of a cannon going off if he was harnessed to it. Maybe not even that. About as gentle and well-mannered a horse as I’ve ever seen, that one.

  Anyhow, Mariano followed Harlow Mackelprang into the bank according to the way our idiot leader had set it up.

  But instead of waiting there like I was assigned, I rode on over to the marshal’s office with Harlow Mackelprang’s horse in tow and hailed the law. I pulled my hat down low and screwed my head down into my shoulders so my face didn’t show much. And when that deputy what’s still wet behind the ears poked his head out, I told him the bank was being robbed and to be careful on account of the robber had a sawed-off shotgun.

  Before that deputy could get his wits about him, I headed back toward the bank, and by now Mariano was coming out the door and Harlow Mackelprang was in there hollering and carrying on.

  Mariano mounted up and we headed out of town at a brisk pace—not fast enough to arouse suspicion, you understand, but enough to put some distance between us and the fandango at the bank quicklike. We hadn’t got far when we heard that shotgun go off and saw that the marshal and that deputy had got there and knew our plan had come off without a hitch.

  So we met up with Benito outside of town, where he was keeping the spare mounts for our getaway, just like Harlow Mackelprang planned.

  But we didn’t need to get away too much anymore, so we just kind of laid low and hung around town waiting to see what happened next. It’s amazing how much news a man can pick up just hanging around a saloon minding his own business. Without even asking, we got all the details of the arrest and the trial.

  And, of course, we learned the date the sentence was to be carried out, leaving Harlow Mackelprang dangling at the end of a rope too short to reach the ground.

  We wouldn’t want to miss that.

  “Damn, McNulty,” Harlow Mackelprang says, jolting me out of my reverie. “That’s the same as what Mariano told me. I can’t believe you two could screw up a simple little bank job like that.

  “On second thought, I guess I can believe it. With a couple of fool Mexicans and an over-the-hill idiot for partners, it ain’t no wonder I’m locked up here. Just make sure I’m out of here before morning or I’ll kill all three of you sorry bastards. You hear me?”

  “I hear you. No need to get upset. Don’t you worry none. Like I said, just watch for my signal.”

  Here’s how that’s going to work, I think as I leave the jail.

  Tomorrow morning, when the legendary gunman Harlow Mackelprang climbs them thirteen steps to the top of the gallows to where he can get a good look at the crowd, he’ll see me and Mariano and Benito sitting out there just past all the town folks on our horses.

  And when he sees me, I’ll grin at Harlow Mackelprang and give him a thumbs-up.

  “What a stupid thing to do,” he’ll maybe say to himself. “I wonder what he means by that.”

  HENKER

  Harlow Mackelprang’s last supper, while substantial in quantity, will not add appreciably to his weight. A few ounces perhaps, but not enough to require adjustments to the usual formulas for a hanging, which determine the length of drop required to snap the neck cleanly.

  The greater problem with the man, I think as I contemplate him through the bars of his cell, is the fact that he is as long as a polygamist’s clothesline and not much bigger around. A decided disparity in the usual relationship of height to weight.

  I judge the man to be just shy of six feet and three inches in height. But he is so skinny, I doubt he would tip the scale at more than a hundred and fifty-seven, maybe fifty-eight, pounds. Just figuring in my head, that weight wants a drop of, say, eight foot ten inches, or maybe nine foot even.

  This will require some consideration. Frankly, it is going to be more difficult than I t
hought, and will require that I check the gallows again.

  Allow me to explain. A nine-foot drop is not unusual in a hanging. I myself have dispatched a number of miscreants at that distance, as weights of a hundred and fifty-four to one hundred and sixty-eight pounds are common. The average man, you might say. The corresponding drop ranges from the aforementioned nine feet down to eight foot eight, depending.

  But this “average man” with whom I am well acquainted usually stands well under six feet in height—three or four inches less, say. And oftentimes, a man with a stocky build will achieve that weight at five and a half feet. Even shorter.

  You see my problem.

  All this, within ten seconds of Harlow Mackelprang’s rising from his filthy cot and standing before me, fills my mind.

  In my early years in the hanging trade, it would have taken considerably longer to arrive at this point. Not to mention a carefully balanced scale, a measuring tape, and referral to the charts and graphs from England. But long experience and a practiced eye allow me to forgo those mechanical devices and calculate the death drop of the ne’er-do-well in the instant.

  Fine adjustments—an inch or two—are often required based on the structure of the criminal’s neck, and this always—always—requires a thoughtful analysis. I fear that Harlow Mackelprang’s death will be complicated even further by this variable.

  Aaah, the life of a hangman.

  Perhaps you think, as many—nay, most—do, that hanging is a simple matter of wrapping a rope around a man’s neck and shoving him down a hole or hoisting him up to draw it tight. Oh, that will kill him all right. Eventually.

  But conducted improperly, a hanging becomes an unpleasant, agonizing affair rather than the quick dispatch of a death sentence. And only the most coldhearted among us demand a nasty and painful death to satisfy the requirements of justice.

  That “quick dispatch,” then, is my trade. One I came by honestly and have practiced with pride these twenty-six years.

  Twenty-seven years ago, I arrived in this country from my childhood home along the Rhine River. Lacking skill in the English tongue, my options of obtaining a livelihood in America were limited.