by Rod Miller
“Can’t say as I do. Fact is, I’m sorta looking forward to meeting him.”
“Looking forward?”
“That I am, Preacher. And when I do meet him, I’ll spit right in the old gentleman’s eye,” he says.
“Blasphemy! On top of all else, you are blasphemous and profane. Were I not so angry and were you not so unrepentant, I would pity you. But I feel only hate.”
“Not very Christian of you, that.”
“Do not presume to speak to me of the things of God or Our Savior Jesus Christ. I shall now shake off the dust of my feet and remove myself from your presence. Should you have a change of heart and wish a prayer in your behalf come morning, I shall do my duty. Otherwise, Harlow Mackelprang, may you burn forever in hell.”
Without further ado, without even bidding Sweeney (whose arguments I found stimulating, if misguided) farewell, I leave the jail. I need to fall on my knees and repent of letting that spawn of Satan get the best of me. I am guilty of anger, unkindness, incivility, even outright hatred.
I feel I have faced a devil, and now a devil is within me.
Harlow Mackelprang’s accusation of an unchris-tianlike attitude sits heavy on my soul. Only his complete depravity and sinful, unrepentant nature counterbalance these twinges of guilt. I believe in my soul of souls that the man is beyond help. Beyond redemption even. And I can think of but one thing to do:
Pray for Harlow Mackelprang.
On second thought, I shan’t bother. He won’t appreciate it. It will waste my time. And God might be insulted.
BROUSSARD
Harlow Mackelprang’s last supper consisted of beefsteak with gravy, mashed potatoes, beans, sauerkraut, biscuits, peach cobbler, and coffee. He took the meal in a six-foot-by-eight-foot cell in the jail at Los Santos, where he was held for three weeks, two of which while awaiting trial and the other while awaiting the execution of his death sentence. His trial . . .
No.
Decked out in duck trousers, Texas boots, a soiled dress shirt without cuffs or collar, and a striped vest, Harlow Mackelprang took his last walk this morning. Accompanied by the marshal and a deputy, both heavily armed, the gunman walked the block and a half down Front Street in Los Santos to the gallows....
No.
The West today rid itself of its most notorious bandit, the murderer Harlow Mackelprang, in a public hanging in the city of Los Santos. Arrested here three weeks ago and tried and convicted a week ago for murder and bank robbery, the execution marks the end of a three-year reign of terror during which the gunman Harlow Mackelprang and his outlaw band robbed, rustled, raped, and murdered their way across the territory....
Not that either. Maybe this: Blood and horror earned their due today. The citizens of Los Santos repaid erstwhile resident Harlow Mackelprang for the shotgun murder of a bank clerk with public hanging. The execution draws the curtain on a three-year crime spree....
No. It will not serve. Here I sit on top of the biggest story ever to come out of Los Santos, the one story likely to propel me out of obscurity and into the rarified air of top reporters on daily newspapers with a nationwide audience, and perhaps an opportunity to reshape my tales for the crime magazines published in the East, and I cannot come up with a suitable lead.
For nearly two and a half years I have toiled for the local weekly in the employ of one Mr. Ford, splitting my duties as a reporter with setting type, proofing galleys, composing advertisements, and even assisting with the press run. It is not the situation I desire, but one I am told I must endure in order to learn the business and gain the experience necessary to advance.
Which may be true, I suppose. But “learning the business” is not something I care to do. I have neither the desire nor the inclination to operate a newspaper. My sole purpose is to be a reporter—a writer actually, with literary pretensions, and the reporting is merely the means by which I acquire the material to be written up.
But it is difficult for one to make his mark and arouse the interest of distant editors in one’s abilities when the subject matter of one’s stories is confined to mining shipments passing through, market prices for cattle, the arrival and departure of relatives visiting the notables of the community, recent occurrences with the ladies’ horticultural and literary societies, and the like.
To be honest, the one bright spot since my arrival here has been Harlow Mackelprang.
Interest in his activities due to Los Santos being his hometown, as well as the proximity of his crimes (combined, I must add, with a nearly total lack of other notable events in the territory hereabouts), have afforded an opportunity for me to follow his exploits through dispatches from and to area law-enforcement authorities, rewriting stories from other newspapers, and even, on a few occasions, traveling to other communities to gather information firsthand.
One such excursion, taken just a week and a half ago, in the days leading up to Harlow Mackelprang’s murder trial, took me to the Meeker’s Mill mining district in the mountains. That, it was said, was the place of the bandit’s birth, infancy, and early childhood.
By journeying there I hoped to fill in some gaps in the general knowledge concerning our local gunman’s origins, information about which was sketchy. I admit my purpose had little to do with my stories for readers of the local newspaper. They cared little about the outlaw, feeling—with some legitimacy, I suppose—that they already knew more than they wanted to about Harlow Mackelprang, man and boy, and the course of his young life before it upset theirs mattered not a whit.
No, my hopes were more related to the possibility of peddling an account of the life of Harlow Mackelprang to the publishers of dime novels or, perhaps, legitimate biographies.
And so I bought a ticket and boarded the train for Meeker’s Mill. The speed of train travel has its advantages for the journalist. But for one with literary ambitions it can prove a liability.
How, after all, does one get a sense of place when thundering through it at breakneck speeds approaching thirty miles per hour?
How does one absorb the smell of sage, the delicate odor of rain curtaining from a summer thunderhead, or the hint of campfire smoke on the breeze, when one is overwhelmed with the acrid stench of burning anthracite and the putrid proximity of dozens of unwashed fellow travelers?
How, in the midst of such pounding and pulsing, huffing and whistling, can you expect to detect the distant cooing of a mourning dove in the gray dawn? The rhythmic chirp of crickets concealed in the gloaming, or coyote calls relayed through the darkness on moonbeams? Or even the annoying clatter of locusts in the noontime sun?
And what of the clear air of the West, which can distort fifty miles of distance into what appears a mere hour’s ride on horseback? That too is lost when traveling by train, as everything you see in every direction wavers and warps, dims and deforms through a haze of coal smoke and ashes stirred by an artificial wind.
But as writers are wont to do, I have wandered too far from the subject at hand. So allow me to pick up the tale of Harlow Mackelprang at the place of his birth—the mining area known as Meeker’s Mill.
Gallows frames topping numerous mine shafts marched up and down the sides of a steep, narrow canyon. At the mouth of the defile, sprawling across the only flat piece of land of any size, stood the mill works for which the area was named—the focal point of which was a noisy stamp mill that pounded and pulverized ore at any and all hours of the day and night.
The rails ended just short of the mill works. The train station consisted of nothing more than a six-by-six shack holding a pigeonhole desk and sheet-iron stove.
Beyond, a switching yard allowed railroad workers to shuttle cars to and from the tipple for loading, then assemble them into a train with the passenger cars for the trip back down the mountain to Los Santos and points onward.
Limited as it was, rail service to Meeker’s Mill kept the mines thereabouts considerably more active and prosperous than their counterparts in the neighboring Thunder Mountain district. Ther
e, mule-drawn freight wagons hauled ore and supplies, stagecoaches hauled people and mail, and the bone-rattling wagon road they all used was the only means in or out.
One result was that the commercial traffic on the Thunder Mountain road from Trueno to Los Santos offered a more tempting target for bandits like the late Catlin and soon-to-be-late Harlow Mackelprang. A stagecoach or freight wagon is considerably easier to stop than a train.
But again, I digress.
An inquiry at company headquarters—a shoddy two-story affair of rough-sawn lumber—garnered no information.
“How long ago?” the chicken-necked clerk asked, peering down his long nose at me.
“Twenty years, more or less. Can’t say exactly.”
“Boy, you have any idea what miners are like?”
“Like everyone else, generally speaking, I guess.”
His snort turned into a condescending laugh; then he said, “They’re like a bunch of damn gypsies. That’s why they call them ‘gyppo’ miners. They move from job to job and place to place for any reason or no reason at all. Twenty years would see more hundreds of miners than you can count coming through here.”
“But this man was married. Had a family. I just thought that might have kept him here a little longer.”
“Might have. Even so, anyone that might remember him is probably long since gone.”
“How about payroll records?”
There was that snort again. “I’ve been keeping the books here for twelve years. Had he been here during that time, there might be a chance. The records before then are a hopeless jumble. Couldn’t find anything even if I wanted to.”
“So you won’t help me.”
“Can’t.”
“And you don’t think anyone would remember them? None of the miners, or their families?”
“What’s the name again?”
“Mackelprang.”
“Well, that’s not a name you hear every day. Could be somebody might remember it, if you can find somebody that’s been around that long,” he said. “You might try over in Mechanicsville. That’s where most of the workers with families live. But there ain’t many of them. Like I said, most of what we get here are footloose gyppo miners.”
A nondescript place, Mechanicsville. Not a proper town, it was but a double row of ramshackle huts, cabins, shacks, and wood-walled tents occupying an unwanted side canyon a hundred yards downhill from the mill.
A few questions and a little nosing around led me to a whitewashed house halfway up the neighborhood’s one street. Its white walls were the only color in the canyon that showed through the film of dust that covered everything, and the only wood of any hue other than the natural drabness of aged, untreated rough lumber.
“Mackelprang, you say?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied, attempting to encourage the old woman with the tone of my voice. Gray-haired and wrinkled, she was as weathered and worn as everything else in the canyon, but still as neat and tidy as her cottage.
“That’s a long time ago. But sure, I remember them. They moved in that little place two doors down right after they married. Lot of folks have lived there since. But they came to mind a year or two ago when I started reading about that outlaw Harlow Mackelprang in the newspapers. Knew it had to be the same boy.
“A right ambitious housekeeper, that Bonnie was. Made a real nice little home of that place. She and I, we neighbored some while they were here. Things started going bad, though, once she took sick and succumbed.
“That baby boy never had much of a chance after that, once his dad took to drinking so.”
I asked if anyone else might still be around that would remember them.
“You go on up the street, clear to the end, and there on the right you’ll find a place that looks to be a junkyard. Woman there used to look after Harlow Mackelprang once his mother Bonnie passed.
“Now I’m not one to tell tales, young man, but were I you, I would decline the offer of any food or drink at that house. Of course, I’ve not heard of her offering.”
Stacks of warped and weathered boards, rusting metal, boxes, and all manner of detritus littered the dooryard of the house I was directed to. Glass was missing from more windowpanes than not, haphazardly replaced by ill-fitting scraps of board. Tin cans hammered flat, covered others, as well as patching what must have been holes in the shack’s lapboard walls.
Picking a path through piles of trash and refuse, I made my way to the door and knocked. I tracked the progress of someone inside by the squeak of floorboards, so was ready, with hat in hand, when the door swung and rattled wide on loose-fitting hinges.
At least I thought I was ready.
The woman filled the doorway. Greasy hair and fabric hung and clung to various parts of her person. Every expanse of exposed skin sagged and bagged, from jowls to arms to ankles. Even her lower lip seemed to surrender to gravity, its droop revealing a single brown tooth, thrusting upward at an unexpected angle.
I was speechless.
She did not speak.
I found my voice eventually, at least some of it, clearing my throat and spilling out a collection of syllables only marginally coherent.
“Excuse me. Harlow Mackelprang. Do you know him?”
She stared at me through drooping, dripping eyes, clouded with a film of ignorance.
“What?”
“Harlow Mackelprang,” I repeated. “Do you remember him?”
A glimmer of recognition appeared in her rheumy eyes.
“What for you want to know?”
“I’m from the newspaper. He’s going to trial for murder in Los Santos. We’re just looking into his background. For our readers.”
From behind the woman came the unmistakable sound of the cocking hammer on an unseen weapon. The type of weapon soon became clear as an ancient, oversized percussion-cap pistol in a hairy, white-knuckled fist crept over her shoulder.
With his other hand, the man must have grasped the back of the woman’s filthy dress and pulled, for she shuffled backward two or three sliding steps. A face peered from around her shoulder, and a bony body followed.
The man was barefoot; the gaping waist of his patched and baggy pants was held aloft by a single suspender of frayed twine angling across his chest. The top half of a faded and filthy union suit served for a shirt, and it had been attached to the man so long that kinky hair in variegated shades of black, gray, and white sprouted through from his chest and belly.
“Who is it? What’s he want?” he asked the woman.
“He’s asking about Harlow Mackelprang.”
“Who?”
“Harlow Mackelprang. Go back in the house.” She shouldered him out of the way and again filled the doorway.
“Don’t pay him no mind. He ain’t right in the head. Something up there in them mines has made him touched,” she said as the awareness in her eyes started to dim.
“What about Harlow Mackelprang?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed back to reality and she asked, “What about Harlow Mackelprang?”
“I’m told you cared for him after his mother died.”
“I suppose I did. Had so many brats underfoot back then, I can’t recall anything in particular about that one. All my own is either dead and buried or grown and gone now. Had a passel of kids and there ain’t a one of ’em left around here to care for me in my old age. And I’ll need it, what with him being the way he is,” she said, inclining her head toward the man standing unseen just beyond the door frame. “That’s the thanks you get, I guess.”
“So you don’t remember anything in particular about him?”
“Naw. Just another brat. They all had their mouths open all the time, either hungry or hollerin’. What you say he’s gone and done?”
“He’s standing trial for murder in Los Santos. You mean you haven’t heard about the outlaw and gunman Harlow Mackelprang?”
“Not much news from down there gets up this high.”
The woman shuddered and si
destepped as the man bumped her aside and again showed his face. “What you want with us? We ain’t got nothing to do with it.” He waved the gun menacingly. “Get on out of here.”
Sensing nothing of value would result from continuing the interview, I picked my way through the refuse between the house and what passed for the street. I hastened my steps considerably, increasing to a dead run, in fact, when the old pistol discharged with a roar and its projectile shattered several stacked boards a mere three feet from my own feet.
Contemplating the life of Harlow Mackelprang during the train ride back to Los Santos, I realized there was nothing of his early years that would help sell newspapers or dime novels. I determined to concentrate my efforts on his criminal activities, fleshing out my scant knowledge of events with further interviews with sources yet to be determined.
Here is what I had learned at the time, and how I learned it.
Harlow Mackelprang’s depredations had commenced some six months prior to my arrival in Los Santos. According to the back issues of the newspaper that I studied, as well as information provided by Mr. Ford, the newspaper’s editor and owner (and only member of the staff, save me), the crime spree commenced here in Los Santos.
It seems Harlow Mackelprang had been drinking to excess. He visited Althea, the local prostitute, who shunned his attentions and was beaten for her trouble. He then retired to the saloon, where he played cards poorly. An argument with another gambler led Harlow Mackelprang to draw his pistol without warning and shoot the other man, who was seriously wounded but not killed.
He then shot up the saloon, stole a horse from the local livery stable and wagon yard, set the barn afire either as a distraction or from pure recalcitrance, then raced out of town.
While the men of the town extinguished the blaze, the newly minted desperado used up his stolen horse almost immediately by pushing too hard, and stopped for a replacement at an outlying farm.
There, he relieved the family of a store of supplies and a less-than-suitable mount, shot and killed the farmer, and again rode away. By the time the posse arrived, his lead was too great, and so Harlow Mackelprang was lost in the hostile expanse of the desert.