Gallows For a Gunman

by Rod Miller

  In order to get away, he then appropriated a horse and tack at the livery stable and set that structure ablaze.

  Later, I learned there was more. He had visited Althea, a local lady of the evening, earlier. (I am well acquainted with Althea, incidentally, on a professional level—my profession, not hers—and know that most people in Los Santos would be surprised at the balances she maintains in accounts at the bank.) For whatever reason, he had mistreated Althea terribly and she was some days recovering from his beating.

  After leaving Los Santos, he robbed a struggling farm family and killed the man of the house in cold blood. (A little-known result of this crime was an unpaid debt at the bank, requiring an unfortunate foreclosure. The bank still holds the deed to that marginal property, and I doubt we will ever be able to shift it.)

  As for any personal relationship or unpleasant encounters with Harlow Mackelprang, I have nothing to relate. Other than the day of the robbery and killing, I can recall only two occasions upon which he set foot in the bank.

  The first occurred when he was about seventeen years old, I suppose. I accepted for deposit an amount of money (sixty-three dollars, if memory serves) he brought into the bank.

  I confess that I did not, however, actually put the money on deposit. Suspecting something nefarious in the acquisition of the funds, I intended to notify the marshal, so I placed the money in one of my personal accounts for temporary safekeeping.

  But in the press of business I never accomplished the task of notifying the marshal, and so the money languished there. When the incident next crossed my mind, so much time had passed that I believed the interval too great for any good to come from reporting my suspicions, so I (I am ashamed to confess) decided to let sleeping dogs lie, as they say, and the money remained in my account.

  Harlow Mackelprang’s deposit again came to my attention subsequent to his second visit to the bank.

  It occurred more than a year later (fourteen months, to be precise) when he returned to withdraw the funds. I was not in the bank that day, being out and about in the countryside visiting farmers and stockmen who were indebted to the bank, delivering payment notices and gentle reminders. I was also, you might say, keeping an eye on the bank’s investments.

  So the clerk was on duty alone at the bank that day. He (his name was Waldo, this being prior to Calvin’s tenure with us) could find no record of any account in the name of Harlow Mackelprang. Nor was there any notation or entry in the ledgers to record the deposit or to credit the accumulation of interest.

  Harlow Mackelprang, of course, did not have one of the booklets the bank provides customers, in which we record account activity and update it for the account holder on each visit to the bank.

  After enduring considerable verbal abuse, Waldo eventually convinced Harlow Mackelprang that he had no money on deposit. (Or at least Harlow Mackelprang realized the futility of his claim given his own ignorance of the ways and means of financial transactions.)

  After all these years, the money is still there somewhere. But I do not recall which of my accounts holds the money and, to be honest with you, I would not be able to separate the deposit (or the interest earned and accumulated) from the personal funds with which it has mingled all these years.

  That summarizes my personal knowledge of and experience with Harlow Mackelprang right up to the day, three weeks ago, that he committed robbery and homicide in my presence.

  And, of course, my experience in the courtroom last week.

  “Is the man who came into the bank, the one you call Harlow Mackelprang, in this courtroom today?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Of course. He is sitting right there.”

  “Thank you. Please go on.”

  “Another man—he appeared to be Mexican—followed him in. The second man stopped by the door, looked around for a moment, then left.”

  “Is it your belief that this second man was with the defendant?”

  “It is. He had a pistol in his hand. But as I said, he did not stay. He slipped away.”

  “Did you see where he went, Mr. Tueller?”

  “I did not. Harlow Mackelprang was waving his gun around and shouting, so my attention was on him.

  “He ordered me to stand up, raise my hands, and step to the side of the desk. He threw a cloth sack at Calvin and told him to put all the money in it.

  “Calvin did as he was told, all the while protesting to Harlow Mackelprang that he would not get away with it. This seemed to upset him—Harlow Mackelprang, I mean—and he grew considerably more agitated with each passing moment.

  “Calvin emptied the cash drawer and attempted to pass the sack back to Harlow Mackelprang, but he demanded that the safe also be emptied. Our bank does not have a vault; merely a small safe that sits on the floor behind the manager’s—my—desk. Calvin added the few stacks of currency and some gold coin from the safe to the sack, then handed it to Harlow Mackelprang.

  “Then Harlow Mackelprang called out—to the other man who had come in with him, I presumed—asking if the coast was clear. When the other man did not answer, he became even more upset. Visibly, almost insanely so. He kept calling for the man—Mariano was the name he used. Calvin told him once again that he wouldn’t get away with this, which upset him even more.

  “He started backing slowly toward the door, pointing his gun back and forth between us and calling out for his accomplice. Then Calvin said again, ‘You won’t get away with this,’ and ‘We know who you are. You are Harlow Mackelprang.’

  “At this, Harlow Mackelprang shouted, ‘You’re damn right I am. And don’t you forget it.’”

  “Was that all he said?”

  “Yes, sir. That is all.”

  “Then what happened, Mr. Tueller?”

  “He shot him.”

  “I’m sorry Mr. Tueller. I know this is painful. But the record must be clear on this point. Who shot who?”

  “Harlow Mackelprang shot Calvin.”

  “Do you remember how many shots were fired?”

  “Just one. That’s all it took to kill Calvin. It blew him to pieces. I was standing just behind him, a little to the side. The shot splattered blood and bits of him all over me.”

  As I related the story in court, tears streamed down my cheeks, as warm and wet as the streams of Calvin’s blood had been.

  Some of the townspeople in the courtroom seemed uncomfortable with my display of emotion on the stand, and I confess embarrassment. But I could not help myself. The tears came then, as they still do on occasion, unbidden and unexpected. Seeing a young man one has worked with side by side, day by day, and grown to love, get shot to pieces is not easily dealt with so soon after the fact.

  I only hope that with the passage of time I will at least be able to control my emotions, as I cannot face life if it is to be lived as these past three weeks have been.

  I find myself weeping silently and am surprised by the discovery. I no longer sleep well, due to nightmares. I lose concentration at work—a regular occurrence these days—and drift into daydreams, only to be startled back to reality by visions of Calvin’s blood spraying me.

  Even being in the bank is almost more than I can bear, as everything there serves to remind me of the robbery and the murder.

  “A most unfortunate experience, Mr. Tueller,” the prosecutor said. “Can you continue?”

  “Yes. Yes. I am sorry. After shooting Calvin, Harlow Mackelprang turned and ran out the door, but was upended and fell to the sidewalk. The marshal was waiting outside the door and tripped him up. Then the marshal was standing over him, with a pistol at Harlow Mackelprang’s head.”

  “Why was the marshal there? Had an alarm been sounded?”

  “The bank does not have an alarm. I did not even wonder at the time how the marshal came to be there. I was so grateful that he was there that it did not occur to me to wonder why.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Tueller. That will be all.”

  The only other witness at Harlow Mackelprang’s tr
ial was the marshal. His testimony was brief.

  He told of how an old man on horseback leading another horse had ridden up in front of his office, called him out, told him—his deputy actually—that the bank was being robbed, and then had ridden away with a second man, who mounted his horse on the street in front of the bank.

  It was the marshal’s contention, passed on to me in private conversation, that these were Harlow Mackelprang’s confederates who had, for some reason, orchestrated the betrayal of their associate.

  The marshal testified that he concealed himself next to the open front door of the bank in an attempt to assess the situation inside, only to be startled by the shotgun blast. Then the marshal told, as I had, how Harlow Mackelprang ran out the door and he tripped him and placed him under arrest.

  The jury required mere moments to return a guilty verdict, and the judge sentenced Harlow Mackelprang to be hanged in a week’s time. From start to finish, the entire procedure took less than one hour.

  An hour that I may never recover from.

  And one that Harlow Mackelprang certainly never will.

  Now, here I stand on the streets of Los Santos, on the very route Harlow Mackelprang will take when escorted by the marshal to the gallows just moments from now. After the hanging, I will retire to the bank and prepare for the day’s opening.

  One advantage of keeping banker’s hours is that a hanging on an early summer’s morn does not interfere with the normal course of business. Which course of business nowadays involves training a new clerk.

  I have engaged a woman for the position, despite the protestations of my uncle that a female banker would not engender the necessary respect, particularly among members of the business community. In the end, he bowed to my wishes.

  (However, I cannot imagine his acquiescence had the prostitute Althea been the woman I wanted to hire. She lobbied for the position, and her adept handling of her own investments more than qualifies her for the job. Nevertheless, I am sure you can understand that her current employment disqualifies her from consideration.)

  In any event, indications thus far are that Margaret (a miner’s widow, childless) will prove a valuable asset to the bank. And as our clientele is becoming cognizant of that fact, she is gaining acceptance. She is also learning the subtleties of finance, and I do not doubt she will come to understand the many ways (with an adjustment here, a transfer there) that a bank can profit from the funds placed in its trust.

  I see Margaret now, standing near the gallows with Lila, another local widow (the one whose farmer husband died some years ago at Harlow Mackelprang’s hand, a brief account of which crime and its aftermath I related earlier). Lila cooks at the café where I take most of my meals. (The café must be closed for the hanging, as, apparently, is every other business in town.)

  I would not have predicted such a level of interest. Most of the residents of Los Santos and the immediate environs appear to have turned out for the occasion.

  Adults mill and talk quietly, jockeying for a favored position from which to view the event that will protect the town from violence and corruption (from one front, at least). Children are running and laughing, dodging among the more somber adults in games of tag and hide-and-seek. I wonder how the little ones will react when Harlow Mackelprang is led out to hang.

  For that matter, I wonder how I will react.

  I have chosen my spot so that I can get a good look at him when he passes. I wonder, should his eye catch mine, if he will acknowledge me. Perhaps I will look different to him and he will not recognize me.

  Because, remember, the last time Harlow Mackelprang saw me I was covered in blood and gore.

  I can’t seem to get the taste of it out of my mouth.

  BROOM

  Harlow Mackelprang’s last supper is nothing now but a few dried-up strands of sauerkraut, some gravy smears gone hard, a little piece of meat fat, and some biscuit crumbs.

  His empty plate is the first thing I see in the vacant cell, sitting over there in the corner on a tray with a bowl and an empty mug and a wadded-up cloth. I suppose I’ll carry that tray over to the café later, once I’ve cleaned up this place and the café opens back up after the hanging. Maybe there’ll be a cup of coffee in it for me—which I could sure use just now to burn this fur off my tongue.

  Although a drink of whiskey would do a better job, come to think of it.

  All in good time. Right now I got work to do.

  I drag the bucket that serves as a chamber pot out from under the cot and scrape in the leavings from the dinner plate. I haul the bucket into the walkway and carry the tray into the office, then drag the mop pail over to the cell and start in to swabbing the floor.

  “Will you be cleaning my cell as well, my good man?”

  I jumped a foot in the air at the question, not expecting there was anyone in the jail save me. It took a minute to focus my rheumy old eyes, but I finally got my bearings on a fat man standing down in the end cell.

  “What?”

  “Will my ‘living area,’ so to speak, be getting a cleaning?”

  “Oh, no. I only do this when someone leaves. Live in your own filth until you do. I’ll be along to empty your bucket, though.”

  “Excellent. It does get foul in here.”

  “How long you been locked up?”

  “This is my fourth day.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why what?” he asked.

  “Why for are you in here?”

  “A minor business dispute. A mere misunderstanding that will be cleared up posthaste once I have the opportunity to appear before the bar of justice.”

  “Oh,” I said, and kept mopping.

  “What, if I may be so bold to ask, is your name, kind sir?

  What a windbag. I wonder what it would be like to be locked up in here with him for four days. About now, Harlow Mackelprang might be thinking hanging ain’t such a bad thing.

  “Broom,” I said, and kept mopping.

  “Broom.” He mulled that over for a minute, then asked, “Is that your surname or given name?”

  “Ain’t neither. It’s just what folks call me.”

  “Broom. Very good then. Call me Sweeney. Will you be attending this morning’s execution, Broom?”

  “Nope.”

  “It seems we will be the only ones in town not in attendance.”

  “Yup.”

  “Are you acquainted with the condemned, Broom?”

  “Knowed him all his life.”

  “I understand there is no question of his guilt. Do you concur?”

  “Mr. Sweeney, I know for a fact that Harlow Mackelprang ain’t no good for nothing,” I said as I wrung out the mop for the last time. “And it’s my own damn fault.”

  Maybe for the first time in his life, Sweeney looks to be at a loss for words. I ain’t going to help him find any.

  Guilt ain’t an easy thing for a man to live with. And I sure as hell feel guilty about Harlow Mackelprang. Who wouldn’t feel that way if his own boy, his own flesh and blood, grew up to be a gunman and took up a life of thieving, raping, robbing, and killing.

  Not that I taught him such things, you understand. But I never taught him different. Fact is, I don’t guess I taught him much of anything at all.

  I’ll tell you, when the midwife finally allowed me in to see Bonnie and our newborn babe, I thought there was nothing finer in all the world. My beautiful young wife, with that red and wrinkled-up little baby snuggled up to her, plumb made my heart pound. And that glow carried me along for a good long time.

  I’d come on home from a shift at the mine and find Bonnie putting the finishing touches on my supper—or breakfast when I had the night shift. Nothing fancy, just plain food, but Bonnie had a way of making anything tempting and tasty. The place, small and run-down though it was, was always swept and polished till it sparkled and dolled up with curtains and tablecloths and such that Bonnie whipped up from out of nothing.

  She always saw to it that our lit
tle shack was the best-kept-up place in Mechanicsville—not that many others in that dusty crevice cared about such things as that. It was a hard ground for a family to take root in, and the mining combinations that owned everything aboveground and below in the Meeker’s Mill district never made it any easier.

  But that baby made it all worthwhile for me and Bonnie. Our little boy was about the smartest one ever born, is how we thought. Why, he’d google and coo and grin near about every time you looked at him. He learned early on how to talk, and Bonnie would have him say new words to me every day, and she’d swell up with pride and tell stories about all the other smart things he’d been up to.

  It was near about as perfect a life as a man could ask for in them conditions. Good home with a loving family. Steady work and wages at the mine. And prospects for more of the same for as long into the future as we could see.

  I guess I should have known that nothing that good was bound to last.

  When the boy was just turned three, Bonnie took sick with pneumonia. Nothing would shake it. The poor woman was racked with coughing fits that took her breath away and she could not hardly get it back.

  The company doctor tried any number of cures from bromides to meal poultices to bleeding to wrapping her in a pneumonia jacket. Finally, though, she just couldn’t get any more air into her and she faded away in her sleep, leaving me and the boy alone.

  That’s when the whiskey took ahold of me. Before then, see, I only took a drink from time to time to celebrate a special occasion. Bonnie didn’t hold with liquor, and that was all right by me since I could take it or leave it and mostly left it be, even before we got hitched.

  But I turned to drink when she died, thinking it would dull the ache, but it never did.

  I found a local woman to help look after the boy, but she had seven or eight kids of her own. She was a trashy woman, her shack coated with dirt and grime and infested with vermin. Her kids was always skinny with snotty noses and runny eyes.

  I can’t say about the sniffles, but you didn’t have to look far to see why them kids was skinny. That woman weighed three hundred pounds if she weighed one. I suspected them kids had to fight her for every scrap of food they got. She was filthy in her personal habits to the point that I wondered how her man, who worked with me at the mine, managed to get near enough to her to father all them kids, but it was obvious he did it somehow—leastways somebody did.