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Title: Two Creeks has a Hanging
Date of first publication: 1945
Author: Arthur K. Barnes (1909-1969)
Date first posted: Mar. 2, 2023
Date last updated: Mar. 2, 2023
Faded Page eBook #20230301

This eBook was produced by: Al Haines

This file was produced from images generously made available by The Unz Review.




[Source: Collier's Weekly, January 20, 1945]




[Transcriber's note: text surrounded by plus signs (+) is +bolded+.]




TWO CREEKS HAS A HANGING

BY ARTHUR K. BARNES


+Timmy and I found excuses to detour on our way home from school in
order to pass the jailhouse.  Clay was the most entertaining prisoner+



Everybody in Two Creeks said afterward it was the best hanging they
had ever seen.  I guess this was because of Clay Gowan, the hangee,
who weighed three hundred pounds, and was always laughing with a
sound like rocks falling in a cavern.  He was a Falstaff in a
ten-gallon hat and cowboy boots, and people everywhere said he was
very likable.

My little brother and I got acquainted with Clay while he was in
jail.  There wasn't a tree in Two Creeks large enough to hang such a
big man, and the execution was delayed while they built a gallows.
So Timmy and I found excuses to detour on our way home from school in
order to pass the jailhouse and visit.

Clay was the most entertaining prisoner you can imagine.  He was
always making jokes or gambling noisily with the turnkey, and he had
a mouth organ from which, completely hidden in his great fist, he
drew marvelous tunes.

After our third afternoon of impromptu concert amid the carpenters'
clatter as they built the scaffold, Clay grinned at us kids through
the bars and asked if we would do him a favor.  Round-eyed, with
visions of smuggling a file inside a fruitcake, we agreed.

"May seem foolish to you lads, but I always been one for
cleanliness."  It was true.  Clay was always neat and scrubbed.  "Now
I'm agoin' on a long journey.  You know about that?  Well, I'd mark
it up as a good turn if you lads could manage to sort o' wash off
that there gallows, so when the time comes--y' understand?"

Of course we didn't understand such double talk, but each afternoon
after the carpenters had gone home, Timmy and I solemnly poured a
bucket of water over the raw, gleaming lumber.  In some vague way we
felt holy.  We also felt conspiratorial, because Pa was the judge who
had tried and sentenced Clay Gowan, and we knew our sensations would
be anything but holy if he found us out.

We were expressing the sentiments of Two Creeks, though; sympathy for
Clay was almost unanimous.  Even Ma ventured her opinion, something
she dared to do only when she felt very strongly.

"Seems a shame," she observed, "that good-natured man has to hang.
Don't someways seem right."

But there was no doubt about Clay's guilt.  He had received word that
his sister was very sick, so he tried to borrow Sheriff Arter's gray
gelding--only horse within a hundred miles big enough to carry him.
The sheriff not being what you could rightly call a warmhearted man,
Clay finally just had to help himself.  And horse thieves were hanged
in those days.  So Pa had the right on his side when he thinned out
his lips and said:

"I don't make the laws, Ma.  I just administrate 'em."  Then Pa
stared at us.  "And if you boys have any notion of seein' Clay Gowan
hang Saturday, you can forgit it.  You're astayin' home."

But even fear of Pa couldn't keep us away from that hanging.  Having
waited till the folks were safely gone, we scrambled up into the
church bell tower to join a half dozen other kids.



It was what you might call a gala occasion.  People had come from all
over the countryside, and we were told Clay had made a nice speech
saying he was sorry he had found it necessary to take the sheriff's
big gray, and that he hoped everyone would be glad to hear his sister
was getting better.  After that he had played My Bonnie Black Bess on
the mouth organ, then climbed the scaffold and allowed the rope to be
placed about his neck.

But as the sheriff took hold of the trip lever, Clay's face went
stark white.  Realization hit me for the first time that this man was
intended to die, and I shut my eyes.

They opened quick, though, when Timmy gasped, "Lookee!  Nothing's
happened!"

It was so.  The trap had not fallen and, at Pa's suggestion, Clay
stepped back to let Sheriff Arter fix the trouble.  Presently someone
pulled the lever, and the trap dropped smoothly, and Clay took his
place again, still white and not very steady.  I didn't close my eyes
this time, and I could see surprise actually ripple over the crowd as
the trap stuck for the second time.

Then Pa called out, "Better make real certain, Sheriff.  By virtue of
the old law, you can't hang a man but three times."

There was real excitement then, and plenty of heads nodded agreement.
Sheriff Arter glared at Pa but he was mighty careful to check his pet
gallows completely.  He even stood on the trap himself, a mean-eyed
runt who held his job only because of his reputation as a man-hunter.
When Pa worked the lever, the trap opened, and the sheriff plunged
down slick as grease, amid jeers and laughter.

But in vain.  For when Clay Gowan again tried to fulfill his
sentence, the trap refused to open for the third straight time.  It
was like Election Day, with people yelling and running about and
applauding Clay and it wasn't for hours that somebody discovered that
Clay had ridden off on Sheriff Arter's horse once more.  I guess he
figured he'd earned it.

It was Pa who solved the real mystery.  He poked about the gallows
for a long time while everyone watched.  Finally he announced, "The
trap's warped, that's all.  Long as there was just a light weight
like the sheriff on it, it worked fine.  But Clay's so heavy he
flattened it out and jammed it tight....  Funny thing, there was
another case like this few years ago.  English feller went free after
they failed t' hang 'im.  Odd coincidence."

"Tarnation odd."  Sheriff Arter squinted about suspiciously.  "Seein'
we ain't had so much as a heavy dew fer nine weeks, how come that
gallows t' be warped, Judge?"

Timmy and I wasted five seconds exchanging glances of horrified
comprehension; then we skedaddled.  But when Pa and Ma got home, not
another word was spoken in our house about the hanging of Clay Gowan,
except once.

That was when Ma said, "My, wasn't it wonderful the way things turned
out?  I was awful proud when your pa remembered the law just at the
right time."

Pa and Ma looked at each other the way grownups do when they talk
without saying anything.  I thought Pa was going to laugh, but he
only said, "I don't make the laws, Ma.  I just administrate 'em."


[The end of _Two Creeks has a Hanging_ by Arthur K. Barnes]