steadier now than they were when he shouted, “Kau-tux-a.”
Corporal Killien measures the diameter of Schonchin’s neck with the end of another rope. The old chief’s eyes do not glare now as they did when he drew from his side a knife with one hand, and a pistol with the other, and shouting, “Blood for blood!”—chock-e la et chock-e la,—fired eleven shots at the chairman of the “Peace Commission.” He was excited then; he is cool now.
Private Robert Wilton is putting a halter on Black Jim’s neck, while Private Anderson is fixing a “neck-tie” that will stop the voice that taunted Dr. Thomas, in his dying moments, with the failure of his God to save him.
Justice smiles on Anderson’s hand while he performs this worthy act in vindication of her honor.
The ropes are all adjusted; the soldiers who have performed this last personal act walk down the steps.
Forty millions of people, through a representative, read a long list of “wherefores” and “becauses,” including the finding and sentence of the courts, to the patient men standing on the drop, thousands of eyes watching every movement.
At last the adjutant reads the following short paper from the forty million, to the four men on the scaffold; the two men in the wagon.
Executive Office, August 22, 1873.
The foregoing sentences, in the cases of Captain Jack, Schonchin, Black Jim, Boston Charley, Barncho, alias One-eyed Jim, and Slolux, alias Cok, Modoc Indian prisoners, are hereby approved; and it is ordered that the sentences in the said cases be carried
into execution by the proper military authority, under the orders of the Secretary of War, on the third day of October, eighteen hundred and seventy-three.