It is not within the purpose of this book to follow here the case of the Conditt murderers through the courts. The evidence as finally accumulated was voluminous and damning so far as Felix Powell and Monk Gibson were concerned. That Monk Gibson was a tool of Powell (and perhaps of others) was most likely, for it was proven that Powell had been seen walking around and around the field with him as he plowed, early on the morning of the murder, and the big track and the smaller one had been found there, side by side. That Powell had enticed the negro boy to join in the crime, we may easily believe, and that Monk Gibson had joined in that fearful tragedy cannot be doubted, and he had plowed on until one o'clock with those dead bodies lying there close by, thus giving his confederate, or confederates, a chance to establish an alibi, probably in accordance with a preconcerted plan.
Both Powell and Gibson paid the extreme penalty of their crime. Powell went to the gallows at Victoria, Texas, on the 2d of April, 1907. Monk Gibson was hanged at Cuero, Texas, a year later, in June. Neither made any confession that was of legal value, though Gibson, a few minutes before his execution, gave to Captain McDonald a rambling statement in which he involved others besides Powell.
The cases of Henry Howard and of the women arrested as accessories to the plot and its execution, had not been disposed of when this was written. Howard was then under indictment as principal and accessory on evidence supplied by McDonald. Whether that evidence is found sufficient to convict will only be decided by the juries of the future.
The Brownsville Episode
AN EVENT OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE. THE TWENTY-FIFTH INFANTRY'S MIDNIGHT RAID
The year 1906 was Captain Bill McDonald's last and most important year in the Ranger service. He was still concerned in the work at Edna when there occurred not far away an event in which certain negro characteristics were even more strikingly manifested—an event which was presently to grow into an episode of national importance.