One evening, after the work of the day was done and the boys had eaten their suppers, one of them suggested that it would be a good time to hang Calamity. So they got things in shape and went down to the Big Laramie bridge.
Calamity was with them. They got things ready for the exercise to begin, and then asked the victim if he had anything to say. He loosened the rope around his neck a little with one hand, so that he could speak with more freedom, and holding his pantaloons on with the other, said:
"Gentlemen of the convention, I call you to witness that this public demonstration toward me is entirely unsought on my part. I have never courted notoriety.
"Plugging along in comparative obscurity is good enough for me. This is the first time I have ever addressed an audience. That is why I am embarrassed and ill at ease.
"You have brought me here to hang me because I seem harsh and severe with my wife. You have entered the hallowed presence of my home life and assumed the prerogative of subverting my household discipline.
"It is well. I do not care to live, so long as my authority is questioned. You have already changed my submissive wife to an arrogant and self-reliant woman.
"Yesterday I told her to go out and grease the wagon, and she straightened up to her full height and told me to grease it myself.
"I have always been kind and thoughtful to her. When she had to go up in the gulch in the winter after firewood, my coat shielded her from the storm while I sat in the cabin through the long hours. I could name other instances of unselfishness on my part, but I will not take up your time.
"She uses my smoking tobacco, and kicks my vertebræ into my hat on the most unlooked-for occasions. She does not love me any more, and life to me is only a hollow mockery.
"Death, with its wide waste of eternal calm, and its shoreless sea of rest, is a glad relief to me. I go, but I leave in your midst a skittish and able-bodied widow who will make Rome howl. I bequeath her to this camp. She is yours, gentlemen. She is all I have to give, but in giving her to you, I feel that my untimely death will always be looked upon in this gulch as a dire calamity.