“Take your hands off him, or by the God, I'll cut them off,” he shouted. “You have killed a lone child—the messenger of peace—peace which I risked my life to secure for the white men who outlawed me.”
Taking the dead body tenderly in his arms, he rode back to face the fury of a wronged people. He understood the penalty but went to offer himself as a ransom, and was shot to death. This, however, is not the class of outlaws I would discuss, for very often force of circumstances makes outlaws of men, but I would speak of the criminal outlaw whom I would spare not nor excuse.
My friends, civilization may be a thin veneer, and the world today may be slimy with hypocrisy, but no man is justified in killing lions to feed dogs.
Outlawry is often a fit companion for treason and anarchy, for which the lowest seats of hell should be reserved. The outlaw, like the commercial freebooter, is often a deformity on the face of nature that darkens the light of God's day.
I need not explain my career as an outlaw, a career that has been gorgeously colored with fiction. To me the word outlaw is a living coal of fire. The past is a tragedy—a tragedy wherein danger lurks in every trail. I may be pardoned for hurrying over a few wild, relentless years that led up to a career of outlawry—a memory that cuts like the sword blades of a squadron of cavalry. The outlaw is like a big black bird, from which every passerby feels licensed to pluck a handful of feathers.
My young friend, if you are endowed with physical strength, valor, and a steady hand, let me warn you to use them well, for the God who gave them is the final victor.
Think of a man born of splendid parents, good surroundings, the best of advantages, a fair intellectuality, with the possibility of being president of the United States, and with courage of a field general. Think of him lying stagnant in a prison cell. This does not apply alone to the highway outlaw, but to those outlaws who are sometimes called by the softer name “financier.” Not long ago I heard a man speak of a certain banker, and I was reminded that prisons do not contain all the bad men. He said: “Every dog that dies has some friend to shed a tear, but when that man dies there will be universal rejoicing.”
I am not exactly a lead man, but it may surprise you to know that I have been shot between twenty and thirty times and am now carrying over a dozen bullets which have never been extracted. How proud I should have been had I been scarred battling for the honor and glory of my country. Those wounds I received while wearing the gray, I've ever been proud of, and my regret is that I did not receive the rest of them during the war with Spain, for the freedom of Cuba and the honor and glory of this great and glorious republic. But, alas, they were not, and it is a memory embalmed that nails a man to the cross.
I was in prison when the war with Cuba was inaugurated, a war that will never pass from memory while hearts beat responsive to the glory of battle in the cause of humanity. How men turned from the path of peace, and seizing the sword, followed the flag! As the blue ranks of American soldiery scaled the heights of heroism, and the smoke rose from the hot altars of the battle gods and freedom's wrongs avenged, so the memory of Cuba's independence will go down in history, glorious as our own revolution—'76 and '98—twin jewels set in the crown of sister centuries. Spain and the world have learned that beneath the folds of our nation's flag there lurks a power as irresistible as the wrath of God.
Sleep on, side by side in the dim vaults of eternity, Manila Bay and Bunker Hill, Lexington and Santiago, Ticonderoga and San Juan, glorious rounds in Columbia's ladder of fame, growing colossal as the ages roll. Yes, I was in prison than, and let me tell you, dear friends, I do not hesitate to say that God permits few men to suffer as I did, when I awoke to the full realization that I was wearing the stripes instead of a uniform of my country.