The dim light burning in the jail revealed Witherill in his cell, standing upon the defensive. He was ordered to come out, and cried out:
“Come in and take me out.”
He had broken his wooden bedstead to pieces to secure a weapon, and when some of the party stepped forward to take him at his word he used the club with the desperate energy of a doomed man. There is no telling how long Witherill might have held his own against superior numbers had not one of the attacking party drawn a revolver and shot the murderer in the shoulder, knocking him down. He was then quickly overpowered and led out of the cage, with a noose around his neck and his hands secured behind his back.
Surrounded by a solemn but earnest crowd, Witherill was marched down to Main street to a telephone pole, about one hundred yards from the jail. The condemned man was led to this pole and the rope thrown over the cross-bar by a practiced hand, and the end of the rope was grasped by fifty strong and willing hands. The triple murderer was given a minute to confess. This he refused to do, and he was drawn up five or six feet from the ground. After some seconds he was lowered until his feet touched the ground, and he was asked to confess the murders of Wall, Jansen and McCain, and upon his stubborn refusal to comply he was drawn up until his feet cleared the ground by some ten or twelve feet and the rope tied.
Witherill’s helpless body, dangling against the pole in the agony of death by suffocation, was watched by the assembled crowd without a single sign of pity or remorse. When satisfied that life was extinct the crowd quietly dispersed to conceal every evidence of the judgment of Judge Lynch, except the ghastly figure at the end of the rope.
As soon as daylight came, the fact that the anticipated lynching had been successfully accomplished was noised through the town, and hundreds of men, women and children went to the scene to view the terrible but significant sight. Old women and young girls stood in the bright sunlight, and gazed at the murderer’s body swaying slightly in the morning breeze, without a shudder, and if their looks could be relied upon they, too, had given Witherill a mental trial and found him guilty. In all the crowd that viewed the remains of the dead murderer, there were none who could forget the murders of Wall, and of Jansen, and of McCain, long enough to pity the wretch who had in a measure paid the penalty of his many crimes.
A SLICK SCOUNDREL.