While the masked men stood on guard at the corners of the streets, Perkins was hanged in the western suburb of the city. It appears that twenty or thirty members of “601” who were within the lines, quietly went to the Court-house, and, with a crow-bar, wrenched open the front door. They then quickly advanced to the private office and sleeping-apartment occupied by the sheriff and a deputy. These officers were surprised in their beds, their weapons were secured, and the keys of the jail and cells taken from them. All the rest was now easily done. Arthur Perkins and a man who, in a fit of jealousy, had shot and wounded his wife, occupied the same cell. When the heavy tramp of the vigilantes was heard in the outer room, Perkins suspected its meaning—
“They have come for me,” said he to his companion. “I may as well bid you good-bye; this is my last night on earth!”
When the masked men entered the room in which were ranged the cells, they advanced to that occupied by Perkins, and unlocking the door, said: “Come out, we want you.”
The man who was in the cell with Perkins was terribly frightened. He supposed that he, also, was wanted—indeed thought a clean sweep of all in the jail was to be made. He started to march out with Perkins, but was pushed back, one of the men saying: “Go back! we don’t want you.” These, the man afterwards said, were the most comforting words he ever heard in his life. In his excitement Perkins was unable to get on one of his boots. “Never mind the boot,” said one of the vigilantes, “where you are going you will not need boots!”
Perkins was marched by the back way through the Court-house, was hurried to a point near the old Ophir works, and there, when a convenient timber was found, was hanged. He stood on a plank placed across the mouth of a tunnel and, when the fatal moment came, did not wait for the plank to be pulled from under his feet, but sprang into the air as high as he could leap, in order to fall with as much force as possible and thus end his life quickly and with little pain.
CAPTURE OF PERKINS.
EXECUTION OF PERKINS.
On the 26th of September, 1846, the ship Thomas H. Perkins sailed from New York, having on board a portion of Stevenson’s regiment of California volunteers. The Perkins was commanded by Captain Arthur, and Arthur Perkins Heffernan was born on the vessel during her passage between New York and Rio de Janeiro. He was named after the vessel and her captain. His father was a corporal in Company F; F. J. Lippite commanding; his mother was a sister of the notorious robber, Jack Powers, who was also at that time a member of company F. A girl was born on the ship Thomas H. Perkins about the same time that young Heffernan first saw the light, and it was an understood thing by those on board the vessel that this girl, called Alta California, should, at the proper age, become the wife of Arthur Perkins Heffernan,—an event that never came to pass. Both children were baptized at Rio, at the American Embassy, by the chaplain of the United States’ ship Columbia, then lying in Brazilian waters.