was in a half-finished log building. The ropes were passed over the ridge-pole, and, as the front of the building was open, a full view was offered of the murderers as they stood on the boxes arranged for the drops. Boone Helm looked around at his friends placed for death, and told Jack Gallegher to "stop making such a fuss." "There's no use being afraid to die," said he; and indeed there probably never lived a man more actually devoid of all sense of fear. He valued neither the life of others nor his own. He saw that the end had come, and was careless about the rest. He had a sore finger, which was tied up, and this seemed to trouble him more than anything else. There was some delay about the confessions and the last offices of those who prayed for the condemned, and this seemed to irritate Boone Helm.
"For God's sake," said he, "if you're going to hang me, I want you to do it and get through with it. If not, I want you to tie up my finger for me."
"Give me that overcoat of yours, Jack," he said to Gallegher, as the latter was stripped for the noose.
"You won't need it now," replied Gallegher, who was dying blasphemous. About then,
George Lane, one of the line of men about to be hung, jumped off his box on his own account. "There's one gone to hell," remarked Boone Helm, philosophically. Gallegher was hanged next, and as he struggled his former friend watched him calmly. "Kick away, old fellow," said Boone Helm. Then, as though suddenly resolved to end it, he commented, "My turn next. I'll be in hell with you in a minute!"
Boone Helm was a Confederate and a bitter one, and this seems to have remained with him to the last. "Every man for his principles!" he shouted. "Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Let her rip!" He sprang off the box; and so he finished, utterly hard and reckless to the last.
Chapter IX
Death Scenes of Desperadoes—How Bad Men Died—The Last Moments of Desperadoes Who Finished on the Scaffold—Utterances of Terror, of Defiance, and of Cowardice.