There is always a grim sort of curiosity regarding the way in which notoriously desperate men meet their end; and perhaps this is as natural as is the curiosity regarding the manner in which they lived. "Did he die game?" is one of the questions asked by bad men among themselves. "Did he die with his boots on?" is another. The last was the test of actual or, as it were, of professional badness. One who admitted himself bad was willing to die with his boots on. Honest men were not, and more than one early Western man fatally shot had his friends take off his boots before he died, so that he might not go with the stain of desperadoism attached to his name.
Some bad men died unrepentant and defiant. Others broke down and wept and begged. A great oblivion enshrouds most of these utterances, for few Vigilante movements ever reached importance enough to permit those who participated to make publicly known their own participation in them. Indeed, no man ever concerned in a law and order execution ever liked to talk about it. Tradition, however, has preserved the exact utterances of many bad men. Report is preserved, in a general way, of many of the rustlers hung by the cattle men in the "regulator" movement in Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska in the late '70's. "Give me a chew of tobacco, folks," said one. "Meet you in hell, fellows," remarked others of these rustlers when the last moment arrived. "So-long, boys," was a not infrequent remark as the noose tightened. Many of these men were brave, and some of them were hung for what they considered no crime.
Henry Plummer, whose fate has been described in a previous chapter, was one of those who died in a sense of guilt and terror. His was a nature of some sensitiveness, not callous like that of Boone Helm. Plummer begged for life on any terms, asked the Vigilantes to
cut off his ears and hands and tongue, anything to mark him and leave him helpless, but to leave him alive. He protested that he was too wicked to die, fell on his knees, cried aloud, promised, besought. On the whole, his end hardly left him enshrouded with much glamor of courage; although the latter term is relative in the bad man, who might be brave at one time and cowardly at another, as was often proved.
THE SCENE OF MANY HANGINGS
Ned Ray and Buck Stinson died full of profanity and curses, heaping upon their executioners all manner of abuse. They seemed to be animated by no understanding of a life hereafter, and were concerned only in their animal instinct to hold on to this one as long as they might. Yet Stinson, of a good Indiana family, was a bright and studious and well-read boy, of whom many good things had been predicted.
Dutch John, when faced with death, acted much as his chief, Henry Plummer, had done. He begged and pleaded, and asked for mutilation, disfigurement, anything, if only he might still live. But, like Plummer, at the very last moment he pulled together and died calmly. "How long will it take me to die?" he asked. "I have never seen anyone hanged." They told
him it would be very short and that he would not suffer much, and this seemed to please him. Nearly all these desperadoes seemed to dread death by hanging. The Territory of Utah allowed a felon convicted under death penalty to choose the manner of his death, whether by hanging, beheading, or shooting; but no record remains of any prisoner who did not choose death by shooting. A curiosity as to the sensation of hanging was evinced in the words of several who were hung by Vigilantes.