VENTURES AND ADVENTURES
Hush! What brooding stillness is hanging over all?
What's this talk in whispers, and that placard on the wall?
Aha! I see it now! They're going to hang a man!
Judge Lynch is on the ramparts and the Law's an "Also-Ran!"
—Woon.
Reader, have you ever seen the look in a man's eyes after he has been condemned by that Court of Last Appeal—his fellow-men? I have, many times. It is a look without a shadow of hope left, a look of dread at the ferocity of the mob, a look of fear at what is to come afterwards; and seldom a hint of defiance lurks in such a man's expression.
I have seen and figured in many lynchings. In the old days they were the inseparables, the Frontier and Judge Lynch. If a white man killed a Mexican or Indian nothing was done, except perhaps to hold a farce of a trial with the killer in the end turned loose; and if a white man killed another white man there was seldom much outcry, unless the case was cold-blooded murder or the killer was already unpopular. But let a Mexican or an Indian lift one finger against a white man and the whole strength of the Whites was against him in a moment; he was hounded to his hole, dragged forth, tried by a committee of citizens over whom Judge Lynch sat with awful solemnity, and was forthwith hung.
More or less of this was in some degree necessary. The killing of an Apache was accounted a good day's work, since it probably meant that the murderer of several white men had gone to his doom. To kill a Mexican only meant that another "bad hombre" had gone to his just deserts.
And most of the Mexicans in Arizona in the early days were "bad hombres"—there is no doubt about that. It was they who gave the Mexican such a bad name on the frontier, and it was they who first earned the title "greaser." They were a murderous, treacherous lot of rascals.
In the Wickenburg stage massacre, for instance, it was known that several Mexicans were involved—wood-choppers. One of these Mexicans was hunted for weeks and was caught soon after I arrived in Phoenix. I was running my dance hall when a committee of citizens met in a mass-meeting and decided that the law was too slow in its working and gave the Mexican too great an opportunity to escape. The meeting then resolved itself into a hanging committee, broke open the jail, seized the prisoner from the arms of the sheriff and hung him to the rafters just inside the jail door. That done, they returned to their homes and occupations satisfied that at least one "Greaser" had not evaded the full penalty of his crimes.
Soon after a Mexican arrived in town with a string of cows to sell. Somebody recognized the cows as ones that had belonged to a rancher named Patterson. The Mexican was arrested by citizens and a horseman sent out to investigate. Patterson was found killed. At once, and with little ceremony, the Mexican with the cattle was "strung up" to the cross of a gatepost, his body being left to sway in the wind until somebody came along with sufficient decency to cut it down.