“You’re here to interfere, you see. Now you vote right, do you hear?—or else there’ll be a double-barreled inquest here when this trial’s off, and your remainders will go home in a couple of baskets.”
The caution was not without fruit. The jury was a unit—the verdict. “Guilty.”
Capt. Ned sprung to his feet and said:
“Come along—you’re my meat now, my lad, anyway. Gentlemen you’ve done yourselves proud. I invite you all to come and see that I do it all straight. Follow me to the canyon, a mile above here.”
The court informed him that a sheriff had been appointed to do the hanging, and—
Capt. Ned’s patience was at an end. His wrath was boundless. The subject of a sheriff was judiciously dropped.
When the crowd arrived at the canyon, Capt. Ned climbed a tree and arranged the halter, then came down and noosed his man. He opened his Bible, and laid aside his hat. Selecting a chapter at random, he read it through, in a deep bass voice and with sincere solemnity. Then he said:
“Lad, you are about to go aloft and give an account of yourself; and the lighter a man’s manifest is, as far as sin’s concerned, the better for him. Make a clean breast, man, and carry a log with you that’ll bear inspection. You killed the nigger?”
