Struggling wildly in the hands of his executioners, the wretched man was strung up, the rope itself arresting his curse before it was half uttered. Being loosely pinioned, he thrust his fingers under the noose, and, by a sudden twist of his head, the knot slipped under his chin.
“There goes poor Ned Ray,” whined Stinson, who a moment later was dangling in the death-agony by his side. As Stinson was being hoisted, he exclaimed, “I’ll confess.”
Plummer immediately remarked, “We’ve done enough already, twice over, to send us to hell.”
Plummer’s time had come. “Bring him up,” was the stern order. No one stirred. Stinson and Ray were common villains; but Plummer, steeped as he was in infamy, was a man of intellect, polished, genial, affable. There was something terrible in the idea of hanging such a man. Plummer himself had ceased all importunity. The crisis of self-abasement had passed, hope fled with it, and he was now composedly awaiting his fate. As one of the Vigilantes approached him, he met with the request,
“Give a man time to pray.”
“Certainly,” replied the Vigilante, “but say your prayers up there,” at the same time pointing to the cross-beam of the gallows-frame.
The guilty man uttered no more prayers. Standing, erect under the gallows, he took off his necktie, and, throwing it over his shoulder to a young man who had boarded with him, he said,
“Keep that to remember me by,” and, turning to the Vigilantes, he said, “Now, men, as a last favor, let me beg that you will give me a good drop.”
The fatal noose being adjusted, several of the strongest of the Vigilantes lifted the frame of the unhappy criminal as high as they could reach, when, letting it suddenly fall, he died quickly, without a struggle.
The weather was intensely cold. A large number of persons had followed the cavalcade, but were stopped by a guard some distance from the gallows. The Vigilantes surrounded the bodies until satisfied that the hangman’s noose had completed their work, when they formed and marched back to the town. The bodies were afterwards buried by the friends of the criminals.