“Well, well,” said Slade, now thoroughly quieted, “let us go out and get a drink.”
The two men left the store. In a few moments Slade returned, and, approaching Davis, said,
“I was too fast. I ask your pardon for my conduct, and hope you will overlook it.”
In the meantime the Vigilantes, undetermined what course to pursue, had sent a request to their brethren at Nevada to join in their deliberations. Six hundred armed miners obeyed the summons, sending their leader in advance to inform the Executive Committee that, in their judgment, Slade should be executed. The Committee, unwilling to recommend this measure, finally agreed that, if unanimously adopted, it should be enforced.
Alarmed at the gathering of the people, Slade again sought the presence of Judge Davis, to repeat his apologies and regrets for the violence of his conduct. He was now perfectly sobered, and fully comprehended the effect of his lawlessness upon the community. The column of Vigilantes from Nevada halted in front of the store, and the executive officer stepped forward and arrested Slade.
“The Committee,” said he, addressing him, “have decided upon your execution. If you have any business to settle, you must attend to it immediately.”
“My execution! my death! My God! gentlemen, you will not proceed to such extremities! The Committee cannot have decreed this.”
“It is even so, and you had better at once give the little time left you to arranging your business.”
This appalling repetition of the sentence of the Committee seemed to deprive him of every vestige of manliness and courage. He fell upon his knees, and with clasped hands shuffled over the floor from one to another of those who had been his friends, begging for his life. Clasping the hands of Judge Davis and Captain Williams, he implored them for mercy, mingling with his appeals, prayers and promises, and requests that his wife might be sent for. “My God! my God! must I die? Oh, my dear wife! why can she not be sent for?” were repeated in the most heartrending accents.
Judge Davis alone stood by the unhappy man in this his great extremity, and tried to save his life. He conversed with several leaders of the Committee, suggesting that they should substitute banishment for death. But the people were implacable. Slade’s life among them had been violent, lawless, desperate. No brigand was more dreaded by all who knew him; and the speech which, at the foot of the gallows, Davis addressed to the crowd in his behalf, fell like water upon adamant. There was no mercy left for one who had so often forfeited all claims to mercy. Yet there were a few men, even among those who had doomed this man to death, that would have given all they possessed to save his life. They could not witness his execution; and some of them, stout of heart and accustomed to disaster, it is no shame to say, wept like children when they beheld him on his march to the scaffold.