Moving pictures inspired ten boys to “lynch” Harry Werner, their 9-year-old playmate, in Glencoe yesterday. So serious are his injuries that he may be crippled for life.
It was a “wild west” picture, absurd to the practical mind in its unrealities, that gave the boys their idea.
They saw in the flickering pictures a score of “cowboys,” their revolvers strapped on the wrong side, while they mounted their horses also from the wrong side, and rode with the grace and skill of wooden Indians.
The boys did not notice these details. They saw only the rakishness and swaggering daredeviltry. They applauded vociferously the “stringing-up” of the actor-cowboy.
“Let’s play wild west,” one 10-year-old enthusiast proposed after the show. The vote was unanimous.
Wooden revolvers were fashioned. Fathers’ discarded hats took the place of sombréros. Broom sticks served as prancing bronchos.
“Who’ll we lynch?” one asked. Harry Werner was selected. His dark hair and eyes led to his unwilling selection by them for the rôle of “villain.”
They tied a clothes-line under his arms and threw the rope over a branch of a tree. Whooping madly, in true moving-picture-wild-west fashion, they pulled him up until his feet were far from the ground.
The thin rope cut into his tender flesh. He struggled and implored his comrades to let him down. His pleas brought renewed whoops. Had not the “villain” in the moving-picture struggled and cried for mercy?
For half an hour they kept him there. Then they cut the rope and let his body fall to the ground. Their childish eyes did not see that he was unconscious. They seized the rope and dragged[Pg 253] him for several minutes, leaving him on the ground to find his way home alone.