I
This is, in all essentials, a true story. It came through an old friend
from the Southwest, a newspaper man, who telephoned an invitation to
lunch the other day. He says he remembers, as a boy, seeing the whole
population of his home town embark on horseback, in wagons, and afoot to
go to the hanging. That was in 1881; but it was not till twenty years
afterward that he heard from one Chris O’Neill the true inwardness of
that hanging, as he told it to me over our coffee. The thing happened in
a little frontier town in the cow country; and since swift justice and a
ready rope were characteristics of the time and the place, it occasioned
only passing comment in that day. Nevertheless, the tale may well bear
preserving.
I cannot hope to reproduce my friend’s words, nor the atmosphere of
those reckless times, so long dead, which he brought back to life for
me. Nevertheless, here is the substance of the story that he told.