Roughing It by Mark Twain

surrounded by a guard, composing the best armed and most numerous

force that has ever appeared in Montana Territory.

The doomed man had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and

lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the

fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, “My God! my God! must I die?

Oh, my dear wife!”

On the return of the fatigue party, they encountered some friends of

Slade, staunch and reliable citizens and members of the committee,

but who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of

his sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his

handkerchief and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still

begged to see his wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny

his request; but the bloody consequences that were sure to follow

the inevitable attempt at a rescue, that her presence and entreaties

would have certainly incited, forbade the granting of his request.

Several gentlemen were sent for to see him, in his last moments, one

of whom (Judge Davis) made a short address to the people; but in

such low tones as to be inaudible, save to a few in his immediate

vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting his powers of

entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the prisoner could

not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hundred guns were

instantly leveled at him; whereupon he turned and fled; but, being

brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a

promise of future peaceable demeanor.

Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be found, though numbers of

the citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made.

All lamented the stern necessity which dictated the execution.

Everything being ready, the command was given, “Men, do your duty,”

and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, he died

almost instantaneously.

The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a

darkened room, it was scarcely laid out, when the unfortunate and

bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to

find that all was over, and that she was a widow. Her grief and

heart-piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her

attachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed

before she could regain the command of her excited feelings.

There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly

unaccountable–at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true

desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most

infamous advantage of his enemy; armed and free, he will stand up before

a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under

the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words are

cheap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not

“die game” are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and when

we read of Slade that he “had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and

lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal

beam,” the disgraceful word suggests itself in a moment–yet in

frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Rocky Mountain

cut-throats by shooting down their comrades and leaders, and never

offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless

bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a

chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying

speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with

what looked liked the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified in

believing, from the low intellect of such a creature, that it was not

moral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not

the requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted

Slade lacked?–this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman,

who never hesitated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill

them whenever or wherever he came across them next! I think it is a

conundrum worth investigating.

CHAPTER XII.

Just beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of