Two guards walked grimly past the cell of Henry Starr and down the long corridor to stop on almost the precise spot where Larry Keating had fallen dead. One produced a ring of keys and unlocked the door to the cell of Cherokee Bill. They stepped inside and bound Bill’s arms behind him; then, one on either side of the condemned man, they walked him back down the length of hallway. Inside his cell, Henry Starr, in the company of his attorney, saw them pass. Cravens, who had been talking, saw the spectacle that momentarily absorbed Henry’s attention, and observed a brief but respectable period of silence until the guards and their charge had passed on through the doorway at the end of the hallway, and he had heard the heavy door clank shut behind them. Only then did he resume speaking.
“Henry,” he said, “under the circumstances, I think I have to say that we won the case.”
Henry stood staring vacantly out the cell window.
“I got fifteen years,” he said.
“Yes,” admitted Cravens, “but you won’t hang.”
Outside in the courtyard before the great gallows, a vast crowd had gathered. They surged and pushed against one another. Even from the distance of his cell window, Henry could see their mouths watering and their eyes bulging in anticipation of the event they were about to witness—or at least, he imagined that he could. On the other side of the tall fence that surrounded the courtyard, the unfortunate ones who could not gain entrance to the courtyard had clambered up onto the roof of a small shed so that they might see over the fence. The crowd noise suddenly increased in volume, and Henry knew that the guards had stepped out into the courtyard with Cherokee Bill. As Bill and his escorts came into Henry’s view and so approached the thirteen steps leading up to the fateful platform, the crowd grew quiet. It was then that Henry noticed a dark-skinned woman in front of the crowd just before the gallows. She was weeping. As Cherokee Bill approached the bottom of the stairway, the woman stepped forward, as if she would go to him. Bill paused as he drew abreast of her, and his voice was remarkably clear to Henry up in his cell.
“Mother,” Bill said, “you hadn’t oughta be here.”
Then he climbed the steps.
“That trick you pulled with Cherokee Bill certainly didn’t hurt our case either,” said Cravens.
Henry didn’t seem to hear the colonel. He continued to stare down onto the scene below. The hangman had adjusted the noose around Bill’s neck and was standing ready with the black hood. A deputy marshal was speaking.
“Do you have any last words?”
The crowd was absolutely silent, anticipating the final speech of the dying man. It was one of the major attractions of a public execution. Cherokee Bill knew that. He knew that he was the star attraction of this show and that his audience eagerly awaited his soliloquy. Well, he thought, a wry smile forming on his heavy lips, they going to be disappointed in me again.
“Hell,” he said in a booming voice, “I came here to die, not to make a speech.”
The hood was adjusted, the hangman’s knot checked, Cherokee Bill was moved onto the trap, and the trap was sprung. Henry jerked as Cherokee Bill plunged into darkness. He took a deep breath, then, responding to the last thing he recalled from Cravens’ conversation, he said, “No, Colonel, at least I won’t hang.”
Cravens left shortly after that, and Henry was alone with his feelings regarding the spectacle he had just witnessed. They were mixed feelings and strange.