ew to the telegraph office to send a
dispatch to the Sheriff at Flatbroke. I found the operator locking the
door of the office and putting up the shutters. I pleaded in vain; he
said he was going to see the hanging, and really had no time to send my
message. I must explain that Flatbroke was fifteen miles away; I was
then at Swan Creek, the State capital.

The operator being inexorable, I ran to the railroad station to see how
soon there would be a train for Flatbroke. The station man, with cool
and polite malice, informed me that all the employees of the road had
been given a holiday to see Jerome Bowles hanged, and had already gone
by an early train; that there would be no other train till the next day.

I was now furious, but the station man quietly turned me out, locking
the gates. Dashing to the nearest livery stable, I ordered a horse. Why
prolong the record of my disappointment? Not a horse could I get in that
town; all had been engaged weeks before to take people to the hanging.
So everybody said, at least, though I now know there was a rascally
conspiracy to defeat the ends of mercy, for the story of the pardon had
got abroad.

It was now ten o'clock. I had only seven hours in which to do my fifteen
miles afoot; but I was an excellent walker and thoroughly angry; there
was no doubt of my ability to make the distance, with an hour to spare.
The railway offered the best chance; it ran straight as a string across
a level, treeless prairie, whereas the highway made a wide detour by way
of another town.

I took to the track like a Modoc on the war path. Before I had gone a
half-mile I was overtaken by "That Jim Peasley," as he was called in
Swan Creek, an incurable practical joker, loved and shunned by all who
knew him. He asked me as he came up if I were "going to the show."
Thinking it was best to dissemble, I told him I was, but said nothing of
my intention to stop the performance; I thought it would be a lesson to
That Jim to let him walk fifteen miles for nothing, for it was clear
that he was going, too. Still, I wished he would go on ahead or drop
behind. But he could not very well do the former, and would not do the
latter; so we trudged on together. It was a cloudy day and very sultry
for that time of the year. The railway stretched away before us, between
its double row of telegraph poles, in rigid sameness, terminating in a
point at the horizon. On either hand the disheartening monotony of the
prairie