long
suit, and any little difficulties that cropped up were straightened out by
the vigilance committee--and a rope. One day a saddle, or maybe it was a
gun, that didn't belong to him, was found among this man Steele's traps,
and though he swore that some one had put it there for a grudge, the
committee thought that a hemp necktie was the easiest way out of the
argument. And this here Steele party finds himself, at the age of
twenty-four, with something like thirty minutes of life to his credit. He
don't take on none, nor make a play for mercy, nor try any fancy
speech-making. He just waits round, kinder pale, but seemin' indifferent,
considerin' it was his funeral that was impendin'. I've heard my father
say that he was a tall, slim boy, with a kind of girlish prettiness, and
the committee looked some for hysterics and they didn't get none. The
noose was made ready and they told Steele he could have five minutes to
pray, if he wanted to, or he could take it out in cursing, just as he
chose. The boy said he felt that he hadn't quite all that was coming to
him in the way of enjoyment, and that while he was far from criticising
the vigilance committee, he was not altogether partial to the nature of
his demise, and if it was just the same to them, instead of praying or
cursing, he'd take that five minutes for a song.

"They was agreeable, and he up and steps on the scaffold, what they was
mighty proud of, it bein' about the only substantial structure the town
could boast. He began to sing that thing you've all been listening to, and
he had a voice like water falling light and fine in a pool below. They
crowded up close about the scaffold and listened. The words he put to it
were his own story, just like those old minstrels that you read about, and
at the end of each verse came the chorus, slow and solemn as the moment
after something great has happened. There wasn't a hangin'-face in the
crowd after he was started. At some time or other every man had heard
somebody he thought a heap of, buried to that tune, and his voice got to
workin' on their imaginations and turned their hearts to water. I don't
remember anything but the chorus--that went like this:

"'Who'll weep for me, on the gallows tree,
As I sway in the wind and swing?
Is there never a tear to be shed for me,
As I swing by a hempen string?
Who'll weep, who'll keep
Watch, as I'm rocked to sleep,
Rocked by a hempen string?'"

There was a lo