ightened. Many of these men were brave,
and some of them were hung for what they considered no crime.

Henry Plummer, whose fate has been described in a previous chapter, was
one of those who died in a sense of guilt and terror. His was a nature
of some sensitiveness, not callous like that of Boone Helm. Plummer
begged for life on any terms, asked the Vigilantes to cut off his
ears and hands and tongue, anything to mark him and leave him helpless,
but to leave him alive. He protested that he was too wicked to die, fell
on his knees, cried aloud, promised, besought. On the whole, his end
hardly left him enshrouded with much glamor of courage; although the
latter term is relative in the bad man, who might be brave at one time
and cowardly at another, as was often proved.

[Illustration: THE SCENE OF MANY HANGINGS]

Ned Ray and Buck Stinson died full of profanity and curses, heaping upon
their executioners all manner of abuse. They seemed to be animated by no
understanding of a life hereafter, and were concerned only in their
animal instinct to hold on to this one as long as they might. Yet
Stinson, of a good Indiana family, was a bright and studious and
well-read boy, of whom many good things had been predicted.

Dutch John, when faced with death, acted much as his chief, Henry
Plummer, had done. He begged and pleaded, and asked for mutilation,
disfigurement, anything, if only he might still live. But, like Plummer,
at the very last moment he pulled together and died calmly. "How long
will it take me to die?" he asked. "I have never seen anyone hanged."
They told him it would be very short and that he would not suffer much,
and this seemed to please him. Nearly all these desperadoes seemed to
dread death by hanging. The Territory of Utah allowed a felon convicted
under death penalty to choose the manner of his death, whether by
hanging, beheading, or shooting; but no record remains of any prisoner
who did not choose death by shooting. A curiosity as to the sensation of
hanging was evinced in the words of several who were hung by Vigilantes.

In the largest hanging made in this Montana work, there were five men
executed one after the other: Clubfoot George, Hayes Lyons, Jack
Gallegher, Boone Helm, and Frank Parish, all known to be members of the
Plummer gang. George and Parish at first declared that they were
innocent--the first word of most of these men when they were
apprehended. Parish died silent. George had spent