some hours with a
clergyman, and was apparently repentant. Just as he reached the box, he
saw a friend peering through a crack in the wall. "Good-by, old fellow,"
he called out, and sprang to his own death without waiting for the box
to be pulled from under his feet.

Hayes Lyons asked to see his mistress to say good-by to her before he
died, but was refused. He kept on pleading for his life to the very last
instant, after he had told the men to take his body to his mistress for
burial. This woman was really the cause of Lyons' undoing. He had been
warned, and would have left the country but for her. A woman was very
often the cause of a desperado's apprehension.

Jack Gallegher in his last moments was, if possible, more repulsive even
than Boone Helm. The latter was brave, but Gallegher was a coward, and
spent his time in cursing his captors and pitying himself. He tried to
be merry. "How do I look with a halter around my neck?" he asked
facetiously of a bystander. He asked often for whiskey and this was
given him. A moment later he said, "I want one more drink of whiskey
before I die." This was when the noose was tight around his neck, and
the men were disgusted with him for the remark. One remarked, "Give him
the whiskey"; so the rope, which was passed over the beam above him and
fastened to a side log of the building, was loosened to oblige him.
"Slack off the rope, can't you," cried Gallegher, "and let a man have a
parting drink." He bent his head down against the rope and drank a
tumblerful of whiskey at a gulp. Then he called down curses on the men
who were about him, and kept it up until they cut him short by jerking
away the box from under his feet.

A peculiar instance of unconscious, but grim, humor was afforded at
Gallegher's execution. Just as he was led to the box and ordered to
climb up, he drew a pocket-knife and declared he would kill himself and
not be hanged in public. A Vigilante covered him with a six-shooter.
"Drop that, Jack," he exclaimed, "or I'll blow your head off." So
Gallegher, having the choice of death between shooting, hanging or
beheading, chose hanging after all! He was a coward.

Cy Skinner, when on the way to the scaffold, broke and ran, calling on
his captors to shoot. They declined, and hanged him. Alex Carter, who
was on the fatal line with Skinner in that lot, was disgusted with him
for running. He asked for a smoke while the men were waiting, and died
with a lie on his lips--