“Come on, Clem,” Marshal Drew said, less harshly this time. “Hangin’ is bad enough. I don’t figure you want to turn it into a spectacle, do you?”
“Seems like it is too late for that,” Clem replied. “Looks to me like we’re already givin’ the folks a show.”
Clem climbed the temporary steps up onto the buckboard and Marshal Drew went up right behind him. Drew moved Clem until he was positioned under the noose, then he slipped it down over Clem’s head. Clem winced as he felt the rope against his neck.
From his elevated position, Clem could look down on everyone, and he stared into all the faces of the spectators, glaring at them defiantly.
The clergyman who had been preaching fire from that very buckboard now stepped up to Clem.
“Do you want to repent?” he asked.
“What have I got to repent for?”
“Why, you have killed, sir.”
Clem looked out over the faces of the crowd. “Yeah? Well, what do you think you people are about to do?”
“There is a difference. We have a God-given right to execute murderers,” the preacher said.
“Do you now? And the folks here? Do they have a God-given right to watch me hang?”
“I beg of you, sir, if you wish to be saved, think now, of our Lord and Savior, hanging on the cross.”
“Saved? You mean if I think about Jesus hanging on the cross I won’t be hung?”
“I am speaking of the salvation of your eternal soul.”
“I don’t give a damn about my eternal soul. It’s the here and now that I’m thinkin’ about.”
“You are goin’ to meet God with heresy in your heart and blasphemy on your lips? You’ll spend an eternity in hell for that!”
“Yeah, well, thanks a lot for the words, preacher,” Clem said sarcastically. “They’ve been just real comfortin’.”
The preacher, red-faced with anger, turned toward Marshall Drew. “I wash my hands of this lost soul,” he said.
“Yeah, didn’t Pontius Pilate do the same thing?” someone called up to the preacher.
“Good Lord in Heaven, what have I just done?” the preacher asked. He walked quickly off the buckboard cum scaffold. Marshal Drew followed him down. Now the only ones left on the buckboard were Clem, who was standing there with the noose around his neck, and the driver, who was sitting in the seat. The driver of the buckboard had not turned around during the entire time, but remained stoically seated, holding the reins of a team of horses.
“Any last words, Clem?” Marshal Drew called back up from the ground. There was a hushed expectation over crowd.
“Daggett,” Clem said.
“What?”
“That’s my last name. Daggett. Tell the undertaker to put it on my tombstone. I don’t want to spend eternity in that hole, and folks not know who I am.”
“All right, Mr. Daggett, I’ll do that,” Marshal Drew said.
“D-A-G-G-E-T-T. That’s how you spell it.”
“Look, when you’re jerked off the back of the buckboard, don’t hunch up your shoulders,” Marshal Drew said. “If you don’t fight it, it’ll be over quicker.”
“How am I going to stop myself from hunching up my shoulders?”
“I don’t know, but if you can keep from doing it, it’ll be better for you.”
“Don’t I get a hood?”
“I forgot to have one made. But I can tie a bandanna around your eyes if you want me to. That’ll keep you from seeing what’s going on.”
“No, that’s all right.” He looked out over the crowd. “I want the ladies and the kiddies to be able to see my eyes pop out.” He cackled an insane laugh, and some of the children cried out and buried their faces in their mothers’ skirts.
Someone handed Marshal Drew a whip, and he raised it up, then popped it loudly over the heads of the team of horses. They dashed forward, pulling the buckboard out from under Clem. He fell, and the limb sagged under the sudden weight.
There were oohs and aahs from the crowd as Clem swung back and forth, pendulum-like, in a long, sweeping arc.
Chapter Eighteen
On the day following the hanging, William Teasdale and his wife Margaret were dinner guests of Moreton and Clara Frewen. Jennie Churchill and her son Winston were also there, as was Lily Langtry.
The purpose of the dinner was twofold: one, to welcome Jennie and her son to America, and another, to say good-bye to Lily, who would be leaving the next morning by stagecoach on her way to Medicine Bow, where she would catch a train to San Francisco.
“It is nice when we all get together like this,” Margaret said. “It is as if we are re-creating a bit of England here, in this desolate and Godforsaken American West.”
“Oh, Margaret, do you really feel that way?” Clara asked. “Because I love it here.”
“Of course you do, dear. You and your sister are both Americans, after all.”
“I’m not an American,” Lily said. “And I like the American West as well.”
“If you dislike it so, why do you stay here?” Jennie asked.
“Because my husband has chosen to live here,” Margaret said. “Though God knows why.”
“I’ll tell you why,” Teasdale said. “Thistledown is larger than the largest estate in England. The opportunity here is limitless.”
“It would be,” Frewen said, “if it were not for Sam Logan and the Yellow Kerchief Gang. But I am beginning to have hope that Mr. Jensen may take care of that problem for us.”
“Do you really think that one man, even a hired killer, working alone against fifteen members of the Yellow Kerchief gang can succeed?”
“I wouldn’t call Mr. Jensen a hired killer,” Frewen said.
“Oh? And what would you call him? He has been here for a few weeks only, and already three men are dead because of him.”
“Only two,” Frewen said. “I take full responsibility for hanging Mr. Daggett.”
“Yes, and I wish I had had the opportunity to have gotten to you before you did that. I fear, Moreton, that you overstepped your authority to declare that a magistrate that you hold in England would give you power to act as a judge here.”
“Since the deed is done it is, at this point, a mere technicality,” Frewen said. “If I need an American appointment, I can easily get one.”
“Perhaps so, but that doesn’t change the situation with regard to Matt Jensen. He is a man who lives in that dark world that decent people, such as we, will never know. He is an evil man.”
“I don’t think he is an evil man at all,” Jennie said. “He met Winnie and me at the depot and escorted us here to Frewen Castle. He was a perfect gentleman, all the way.”
“And I must say that when I met him the first day he arrived, he was very much a gentlemen,” Lily said.
“Don’t let that gentlemanly façade fool you,” Teasdale said. “Matt Jensen is very much a killer. I have it on good authority that he killed four men within one month before he came here.”
“If that is the case, then why is he not in jail?” Frewen asked.
“Three of the men he killed were wanted murderers. The fourth, I understand, was attempting to rob him.”
“Then what you are telling me is that all the killings were justifiable.”
“No, what I’m telling you is, he is a man who dispenses his own justice. Civilized people don’t take the law into their own hands.”
“As long as the people he is killing are the same people who have been killing my employees, then I can find no fault with him,” Frewen said.
“What about you, Winnie?” Teasdale asked. “I imagine young boys like you could be easily persuaded by such things as a fast draw and a straight shot.”
Winnie had been listening to the conversation in rapt attention. “Drawing quickly and shooting accurately are not the most important things,” Winnie said. “The most important thing is to always be on the side of right. So I believe that, no matter how many Mr. Jensen has killed, he has been on the side of right, and fighting against evil. And that makes him a good man.”