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.”
