hed for the evil things he
himself had done; he did dislike, though, being hanged for something
some rival hold-up man had done. Such was his contention, and he
reiterated it with a persistence which went far toward convincing some
people that after all there might be something in what he said, although
among honest men there was no doubt whatsoever that the world would be a
sweeter and a healthier place to live in with the Lone-Hand Kid entirely
translated out of it.

Having been dealt with, as he viewed the matter, most unfairly, the
condemned killer sullenly refused to make submission to his appointed
destiny. On the car journey up to Chickaloosa, although still weak from
his wounds and securely ironed besides, he made two separate efforts to
assault his guards. In his cell, a few days later, he attacked a turnkey
in pure wantonness seemingly, since even with the turnkey eliminated,
there still was no earthly prospect for him to escape from the steel
strong-box which enclosed him. That was what it truly was, too, a
strong-box, for the storing of many living pledges held as surety for
the peace and good order of the land. Of all these human collaterals who
were penned up there with him, he, for the time being, was most precious
in the eyes of the law. Therefore the law took no chance of losing him,
and this he must have known when he maimed his keeper.

After this outbreak he was treated as a vicious wild beast, which,
undoubtedly, was exactly what he was. He was chained by his ankles to
his bed, and his food was shoved in to him through the bars by a man who
kept himself at all times well out of reach of the tethered prisoner.
Having been rendered helpless, he swore then that when finally they
unbarred his cell door and sought to fetch him forth to garb him for his
journey to the gallows, he would fight them with his teeth and his bare
hands for so long as he had left an ounce of strength with which to
fight. Bodily force would then be the only argument remaining to him by
means of which he might express his protest, and he told all who cared
to listen that most certainly he meant to invoke it.

There was a code of decorum which governed the hangings at Chickaloosa,
and the resident authorities dreaded mightily the prospect of having it
profaned by spiteful and unmannerly behaviour on the part of the
Lone-Hand Kid. There was said to be in all the world just one living
creature for whom the rebellious captive entert