“Before I went to the house I drove up to the barn and unhitched the horse and led him in, and then I run the wagon in, and took the potatoes out and put ‘em under a little bag of hay that I had in the corner, and threw the horse blanket over ‘em. Then I unharnessed the horse and bedded him down and gave him some hay and a little oats. I’d watered him at one of the last places I stopped—one of them troughs they have in front of saloons. Then after I got the horse tended to I went into the house.”
Hank got up and went to the door and spoke to the guard. He was still sitting on the stool and talking to the prisoner in the next cell. Once more he handed Hank a cigar.
“Give one to Jim,” he said. “I can’t do much more for him, poor devil; I’m awful sorry.”
Jim came up and took the cigar and looked down at the guard.
“I don’t s’pose nothin’ has come for me, has there?”
Just then the noise of pounding and driving nails and low voices was heard over in the court yard.
“Don’t you know! That’s the fellers buildin’ the scaffold; they always do it the night before. Strange, ain’t it; somehow it don’t seem to me as if it was really me that was goin’ to be hung on it; but I s’pose it is. Now, isn’t it strange about the governor; just one word from him could save my life. I’d think he’d do it, wouldn’t you? I s’pose he don’t really think how it seems to me. I know I’d do it, no matter what anyone had done.
“But it’s gettin’ late and I must go on with my story or I won’t get it finished before—before you have to go. It’s pretty hard to tell all ‘bout this part, but I’m goin’ to tell it to you honest and not make myself any better’n I am. I’ve thought about this a good deal when I’ve tried to account for how I done it, and I guess I can tell everything that happened. When I look at it now it seems years ago, almost a lifetime, not as if it was last November. I guess it’s because so much has happened since then. It seems, too, as if it wa’n’t me that was doin’ it, but as if ‘twas someone else. I guess that’ll make it easier for me to tell; anyhow, I want you to know how it was, and then some time you can tell the boy, if you think it’s the right thing to do.”
I forgot to tell you about the steak. I don’t see how I left that out, for, really, that’s what caused the whole trouble. It beats all what little things will do, don’t it? Now, lots o’ times in my life it has seemed as if the smallest things had the most to do with me. There was that red waist, for instance, that she wore that day she was waitin’ on the table. I ‘most know I never would have paid any attention to her if it hadn’t been for that red waist. And then that beefsteak—in one way I’m goin’ to get hung on account of that beefsteak. How many times since that I’ve just wished I hadn’t stopped and bought it. But you see I was feelin’ cold all day, and when I come ‘round Thirty-fifth Street the wind kind of got in my face worse’n it had done before, and it sort of struck me through the chest too; my legs didn’t feel it quite so much, because they had the blanket over ‘em. Well, just as I got up to the second corner there was a saloon right in front of me. This was before I got to the corner when I met the senators, and I thought I’d go in and get a drink; and then right on the other side was that meat market and there was a lot of chickens and steak and things hangin’ in the window, and they looked mighty good, for I hadn’t had much to eat all day. At first I thought I’d go and get a drink, and then I thought I could get enough steak for supper for just about what the drink would cost, and the steak would do the most good, and besides she and the kid could have some of that, and I thought it would make her feel pleasanter and liven her up a bit. We hadn’t been gettin’ along any too well for some time.