Hanging Judge

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I Hanging day always drew a crowd to Fort Smith. Sam Dark had often ponderedwithout finding answersthe macabre side of human nature that made people travel long miles to watch a man die. If it weren't his job,hewouldn't be here. But he was a federal deputy marshal, assigned to keep watch on the people till the trap was sprung, to be on the lookout for any rescue effort or other disturbance. If he had been inclined to gauge crowds with a showman's eye, he would have said Barney Tankard was not a strong draw. Far larger crowds had fathered here on other occasions. barney Tankard was just one man. The biggest crowds came to witness Judge Isaac parker's spectacular multiple hangings, when they could see several men drop into Eternity together. Barney Tankard was not even a notable criminal. He was simply a farmer's son who had shot a friend in a drunken quarrel over a half bottle of contraband whiskey. Folks said it was the Indian half of him that made him unable to hold his liquor and the white half that made him pull the trigger. He wasn't basically a bad man, just the wrong man to get drunk. Sam Dark had been the officer dispatched across the Arkansas River into Indian Territory to fetch Barney for trial. Barney hadn't been wolf enough to get away, for he had never gone afoul enough to get away, for him had been easy. This was the hard part, to stand here now watching the grim preparations on Judge Parker's big white-painted gallows. Somebody was hawking lemonade at the edge of the milling crowd, catching his dollar wherever it might chance to fall. Dark angered, for it seemed to him a man ought to be allowed some dignity in which to die. Damn it, this wasn't a horse race or a summer picnic. He heard a child shout boisterously and another answer. He glanced around without patience, wanting to send them on their way. Buttons like that...they ought to be in school instead of out here waiting to see a man choke to death at the end of a rope...but this was hard country and these were harsh times...violence so common it was expected like the ague...temptation at every fork in the road. Lots of people figured that to see a hanging was part of a boy's proper education, an object lesson in what happens when one allows his feet to stray from the paths of righteousness and into the devious byways of iniquity. This was a thing to make a boy pause and tremble when tempted by an urge to steal a neighbor's ear-corn or to sneak a ride on somebody's mule, the first fateful steps on the well-marked road to the gallows. Dark surveyed the crowd and found among them a lot of good peoplefarmers, business, riverfolkand wondered what the hell they were doing here. A scattering of Indians watched placidly, people come over from beyond Arkansas to see a brother pay for breaking white man's law. If the crime had not been perpetrated against a white man Barney Tankard could have stood trial in tribal courts, for being half Cherokee qualified him as Indian. But it would have made no difference in the final outcome; even the tribal councils decreed death sentences for murder. An Indian convicted in tribal court might be given time to go home and straighten out his affairs, but the end was inevitable. It was a point of honor that upon the appointed day he would appear on his own volition before the council to meet his death like a man, in strength and in dignity. For Barney Tankard there was to be no dignity. Dark saw cluster of crib girls, gathered from down on the river, and a couple of them were weeping. He doubted they had ever seen Barney Tankard before. Perceiving little sympathy anywhere else, Dark was glad Barney received at least this much. The lank, bearded hangman, George Maledon,