From Place to Place | Page 6

his office, the warden, in all likelihood, would say: "Well,
how about it this time, Uncle Tobe?"
And Uncle Tobe would make some such answer as this:
"Well, suh, accordin' to my reckonin' this here one will heft about a
hund'ed an' sixty-five pound, ez he stands now. How's he takin' it,
warden?"
"Oh, so-so."
"He looks to me like he was broodin' a right smart," the expert might
say. "I jedge he ain't relishin' his vittles much, neither. Likely he'll
worry three or four pound more off'n his bones 'twixt now an' Friday
mornin'. He oughter run about one hund'ed an' sixty or mebbe
one-sixty-one by then."
"How much drop do you allow to give him?"
"Don't worry about that, suh," would be the answer given with a
contemplative squint of the placid, pale eye. "I reckin my calculations
won't be very fur out of the way, ef any."
They never were, either.
On the day before the day, he would be a busy man, what with
superintending the fitting together and setting up of the painted lumber
pieces upon which tomorrow's capital tragedy would be played; and,
when this was done to his liking, trying the drop to see that the boards

had not warped, and trying the rope for possible flaws in its fabric or
weave, and proving to his own satisfaction that the mechanism of the
wooden lever which operated to spring the trap worked with an
instantaneous smoothness. To every detail he gave a painstaking
supervision, guarding against all possible contingencies. Regarding the
trustworthiness of the rope he was especially careful. When this
particular hanging was concluded, the scaffold would be taken apart
and stored away for subsequent use, but for each hanging the
government furnished a brand new rope, especially made at a factory in
New Orleans at a cost of eight dollars. The spectators generally cut the
rope up into short lengths after it had fulfilled its ordained purpose, and
carried the pieces away for souvenirs. So always there was a new rope
provided, and its dependability must be ascertained by prolonged and
exhaustive tests before Uncle Tobe would approve of it. Seeing him at
his task, with his coat and waistcoat off, his sleeves rolled back, and his
intent mien, one realised why, as a hangman, he had been a success. He
left absolutely nothing to chance. When he was through with his
experimenting, the possibility of an exhibition of the proneness of
inanimate objects to misbehave in emergencies had been reduced to a
minimum.
Before daylight next morning Uncle Tobe, dressed in sober black, like
a country undertaker, and with his mid-Victorian whiskers all cleansed
and combed, would present himself at his post of duty. He would linger
in the background, an unobtrusive bystander, until the condemned
sinner had gone through the mockery of eating his last breakfast; and,
still making himself inconspicuous during the march to the gallows,
would trail at the very tail of the line, while the short, straggling
procession was winding out through gas-lit murky hallways into the
pale dawn-light slanting over the walls of the gravel-paved,
high-fenced compound built against the outer side of the prison close.
He would wait on, always holding himself discreetly aloof from the
middle breadth of the picture, until the officiating clergyman had done
with his sacred offices; would wait until the white-faced wretch on
whose account the government was making all this pother and taking
all this trouble, had mumbled his farewell words this side of eternity;
would continue to wait, very patiently, indeed, until the warden nodded

to him. Then, with his trussing harness tucked under his arm, and the
black cap neatly folded and bestowed in a handy side-pocket of his coat,
Uncle Tobe would advance forward, and laying a kindly, almost a
paternal hand upon the shoulder of the man who must die, would steer
him to a certain spot in the centre of the platform, just beneath a heavy
cross-beam. There would follow a quick shifting of the big, gnarled
hands over the unresisting body of the doomed man, and almost
instantly, so it seemed to those who watched, all was in order: the arms
of the murderer drawn rearward and pressed in close against his ribs by
a broad girth encircling his trunk at the elbows, his wrists caught
together in buckled leather cuffs behind his back; his knees and his
ankles fast in leathern loops which joined to the rest of the apparatus by
means of a transverse strap drawn tautly down the length of his legs, at
the back; the black-cloth head-bag with its peaked crown in place; the
noose fitted; the hobbled and hooded shape perhaps swaying a trifle
this way and that; and Uncle Tobe on his tiptoes stepping swiftly over
to a