Will Hardy rolled off the bed fully dressed down to his black boots, except for his duster and Stetson which he'd re-moved when he'd stretched out on the bed. The fire had died down to red-gold smoldering embers, and he shivered in the darkness. Light from the windows of the saloon adjacent to his hotel reflected on the snow outside and cast a dim glow into his room. He lit a lamp and looked at his pocket watch. It was a few minutes past eleven.
He acknowledged the fierce aching need which drove him, but he vowed to himself this would be his last ride with the vigilantes; not that he had no stomach for it. This was war, just as much a war as the one he'd fought only a few years before against the Union.
He wanted to move on with his life but knew a peaceful life in the West was not possible as long as outlaw gangs were allowed to prey on law-abiding citizens. Images of the life he wanted, a wife and family, had died with the woman he'd loved.
He moved to the fireplace, reached for the poker and scattered the glowing coals. A bedside table held a pitcher of water and a wash bowl. Will poured frigid water into the bowl, splashed his face and gasped himself fully awake.
After drying his face and beard, he ran his fingers through his unruly black hair. Before he put on his coat, he strapped on a wide gunbelt, lifted the Navy Six Colt from the holster, examined it and replaced it.
He left the room, walked down the long wide hall, opened the door and descended the outside steps to the ground. Glancing at his watch again, he hurried toward the rendezvous.
The Reno gang had been caught, and the vigilantes had been content to let the law take its course until they learned Judge Beckett would preside at the trial. The gang would go free again to spill blood, fill graves, and spread fear throughout the territories. That would not be allowed to happen.
The bitter wind and freezing sleet penetrated Will's clothing and bit at his flesh. The other heavily-armed men with whom he met suffered no less. They stomped their feet, pulled coat collars up around their necks, and hurried in and out of the shadows along the street. Hiding their identities behind crimson bandanas, they stood cold and silent near the platform of the Seymour, Indiana depot.
It was now midnight and a train screeched to a stop. At a signal, one of the men climbed a telegraph pole and cut the wires. The others entered the cab and ordered the startled engineer to disconnect the train's whistle, bell-cord and headlights.
As quickly as all were aboard, the train chugged out of the station. The masked men remained quiet and unmoving for the next fifty miles, until they stopped the train at the Jeffersonville depot.
The vigilantes left the first train, boarded a second one and took that surprised engineer prisoner also. This train made it into the New Albany, Indiana depot at approximately three-thirty on the morning of December 12.
A rider sent to cut the lines at New Albany reappeared and reported success. Someone whispered breathlessly, "Salus Populi Suprema Lex!" And many voices repeated the Latin phrase, ‘the welfare of the people is the highest law!'
The men strode up the street to their destination, the New Albany jail, where one of the worst outlaw gangs in the West awaited a farce of a trial. The Reno brothers, John, Clinton, Frank, Simeon and their followers, spawned by the lawlessness of the frontier, had ruthlessly thundered from town to town, murdering, robbing, and terrorizing the populace. For a number of years the venom and greed of these predators held the people in a paralysis of fear. The Indiana authorities viewed the situation as alarming but did nothing about it.
Just two years before the Reno gang had pulled off the first train robbery in the history of the country. Alan Pinkerton and a half dozen agents captured John Reno, and later the entire gang. John was convicted and sentenced to forty years. The others escaped.
Later, the largest train robbery of their career in netted the gang almost $100,000. The Pinkerton's again took up the chase and three of the outlaw gang were captured, but a mob of masked men overpowered the Pinkertons and lynched the prisoners.
Now, these masked men, on that freezing December morning, had every intention of executing the gang members lodged in the New Albany jail.
Reaching their destination, they wounded the sheriff and forced the commissioners to yield up their keys to the cells.
Ropes appeared. The vigilantes rushed up the stairs to the second floor. Frank Reno died first. Two vigilantes dragged him out on to an outside balcony. They lowered a noose over his head, jerked it tight and tied it to an iron beam. Amid his violent protests, the men tossed him off the balcony into the darkness. He shot downward, his neck snapped, and his body twisted and turned as the men in red masks leaned over the rail and watched him die.
The second door opened and masked men jerked William from the cell. He pleaded for his life. The noose tightened around his neck. His words grew garbled and indistinct as his body tumbled over the rail and joined his brother in death. Both bodies swayed in the freezing air, their mouths gaping, as though silently screaming.
Charlie Anderson came next. Two nooses were necessary to hang him. The first one snapped when his weight hit full force. Faceless men dragged him back up and slipped a second noose over his head, tightened it around his neck, and lowered him to strangle to death.
Simeon, the only one who fought, armed himself with the metal leg of a sink he'd torn from the wall and fought with the ferocity of a wild beast, but a gun butt clubbed him to the floor. A vigilante flung a noose over his head and hurled his body over the balcony rail to join the others.
The vigilantes left the building. An astonished voice called their attention to Simeon Reno. He had revived and was fighting the rope, jerking and struggling, his eyes bulging.
The other prisoners in the jail yelled and cursed and beat on the bars until his body stopped twitching and he died.
The agony which had slowly devoured Will Hardy did not begin to lessen until all the outlaws were dead. He would never know which one had raped and killed the girl he loved and planned to marry. The Renos had butchered her entire family.
This execution was frontier justice, and it put these men outside the law, too, but it was the only justice that seemed to work since the war had ended.
The masked men left the jail, lined up behind their leaders, marched to the depot and boarded the train. It pulled away to the sound of many voices shouting "Salus Populi Suprema Lex!"