“Watch out there.” Immediately the guards were around him. Afraid he might try to escape, Matt surmised, and would have laughed if he could have summoned the will to do so. He was, or had been, a strong man, big, nearly six feet four inches, with muscles that had earned him a healthy respect in ports from San Francisco to Africa’s Barbary Coast. But the months in prison, without sufficient food or exercise and with frequent beatings and other tortures (they had hoped to wrest a confession from him; he took pride in the fact that they hadn’t succeeded), had shrunk the flesh from his bones. He was a mere shell of what he had been, and he doubted that he had the strength to overpower a girl-child, much less three guards who had surely been chosen for their bullish physiques. But it seemed they were taking no chances. They closed ranks around him, hustling him the short distance from the cart to the foot of the gallows as if terrified that he might break away.

If he could have, he would have, Matt acknowledged silently, staring up dry-mouthed at the men who awaited him on the platform above. The first twinge of fear pierced the apathy with which he had armored himself as he recognized the black robes of a priest, and the hooded executioner. Matt cursed himself inwardly. He, who had never feared anyone or anything in his life, would not start now. He would meet death with his head up, his step unfaltering, and laugh in the faces of those who had come to hang him. They had taken from him all else that he valued; he would not surrender his pride.

Urged on by the guards, he mounted the rough wooden planks, his movements slow and awkward because of the confining chains. Over their clanking, he suddenly became aware of a swelling roar. Surprised, Matt looked around and down. A milling, unruly crowd stretched around the gallows like an endless expanse of sea around a tiny island. The sight stopped him in his tracks. He had not been aware of them before, wished he had not become aware of them now. They were staring up at him, a featureless blur made up of hundreds of faces, come to watch him die. Their mouths shouted obscenities; their eyes screamed hate.