Beatrice, Nebraska.

March 25, 1887.

The sky over Beatrice was clear and cold.

The scaffold stood near the courthouse at the center of town.

Pine board still pale. The trap mechanism

oiled and tested. The gallows had been built for one occasion and one occasion only. Gage County

had never hanged a man before. Only one person had been legally executed in all of Nebraska up to that point.

The county intended to do the job right. William Jackson.

Marion walked from his cell with his hands bound behind his back and his feet shackled at the ankles.

He was 37 years old, broad through the shoulders, with a furrowed brow and the bearing of a man who had spent the better part of his adult life behind a team of horses.

He had asked in the days before to be taken to the gallows and shown how they worked, the sheriff had obliged.

Marion studied the mechanism the way a man studies a piece of equipment,

clinically without ceremony, and returned to his cell satisfied that

he understood the procedure. Now he climbed the steps. A crowd had gathered, spectators,

officials, reporters from the Omaha papers. His uncle, William Wymore, was the only member

of his family present. Wymore had hired the defense attorneys. Wymore had petitioned the governor.

Wymore had done everything a man could do with limited resources and unlimited faith,

and all of it had failed.

The two men shook hands at the base of the scaffold.

Then Marion went up the stairs alone.

He stood on the trap door, the noose was adjusted.

The black hood had not yet been placed over his face, and he looked out at the crowd and

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