Tears(Ed DeRousse) “Nine years,” he thought to himself, “nine long miserable years it’s been since I robbed that bank in Cheyenne and left Lizzy. Tomorrow, the 11th. day of October,1879, William “Wild Bill” Preston Langley will be hanged by the neck until dead. The tombstone, if they give me one, will probably read, ‘Here lies a bad man. Good riddance!’”
Giddings, Texas would finally get the job done.
“I was lucky the first time they tried to hang me.” He was remembering, almost a decade ago, when the townspeople of Coleman, Texas left him swinging from a tree. He was lucky when a bullet fired from a distance in haste struck his rope. That was the circumstance that sent him to Cheyenne and then to Lizzy.
“This time I don’t think I’ll be so lucky.”
Langley looked older than his twenty-eight years would have suggested. The years on the run from the law and the hard life that accompanied it had played a heavy toll on his once handsome frame. He was unshaven and unclean. His eyes were puffy from lack of sleep. Exercise was mostly nonexistent. After all, he had been a resident of the Giddings jail since March waiting to be hung.
These Giddings, Texas lawmen proved to be quite competent. He had escaped other jails before, but he couldn’t find his way out of this one.
He had learned that Lizzy had recently moved to Giddings. Every morning, from his jail cell, he saw her walk into the cafe across the street and leave it every evening. He assumed she was an employee. But maybe she owned the place. That thought made him happy. It meant she amounted to something, in spite of him.
On weekends a young boy would help her. The boy had to be their son. He had to be. Lizzy and he were going to have a baby boy when he suddenly left Cheyenne nine years ago.
The outlaw knew, as long as he stayed outside of Wyoming his secret about Lizzy was safe. He knew she was looking for him. He heard rumors, throughout the years, that a woman from Cheyenne had been hunting him. But no one knew exactly why?
He wanted to talk to her. To tell her he was sorry. Did she know he was in the jail? Most likely she did. Giddings was a small town. At least he could see her twice a day until he was hung.
It was mid-morning exactly one week before the outlaw Langley was to be hung when Lizzy crossed the street from the café and walked into the jail. Langley watched her cross. His heart was puzzled and pounding. What was her intent? He thought she looked as beautiful now as day he left her stranded in the streets of Cheyenne. He still loved that woman. His pounding heart told him so.
He could hear the conversation.
“Sheriff, I thought your prisoner might like something to eat.”
“Where’s Mr. Sparks?’ Sheriff Brown asked the young woman. “He usually brings the food to the prisoners.”
She was carrying what looked to Langley, to be a food basket.
“I’m sure you know by now, Sheriff Brown, that I started working for Mr. Sparks last week. He told me delivering food to the prisoners would be part of my job. So here I am. I know you have one in there. Can I take this to him now?”
Langley straightened his hair and pressed out his clothing with his hands in anticipation of seeing Lizzy. But would all that matter? Would she recognize him? It was nine since they saw each other.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean for you to personally hand it to the prisoner. That’s a killer in there and he’s gonna be hung next week. I’ll take it to him.”
The young woman handed the basket to the sheriff. She took a long look toward the cells and left.
Langley’s heart sank. “She must’ve known it was me in here.’, he reasoned. “Seemed like she knew it. That damn lawman kept her away from me!”
Since the day Langley left Cheyenne, that was as close as Lizzy had gotten to her husband. She would get no closer.
At 11:00 A.M. on the morning of 11 October 1879 William “Wild Bill” Preston Langley was handcuffed for the final time. A dozen armed law officers escorted him from his cell to gallows.
This was not the first hanging in Giddings. As in most Western towns, hangings brought people together. They were meant to be viewed. Giddings had constructed their gallows on small hill at the outskirts of town. It seemed the entire town and probably surroundings towns had gathered in the street to watch his hanging.
Not that he deserved one, but Langley hoped for a quick hanging and a quick death. If one was to die, that was the way to go. At least, all thirty-two of his victims died quickly. He was ready.
But his death was slow and painful.
The noose was placed around Langley’s neck. When asked if had any final words, he said “I deserve this fate. Goodbye everybody!”
The trap door opened, but the rope slipped on the beam and the outlaw’s feet hit the ground. Langley had escaped his second hanging. The crowd booed at the botched hanging.
The sheriff and some of his deputies quickly hoisted Langley up so the hangman could properly refasten the rope. Once done, they stepped back and let the outlaw’s own weight properly suspend him from it.
As he hung gasping for the last of his air, he saw Lizzy in the crowd. For one last brief moment, for that was all he had left, Langley remembered the first time he saw her in Cheyenne.
It was in front of the Cheyenne Bank that their eyes first met. At that moment time seemed to stand still. Lizzy had no fear when their eyes met, and his own anger disappeared.
“My name is Elizabeth Mary Smith.”, he recalled. “But call me Lizzy. Everyone else does.”
“Miss Smith, my name is Bill, Bill Langley. When I saw you back there, you looked like someone willing to help a stranger.”
This time though, when their eyes met, he saw forgiveness in them. He knew it was forgiveness. The tears rolling down her cheeks told him so.
His neck finally stretched until it snapped, and it was over.

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