Beneath the Burning Timber: The Wanted Outlaw Who Died to Save His Blood

Eleanor turned her gaze directly upon Silas Danner. The prisoner did not blink, but his jaw twitched beneath the white bandage, his pale gray eyes hardening into flint.

"On the night of October twenty-fourth," Eleanor continued, her words cutting through the hot courtroom like a cold razor, "Elias Ward came to my porch. He was bleeding from a bullet fired by men wearing badges purchased by that man. He carried neither gold nor stolen goods. He carried four tins of condensed milk for my starving infants, and a wooden horse carved with Daniel’s mark."

She reached into her wicker basket and produced the two pine carvings.

She held them aloft before the twelve jurors—twelve weathered men of the territory, cattle drovers, blacksmiths, and storekeepers who understood the value of a brand.

"These toys were whittled in the territorial stockade eight years ago," she said. "One was carved for Thomas Vale’s firstborn son. One was carved for the unborn twins that Clara Vale carried in her womb when Danner ambushed the stage at Bitter Creek. And the third was kept by Elias Ward as a reminder of his brother’s blood."

She pointed her finger straight at Danner's face.

"My husband Daniel did not die of the consumption, gentlemen. He was murdered because he kept the book that proved this man stole an entire valley from the people who conquered it."

The dramatic climax of the trial occurred on the fifth afternoon, when the prosecution called Dr. Horatio Mercer.

The company physician was brought into the courtroom under heavy military guard, having broken down in his cell after three weeks of isolation. He was a ruin of a man—his fingers twitching uncontrollably, his collar filthy with vomit, his eyes darting frantically toward the railroad lawyers who had promised him protection.

Taking the stand, Mercer dissolved into a blubbering, broken confession.

"I had no choice!" he wept, clutching the witness rail. "Silas held my notes from the gambling hall in Denver! He told me Daniel Hayes was an escaped felon who had stolen county documents! He gave me the white powders himself—arsenic trioxide mixed with tincture of belladonna! He told me it would produce a gradual decline that no circuit doctor could distinguish from the dry rot of the lungs!"

A violent roar tore through the courtroom. Men jumped to their feet, knocking oak benches backward, their fists raised toward the defense table.

"Lynch him!" a voice shouted from the gallery. "Hang the butcher!"

Judge Cranston stood up, his white hair bristling with rage. "Marshal! Clear the front three rows! Draw your sidearms if any man touches the railing! Sit down, all of you, or by God I’ll commit the entire town to the military stockade!"

Silas Danner did not look at Mercer. He did not look at the jury. He leaned back in his chair, his shackled hands resting upon the green felt, his face set in a mask of contemptuous, frozen disdain.

The jury was out for only twenty-two minutes.

When they filed back into the box through the side door, their foreman, an elderly Quaker cattleman named Jonathan Albright, did not sit down.

"Have you reached a verdict, Mr. Albright?" Judge Cranston asked, his voice dead and solemn.

"We have, your Honor."

The clerk took the slip of gray paper and handed it up to the bench. Cranston put on his steel-rimmed spectacles, read the lines in silence, and then removed them, looking directly down at the prisoner.

"Silas Danner, stand up."

Two marshals hauled Danner to his boots, the iron chain clinking sharply against his belt.

"On the first count of willful, premeditated murder in the death of United States Marshal Thomas Vale: Guilty.

On the second count of murder by poison in the death of Daniel Arthur Hayes: Guilty.

On seventy-four counts of forgery, grand larceny, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and armed insurrection: Guilty on all counts."

The courtroom was so silent that the scratching of the reporters' pencils sounded like the scurrying of mice in a grain bin.

Judge Cranston leaned forward over the bench.

"Silas Danner, you have disgraced the law, corrupted the courts, and butchered honest men for the sake of corporate greed. You have shown no mercy to the living and no respect to the dead. The sentence of this court is that you be taken from this place to the territorial penitentiary at Rawlins, and there, in the prison yard, between the hours of ten and twelve on the morning of January nineteenth, you be hanged by the neck until your body is dead. And may Almighty God have that mercy upon your miserable soul which you denied to Thomas Vale, to Daniel Hayes, and to the children who survived your fire."

Danner did not flinch. He turned his head, his pale eyes catching Eleanor’s across the railing.

Eleanor did not drop her gaze. She did not smile. She stood tall between young Tom Vale and old Mae Jensen, her eyes clear, hard, and infinite as the mountain winter, watching the monster being led away into the dark corridor of the gallows.