Buckley had escaped and the sheriff sent a posse after him. Two or three men on the list were in hiding and could not at once be found, but the gather in the net of the vigilantes was a large one. Later in the day Buckley was brought to town. He had been found skulking in a prospect hole. There was a disposition at first on the part of some to let the machinery of the law take its course rather than try the prisoners before a people’s court. The leaders of the movement yielded to this sentiment so far as to allow a preliminary hearing in the office of Justice Moore. At this hearing Vance, one of the gang whose name somehow had not been included on the list, had the hardihood to appear. He blustered and bullied, though he was warned to remain silent. Presently, just as he was reaching for a revolver, one of the citizens’ posse wounded him in the arm. Captain Palmer, on behalf of the vigilantes, at once brushed aside the formalities of the law and organized a people’s court. He did not intend to let the guilty men intimidate the court that was to try them, nor to permit them to escape by means of technicalities. About a dozen men were tried. They were brought before the court and examined separately. The evidence showed conclusively that Daily, Buckley, Masterson, and McDonald had murdered Johnson. The four were convicted and sentenced to be hanged as soon as the carpenters could build a gallows. Carberry, known as “Irish Tom,” escaped the extreme penalty by one vote. That deciding vote was cast by Hugh McClintock. Carberry and his companions, shaky at the knees and with big lumps in their throats, were dizzy with joy at the sentence of banishment passed upon them. They would have emigrated to Timbuctoo to escape “the stranglers,” as they called the vigilantes. Someone—perhaps the sheriff, perhaps some friend of the condemned men—wired Governor Nye for help to save the gunmen. The Governor sent a telegram to his nephew. The wire read: It is reported here that Aurora is in the hands of a mob. Do you need any assistance? Bob Howland sent a prompt message back. It read: Everything quiet here. Four men will be hanged in fifteen minutes. The gallows had been built on the summit of the hill in the centre of North Silver Street. There, before the people whose laws they had mocked for so long, the four killers paid the penalty of their crimes. Young McClintock, in charge of the company which guarded the gallows, was bloodless to the lips. He felt faint and greatly distressed. There was something horrible to him in this blotting out from life of men who had no chance to make a fight for existence. If a word of his could have saved them he would have said it instantly. But in his heart he knew the sentence was just. It meant the triumph of law and order against violence. Killers and gunmen would no longer dominate the camp and hold it in bondage to fear. Honest citizens could go about their daily business in security.