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prepared to go to Rogersville and bring home their prize.
    But old George Turner was not fooled. “We don’t know who wrote this,” he said. “Wilse Howard could have done it himself. You ride out there through Hagan Gap and they could cut you down like cornstalks.” He advised Lewis instead to send a rider on a fast horse to Rogersville, but by way of Pineville, to the south, avoiding Hagan Gap. As he suspected, the county judge at Rogersville had no knowledge of the purported prisoners, the rider rode back with the revelation, and the Howard trap was never sprung.
    Will and Wilse sensed that their luck was running out. Wilse rode into Harlan that night and told his mother goodbye, and once more he and Will headed West. This time, for some reason, they went separate ways. Will went to Missouri, where he was arrested, sent home, and imprisoned for killing John Bailey. Wilse, who was wanted in Missouri for killing the deaf-mute, said that he had always wanted to see California, and now he fulfilled his dream.
    But apparently Wilse was running out of money, for in California he was arrested in June 1893 for robbing a Wells Fargo stagecoach and was tried and sent to prison. He was traveling under the name of Brown when arrested, and it is possible that he got himself imprisoned as Brown as a way of dropping out of sight and avoiding trial for the deaf-mute murder. It is also possible that by this time he had been warned that Imboden was on his trail. If that was his strategy,it didn’t work. Someone in prison spotted him from a Wanted poster, Imboden came to the prison and identified him, and Wilse was taken back to Missouri to stand trial for killing the deaf-mute, a man named McMichaels.
    As he surrendered to the sheriff who took him back to Missouri, he said, “I am Wilse Howard, of Kentucky, the man you are looking for.” On the stand he recited without emotion the names of the men he had killed during the feud—Bob Craig, Will Turner, George Turner, George Hall, and John Bailey. He made no mention of the killings of the Cawoods and Hezekiah Hall, and to the end he maintained his innocence of the killing of the deaf-mute.
    Throughout his trial and conviction, Wilse remained composed. Alice Howard and Rebecca, Wilse’s sister, made the trip to St. Louis to be with him during his trial. Like Wilse, they received the jury’s verdict of guilty, and the sentence of death by hanging, with a dignity mentioned in the St. Louis newspapers.
    At his trial, the courtroom was packed and St. Louis papers carried detailed stories about the famous Kentucky mountain feudist. Wilse was surrounded by reporters, who took down every word he spoke as if it were of huge importance. Wherever the train stopped on his last journey, crowds thronged the platform, hoping for a view of the desperado, a title that amused Wilse but angered his mother and Rebecca.
    Both women showed their usual composure until the last morning, when Wilse was taken, heavily shackled, to the train. The accompanying sheriff permitted Alice and Rebecca a final few minutes with their son and brother, and it was then that Alice finally broke down, sobbing and clinging to Wilse as he tried to console her. The sheriff eventually had to pull her away. Rebecca tried to smile, embraced Wilse, and patted him affectionately on the back. “I won’t say goodbye, brother. I’ll see you soon in a better world.”
    On the train taking him to Lebanon, Missouri, where he was to be hanged, Wilse met Imboden for the first time, looked at him coldly, but then relented and shook hands, saying he bore him no ill will. In his jail cell he showed his cellmates a knife he had hidden under his belt with which to stab Imboden, but he said that at the last moment he felt no desire to kill him.
    On his last evening, Wilse sipped a glass of port to steady his nerves but told a reporter, “Let me tell you something: I am not going to die game. I