My first direct information as to this was by a messenger from Key with an order to assemble my company and stand guard over the carpenters who were to erect the scaffold.  He informed me that all the Regulators would be held in readiness to come to our relief if we were attacked in force.  I had hoped that if the men were to be hanged I would be spared the unpleasant duty of assisting, for, though I believed they richly deserved that punishment, I had much rather some one else administered it upon them.  There was no way out of it, however, that I could see, and so “Egypt” and I got the boys together, and marched down to the designated place, which was an open space near the end of the street running from the South Gate, and kept vacant for the purpose of issuing rations.  It was quite near the spot where the Raiders’ Big Tent had stood, and afforded as good a view to the rest of the camp as could be found.

Key had secured the loan of a few beams and rough planks, sufficient to build a rude scaffold with.  Our first duty was to care for these as they came in, for such was the need of wood, and plank for tent purposes, that they would scarcely have fallen to the ground before they were spirited away, had we not stood over them all the time with clubs.

The carpenters sent by Key came over and set to work.  The N’Yaarkers gathered around in considerable numbers, sullen and abusive.  They cursed us with all their rich vocabulary of foul epithets, vowed that we should never carry out the execution, and swore that they had marked each one for vengeance.  We returned the compliments in kind, and occasionally it seemed as if a general collision was imminent; but we succeeded in avoiding this, and by noon the scaffold was finished.  It was a very simple affair.  A stout beam was fastened on the top of two posts, about fifteen feet high.  At about the height of a man’s head a couple of boards stretched across the space between the posts, and met in the center.  The ends at the posts laid on cleats; the ends in the center rested upon a couple of boards, standing upright, and each having a piece of rope fastened through a hole in it in such a manner, that a man could snatch it from under the planks serving as the floor of the scaffold, and let the whole thing drop.  A rude ladder to ascend by completed the preparations.

As the arrangements neared completion the excitement in and around the prison grew intense.  Key came over with the balance of the Regulators, and we formed a hollow square around the scaffold, our company marking the line on the East Side.  There were now thirty thousand in the prison.  Of these about one-third packed themselves as tightly about our square as they could stand.  The remaining twenty thousand were wedged together in a solid mass on the North Side.  Again I contemplated the wonderful, startling, spectacle of a mosaic pavement of human faces covering the whole broad hillside.