Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/141

 meal her tidy care had prepared was dispatched, and the hunting adventures of the day told over. Then he threw himself with his great length along the buffalo robe on the floor, to rest and have a romp with the children. While they were climbing over his large body, and scrambling in riotous joy about him, his wife spoke for some water for her domestic affairs. It was hard for the children to give up their frolic, but Molly's wish was a strong law with Jack. Bounding up, he seized a vessel and started for the stream—the little ones pouting wistfully as they looked after him from the door. It was against Jack's religion to step outside the door without his gun; but this time Molly was in a hurry for the water, there was no time to get the gun, and it was but a short way to the stream. He sprang gaily along the narrow path down the hill and reached the brink. The water had been dipped up and he was returning at a rapid pace through the thicket, when, where it was very high and bordered close upon the path, he suddenly felt something tap him on each shoulder, and his progress impeded strangely. At the same instant a number of men rushed from ambush on each side of him, several of them holding the end of the stout raw-hide lasso, which had been thrown over him. He instantly put forth all his tremendous strength in a convulsive effort to get free; and so powerful was his frame that he would have succeeded but for the sure skill with which the lasso had been thrown that hound him over either arm. As it was, his remarkable vigor, nerved by desperation, was sufficient to drag the six strong men who clung to the rope after him. He heard the voice of Hinch shout eagerly, "Down with him! Drag him down!" At that hateful sound a supernatural activity possessed him, and writhing with a quick spring that shook off those who clung around his limbs, he had almost succeeded in reaching his own door, when a heavy blow from behind felled him. The last objects which met his eye as he sunk down insensible, were the terror-stricken and agonized faces of his wife and two children looking out upon him. When he awoke to consciousness it was to find himself nearly stripped and lashed to the oak which spread above his hut. Hinch, with a look of devilish exultation, stood before him, his wife wailing with piteous lamentations, clung about the monster's knees—the children endeavoring to hide their faces in her dress, screamed in affright, while outside the group eight or nine men with guns in their hands stood in a circle. That was a fearful awakening to Jack Long, but it was to a new birth! His eye took in the whole details of the scene at a glance. His enemy grinning in his face with wolfish triumph, the "quirt," with its long heavy lash of knotted raw-hide in his hand. He saw the brute spurn her violently from him with his foot, until she pitched heavily against the wretches around; and he heard them shout with laughter. A sharp, electric agony, like the riving of an oak, shivered along his nerves, passed out at his fingers and his feet, and left him rigid as marble. The murderous thong fell upon his white skin, whelking it in blue ridges, while the dull black drops spouted and rolled off to the ground. But he regarded it no more than did the oak above him, which swayed its moss-wreathed arms and shook its green leaves, as any other day, in the wind; and when his wife, as every harsh slashing sound fell upon her ear, would shriek "mercy!" then shudder—"Oh! mercy! what has he done?" while she covered her eyes with her hands, and cowered with her forehead on the ground, he seemed no more to hear her than did the dead block on the lintel of his door. The man seemed to be dead, all except his eyes, and though Hinch, roused to frantic wrath by his unmoved air, rose on tiptoe and swung the lash with redoubled fury, howling blasphemies at each blow, yet those eyes unmovingly, with a cold search, glanced around into the faces of the men. That regard was clinging and keen, as if the faintest lineament were intended to be remembered in hell! The man's look was positively awful, and it dwelt fixedly upon one after another with an icy light that shot freezing an undefined sense of fear into their souls, beastialized as they were. The villains could not stand it, and began to shrink and shuffle behind each other to avoid it, but it was too late! He had them all! Ten men! They were registered! "Kill him! Kill him! He's dangerous!" shouted several. I'll do for him, d—n him!" panted Hinch, as he labored yet more furiously with the lash. We will drop a curtain over this scene. It is enough to say that they left him for dead, lying in his blood, his wife swooning on the ground with the children weeping plaintively over her, and silence