Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/147

 these mysterious appearances in the close vicinity of some one of the houses of the Regulators.

It at once struck me that it was a profoundly subtle conspiracy of this class, headed by some man of remarkable personalities and skill, with the deliberate and stern purpose of exterminating the Rangers, or driving them from the county. It seems that the cunning mind of Hinch caught at the same conclusion. He observed the peculiar eagerness of these men in circulating wild reports and exaggerating as highly as possible the popular conception of this mysterious being. His savage nature seized upon it with a thrill of unutterable exultation. Now he could make open war upon the whole hateful class, rid the county of them entirely, and reach this fearful enemy through his coadjutors, even if he still managed to elude vengeance personally. He denounced them with great clamor, and as the people had become very much alarmed and felt universally the necessity of sifting this dangerous secret to the bottom, many of them volunteered to assist—and for a week four or five parties were scouring in every direction. Thus doubly reinforced, Hinch rushed into excesses, in comparison of which, all heretofore committed were mild. Several men were horribly mutilated with the lash—others compelled to take to the thickets, through which they were hunted like wolves. At last Hinch went so far as to hang one poor fellow until he was quite dead. During all the time when these violent and active demonstrations were being made, and the whole population astir and on the alert, nothing further was heard of the Bearded Madman. Not even faint glimpses of him were obtained, and Hinch and his party, while returning from the hanging mentioned above, were congratulating themselves upon the result of his sagacity, which, as they boisterously affirmed, had been nothing less than the routing of this formidable conspiracy and the frightening of this crazy phantom from the field. They felt so sure of being rid of him now, that they disbanded at the grocery to return to their homes.

One of their number named Rees, almost as bad and brutal a man as Hinch himself, was going home alone late that evening. As he rode past a thicket in full view of his own door, his wife, who was standing in it watching his approach, saw him suddenly stop his horse and turn his head with a quick movement toward the thicket—in the next moment blue smoke sprung up from it, and the ring of a rifle shocked upon her car. She saw her husband pitch forward out of the saddle upon his face, and thought she could distinguish a tall figure stalking rapidly off through the open wood beyond, with a rifle on his shoulder. She screamed the alarm, and with the negroes around her, ran to him. They found him entirely dead, shot through the eye, the ball passing out at the back of the head. A perfect blaze of universal phrensy burst forth at the first news of this fourth murder; but when the curious circumstance noted above followed on after it, very different effects and great changes in the character of the excitement were produced. When Hinch was told that Rees had been shot through the eye, and that, from the course of the ball in the other cases, it was probable that all the others had been shot in the same way, he turned livid as the dead of yesterday—his knees smote together—and with a horrid blasphemy he roared out, "Jack Long! Jack Long!" then sinking his voice to a mutter—"or his ghost come back for vengeance!" Other citizens not connected with the Regulators, felt greatly relieved now that this inscrutable affair was, to some degree, explained. They remembered at once the peculiar circumstances of Jack's noted mark, and the lynching he had received, though many still persisted in the belief that it was Jack's ghost, for they said—"How could it be any thing else, when the Regulators left him for dead?"

But, ghost or no ghost, it was universally believed that Jack Long and his rifle were identified somehow with the actor in these deeds. The disfiguration of the heads, in the other instances, had prevented this discovery until now; but everybody breathed more freely since it had been made, it was the painfully harassing uncertainty as to the object of these assassinations—whether any individual in the county might not be the next victim, and the propensity for murder indiscriminate—which had caused such deep excitement, and induced the people to aid the Regulators. But now that this uncertainty was fixed upon the shoulders of the "Bloody Band," and their own freed of the unpleasant burden, they were greatly disposed to enjoy the thing, and, instead of assisting them any further, to wish Jack success from the