Page:The American review - a Whig journal of politics, literature, art, and science (1845).djvu/149

 been placed across the track just where it ran close to a thicket. The jolt was so severe as to roll the barrel over on to him. He forgot his prudence, and put his head out of the cover to swear at the boy for his carelessness. The negro heard him say, "There he is at last!" cutting short, with the exclamation, a torrent of oaths—when a rifle-shot whistled from the thicket. His master fell back heavily in the wagon, and he saw a tall, "hairy man," as he called him, stalking off through the woods with a gun on his shoulder. It was observable that White also, was shot through the eye.

A week after this, another of them named Jarnet, who had kept himself a close prisoner, got up one morning at sunrise, and threw open the door of his house to let in the fresh air. Stepping from behind a large tree in the yard stood forth the avenger with that long rifle leveled, and that cold eye fixed upon his face, waiting for a recognition—as he did in every case—before he fired. The man attempted to step back—too late! The sun was in his eye, but winged with darkness and oblivion, the quick messenger burst shattering through nerve and sense, and the seventh miserable victim fell heavily across his own threshold.

But by an ingenious elaboration of vengeance, the most terrible torture of all had been reserved for Hinch. His imagination became his hell. He died, through it, a thousand deaths. He had been passed by, to see his comrades one by one fall from around him, with the consciousness, that the relentless hate and marvelous skill which struck them down, was strung with tenfold sternness against himself. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven! He had counted them all many times. They had all gone down under his eye, and as each one fell, came the question, shall it be my turn next? From the certainty that it would come, there was no escaping. He had put forth all the malignant ferocity of cunning and brutal passions in vain; and as successively he missed his minions from his side, the dark circle grew narrower and narrower, closing in terrible gloom about him, till he stood almost singly in the light, the only target for that pitiless aim. Ay! the very spot where the ball should strike him was distinctly marked by seven several instances!—and the wretch clasped his hands before his eyes and shivered through every fibre, as he felt the keen shock strike in blackness through tissues so sensitive that even a hair touching them now was agony.

Such a consciousness of coming doom was too much to be endured. Within a few weeks he shrunk like a rank weed, from above which the sheltering boughs had been cleft and the strong sun let in upon its bare stem. His bloated face became pallid and wrinkled. He grew so nervous that the tap of a crisp leaf, driven by the winds against his window, made him shudder and glare his eyes around, expecting that dark tube to grow through upon him from some crevice of his log house. There were yet two other men beside himself, Davis and Williams; but they were young men, much the youngest of the band. They sold their property, and one night were permitted to escape. Hinch caught at this incident with the frantic hope of despair. They succeeded in getting off, and why not he? He managed very secretly to procure one of the best horses in the county, and set forth one dark night for the Red River. The news that he was off caused a strong sensation through the county. However rude and primitive may be the structure of any society, there is yet beneath its surface a certain sense of the fitness of things, or, in other words, an intuitive sentiment of justice which requires to be satisfied; and there was a feeling not very clearly defined, of the want of this satisfaction, left in the minds of men through the whole region. They had recognised at once an appropriateness and savage sublimity in the retribution which had been visited upon these abominable men; but in Hinch's being supposed to escape, the consummation was altogether wanting. Vengeance was only half complete.

Hinch reached Red River after a desperate ride. He sprang from his foaming horse at the top of the bank, and the poor animal fell lifeless from exhaustion, as his feet touched the ground. He did not pause for a single glance of pity at the noble and faithful brute which had born him so far and gallantly; but glancing his eye around with the furtive expression of a thief in fear of pursuit, he descended the sloping bank to the water's edge, and threw himself upon the grass to wait the coming of a boat. In about two hours a hoarse belching sound grew upon his ear, through the heavy stillness. He sprang to his feet with dilated nostrils and a new fire in his eye. In a short time the white eddies of the smoke rose