Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/311

 

I began to approach the neighborhood of Loosahatchie, I perceived, at a distance on the road, a group of men on horseback, upon whom, as they moved at a very slow pace, I gained rapidly.. As I drew nearer, the group presented a very striking appearance. There were twelve or fifteen fierce-looking white men, very variously mounted, with rifles in their hands, and well provided with pistols and bowie knives, their dresses bedaubed with half-dry mud, as though they had been engaged in some aquatic expedition. A negro fellow, who followed on foot, and by the side of whom, with a sharp eye upon him, rode a white man armed to the teeth, held in leash some four or five savage-looking dogs, which I easily recognized as of the breed usually trained and employed for hunting runaway slaves, But the most remarkable objects, and those upon which the attention of the white men of the company seemed to be fixed with looks gloomy and ferocious, though not unmingled with triumph, were near the centre of the group, a little in front. Here I perceived the apparently lifeless body of a white man, whose pale features bore still a scowl of brutal rage upon them, that contrasted strangely with their death-like fixedness. ‘The clothes, muddy and torn, as if in some recent struggle, were all dabbled with blood, which seemed still to ooze from a fatal wound in the breast. The body had been secured on the back of a horse, which was led by a negro man, whose blank and stolid features, upon which, however, I thought I could trace a certain obscure gleam of repressed satisfaction, presented a curious contrast, as did that of the black man who led the hounds, to the fierce, furious, and indignant looks of the white men.

Side by side with this dead body rode a black man, wounded and bleeding, and evidently a prisoner, for his feet were tied together under the horse's belly, and