JACK LONG: A SHOT IN THE EYE (1844)

JACK LONG or The Shot in the Eye (1844) – With the Frontierado Holiday coming up in early August, Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at this Charles Wilkins Webber short story from 1844.

Jack Long was a milestone in western fiction and proved so popular that it was reprinted in many other countries, often in distorted versions and was even presented as a stage play, all without any payment to Webber.

In 1853, the author added his original, official version of the story to his collection Tales of the Southern Border. It may be impossible to overstate the legacy of Jack Long. This Texas-set story presented virtually Biblical levels of violence during the Shelby County War (1839-1844) and set the standard for tales of gunslinging revenge quests down to the present day.

Over a century before High Plains Drifter, Pale Rider and countless similar stories, Jack Long depicted a man subjected to horrific torture & abuse and left for dead who appears later as a possibly supernatural figure blowing away his tormentors. And speaking of the supernatural/ horror angle, no less an authority than Edgar Allan Poe praised Webber’s story, which has been hailed as Southern Gothic.

The climate of fear surrounding Jack Long’s rising body count leads to claims that he is no longer alive but has risen from the dead to pursue those who wronged him. Webber doesn’t clarify that point until the end of the story, but as it unfolds a reader can’t help but note the similarity to modern day serial killers and public terror over the grisly trademarks of such predators.

Fans of the Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian may take a scholarly interest in Jack Long, and not just because of the blunt (albeit much less graphically described) violence on a large scale. Secondarily, McCarthy’s villainous figure Judge Holden is based on a real-life man whom some speculate was really Charles Wilkins Webber himself under an alias.

Enough prelude. Let’s examine the story Jack Long or The Shot in the Eye.

Webber drops readers into the middle of the lawlessness and widespread violence in Shelby County during the eponymous war, also called the Regulators vs Moderators War. Jack Long, his wife Molly and their son & daughter live in peace in their woodland cabin on the fringes of the settled lands.

Long stands six feet, four inches tall, thrives as a hunter and is renowned for being an incredibly accurate shot. Jack’s skill is such that when it comes to larger game like bears, buffaloes, cougars and bucks, he kills them with one shot by placing a bullet through their eyes and into the brain, killing them instantly and painlessly.

Our title character is known for his amiable nature and his devotion to his wife and children. Long’s reputation as a marksman angers a marauder boss named Hinch, who likes to fancy himself as the best shot in Texas.

Other tensions rise as Jack Long refuses to ride with Hinch’s raiders and rustlers, plus refuses to side with either the Regulators or the Moderators, preferring his idyllic life at the family cabin. When Hinch and his subordinates begin taunting Jack as hen-pecked, he is at last drawn into agreeing to a shooting contest against Hinch.

Long succeeds in thoroughly outdoing the boastful gang leader at marksmanship, infuriating the violent Hinch. Ultimately, the criminal and nine of his men waylay Jack outside his cabin, and, in front of Molly and the children, tie him up and strip him down.

Hinch then whips Long to bloody ribbons, literally kicks around Molly (in a later age she would probably get sexually assaulted as well) and then rides off laughing with his boys, leaving Jack for dead.

Neither Jack Long nor his family are seen for quite some time. The cabin seems deserted. Four months after our title character’s ordeal, a member of Hinch’s gang turns up dead, shot through the eye, leaving an exit wound in the back of the skull and with his corpse torn apart by wolves and buzzards. A tall, lean, almost skeletal figure with dead eyes is blamed for the slaying.

And so begins a weeks-long period of bloodshed and other violence in the region. Other gang members who participated in the attack on Jack begin turning up dead, shot through one eye and with their remains mutilated the same way.

Hinch and his gang sneer at the superstitious belief that Jack Long has risen from the grave and instead convince themselves that silent civilians who side with Long are committing the murders to strike anonymously at Hinch’s Regulators.

The Regulator gang ravages the area – burning, looting and killing at will, thinking they will terrify the alleged Jack Long sympathizers into submission. Instead, the citizenry come to revel at the fear spreading through Hinch and his gang and privately cheer on the killer, be it Jack Long or his ghost.

The perpetrator displays incredible patience, sometimes waiting days or weeks between killings, masterfully waging a war of nerves on Hinch and his fellow marked men and making them live in fear. This aspect of the story enhances the ghost story or slasher movie nature of the slayings, as victims are bumped off, one by one.

Even when the now trembling and terrified Regulators begin traveling in pairs or accompanied by groups of their slaves, the killer appears as if from nowhere, claims a single gang member (but never bystanders) and disappears. No doubt remains that it is Jack Long – alive or dead – carrying out the revenge slayings, because his face, though emaciated now, is clearly seen before he pulls the trigger.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

Jack or his resurrected body reserves the cruelest fate for Hinch himself. The villain lives in terror, never knowing when a tall, skeletal, dead-eyed figure will appear and take his life.

The twitchy marked man ultimately breaks under the strain, fleeing the county and attempting to escape across the Sabine River by ferry. The stalking killer waits literally until Hinch dares to think he may have gotten to safety before revealing himself and shooting his final victim through the eye.

Readers are now explicitly shown that the slayings have indeed been carried out by the living Jack Long, who survived the horrific attack, sent his family into hiding, and set out for revenge. The triumphant Jack reunites with Molly and the children, and for the first time since his humiliating brush with death, lies with his wife, since he can now look her in the eye once again.

Much is left unsaid, even with the revelation that Long is not an undead revenant. Why is he emaciated? Has he been virtually fasting ever since he suffered at the hands of Hinch and his gang?

For other fans of lesser-known written works from the 1800s, let me point out that I believe Webber’s avenging gunslinger stands out even from the fictional Nathan Slaughter from the 1830s because Slaughter preyed on the then-conventional targets – Native Americans. Jack Long killed “his own kind.”

I wanted to start this review with an extended look at the lingering influence of Jack Long because the fundamental structure of the tale seems routine now because it has been repeated countless times since 1844. And not just in Wild West settings. Plenty of modern-era gunplay revenge tales could also be considered faint echoes of C.W. Webber’s short story.

At any rate, I can’t match the praise heaped on this story by Edgar Allan Poe and his devotees, so I certainly won’t bother trying.