“On the morning of December 12, 1873, George Bulliner started to Carbondale, on horseback. The sun was standing against the murkey haze of the east, red and sullen, like a great drop of blood. The pearly, vapour-like sails dotted the sky, and covered the more delicately sculptured clouds with their alabaster sides. The great oak trees lifted their parapets to the morning sky, and spangled the earth with shadows. The voiceless winds swept the earth with sublime resignation lawless through the leafless woods, and a melancholy breeze stirred the dead ferns and droping rushes. A cold-scented sleuth-hound had followed the tracks of Bulliner remorselessly. This morning two of them, with stealthy movement, took their position near the Jackson county line in an old tree top, on the ground. There, planted on the spot, their ears drank in every sound that broke the air, mouth half open, ears, eyes, soul, all directed up the road to catch, if possible, each passing object.... Bulliner came riding along and one of the assassins fired on him; only two or three of the balls took effect in his hip and leg; but his horse wheeled and threw his back to the assassins, who fired on him again, and forty-four buck-shot took effect in his back, and he fell to the earth. The assassins then escaped. Bulliner was soon found and carried to the nearest house, and his sons notified, but after desperate riding John reached the place only in time to hear his father say, ‘Turn me over and let me die.’ He did so, and George Bulliner escaped from the cruelties of earth to the charities of Heaven.” A few months later David Bulliner, another son, was shot, also from ambush. "David was carried home by a host of friends, who had gathered at the gate. At the gate he asked ‘Is it a dream? is it a dream?’ and each broken word gurgled up out of the red fountain of his life. His brothers were standing around, their faces sealed with the death seal of inexpressible suffering, and their hearts hushed in the pulsation of woes. His mother lay trembling against the casement, her heart throbbing with its burden of sorrow, while the issues of life or death were being waged in the soul of her son. His sisters were standing in the vortex of misery, praying for the dreadful slaughter to be stopped, and suing for happiness with the sunny side of life in view.... “This was the worst murder of them all. No other equals it in heinousness. You may combine corruption, debauchery and all the forms of degredation known to inventive genius of man, and cord them together with strings drawn from maiden’s hearts, and paint the scene in human blood bespangled with broken vows and seared consciences, and still it will redden Heaven with revengeful blush and leave you blacken hell to make it equal.”