bushes parted and I wheeled in time to strike up a double-barrel rifle a young man was aiming at the chief.

“You’ve fired at him twice already, Shelby Cousin,” I angrily rebuked. “Isn’t that about enough?”

“Nothin’ ain’t ’nough till I git his sculp,” was the grim reply; and Cousin, scarcely more than a boy, endeavored to knock my rifle aside. “At least you ought to kill before you scalp,” I said.

His lips parted and his eyes screwed up into a perplexed frown and he dropped the butt of his rifle to the ground. Holding the barrels with both hands, he stared down at the dead man.

“Some one bu’sted him with a’ ax most vastly,” he muttered. “An’ me wastin’ two shoots o’ powder on the skunk!”

“Without bothering to notice the turkey-buzzards that have been following him down the river,” I said.

He looked sheepish and defended himself:

“The cover was too thick to see anything overhead.”

“He was a friend to the whites. He has been murdered. His killer struck him down from behind. As if murder wasn’t bad enough, his killer tried to make a joke of it by stuffing journey-cake in his mouth. The cake alone would tell every red who sees him that a white man killed him.”

“Only trouble with the joke is that there ain’t a couple o’ him,” hissed young Cousin. “But the fellor who played this joke owes me two shoots of powder. I ’low he’ll pay me.”

“You know who he is?”

“Seen Lige Runner up along. I ’low it will be him. Him an’ me look on Injuns just the same way.”

“It’s fellows like him and Joshua Baker and Daniel Greathouse who bring trouble to the settlements,” I said.

His face was as hard as a mask of stone as he looked at me. His eyes, which should have glowed with the amiable fires of youth, were as implacably baleful as those of a mad wolf.

“You don’t go for to figger me in with Baker an’ Greathouse?” he fiercely demanded.

“I know your story. It wouldn’t be just to rank you with them.”

“Mebbe it’s my story what turns other men ag’in’ these critters,” he coldly suggested. “There was a time when I had a daddy. He talked like you do. He called some o’ the red devils his friends. He believed in ’em, too. Cornstalk, the Shawnee devil, was his good friend.

“Daddy an’ mammy ’lowed we could live on Keeney’s Knob till all git-out bu’sted up an’ never have no trouble with friendly Injuns. That was ten years ago. I was eight years old. Then Cornstalk made his last visit. Daddy had just brought in some deer meat. Made a feast for th’ bloody devils.

“I happened to be out in the woods when it was done. Or, happen like, I’d ’a’ gone along t’others. There’s two things that’ll make me hunt Cornstalk an’ his Shawnees to the back-country o’ hell—my little sister, an’ their overlookin’ to wipe me out.”

He turned and stood by the canoe, glaring down at the dead man. All Virginia was familiar with the terrible story of the Cousin massacre at Keeney’s Knob. Fully as tragic and horrible to me, perhaps, was the terrible change in the only survivor. He became an Injun-killer as soon as he was able to handle a rifle; and a Virginia boy of twelve was ashamed when he failed to bring down his squirrel shot through the head.

At eighteen Cousin was hated and feared by the Ohio tribes. He was not content to wait for Shawnee and Mingo to cross the river, but made frequent and extremely hazardous trips into their country. His panther-scream had rung out more than once near the Scioto villages to proclaim a kill.

Isaac Crabtree was a killer, but his hate did not make him rash. Jesse Hughes would have been one of our best border scouts if not for his insane hatred of Indians. He killed them whenever he met them; nor did he, like Crabtree, wait until the advantage was all on his side before striking. William White, William Hacker and John Cutright massacred five inoffensive Indian families at Bulltown on the Little Kanawha as a reprisal for the Stroud family, slain on Elk River.

Elijah Runner, who Cousin believed had killed Bald Eagle, was yet another with an insatiable thirst for red blood. Many others were notorious Injun-killers. Some were border ruffians; some were driven to the limits of hate because of scenes they had witnessed or losses they had suffered. But none was like Shelby Cousin.

Other killers would drink and make merry at times, keeping their hate in the background until a victim appeared. Young Cousin carried his hate in his face as well as in his heart at all times. There was nothing on earth, so far as I ever learned, no friendships, no maiden’s smile, which could divert him from the one consuming passion of his life.

His mention of his sister revealed the deepest depth of his anguish. His parents were beyond all suffering and the need of pity. His sister, a year older than he, had been carried off. The pursuers found her clothing by a creek near the ruined cabin; but it had never been proved that she was dead. It was this, the uncertainty of her fate, which daily fed the boy’s hate and drove him to the forest, where he sought to learn the truth and never relinquished an opportunity to take his revenge.

“If Lige Runner done for him he sure did a good job,” Cousin muttered. “He sure did make tomahawk improvements on him.”[2]

“You never kill in or near the settlements as some of them do,” I said.

His eyes closed and what should have been a rarely handsome boyish face, a face to stir the heart of any maiden to beating faster, was distorted with the pain he was keeping clamped down behind his clenched teeth.

“That’s only because o’ what I seen at Keeney’s Knob,” he hoarsely whispered. “When I meet one of ’em in a settlement I skedaddle afore I lose my grip. I mustn’t do anything that’ll fetch a parcel of ’em down to carry off some other feller’s little sister. If I know’d she was dead——”

“If you’d stop killing long enough to question some of the Shawnees you might learn the truth.”

He shook his head slowly, and said:

“I stopped—just afore the killin’ at Baker’s Bottom. Kept my Injun alive all night. But he wouldn’t tell.”

I shuddered at the cold-bloodedness of him.

“You tortured him and perhaps he knew nothing to tell,” I said.

“If he didn’t know nothin’ it was hard luck for him,” he quietly agreed. “But I was sartain from things he had boasted that he was at the Knob that day. What you goin’ to do with this varmint?”

And he nodded toward the dead voyager.

“My business won’t allow me to take the time necessary to dig a grave where his friends can’t find him or wild animals dig him out. We’ll set him afloat again and hope he’ll journey far down the river before his friends find him. He was friendly to us——”

“Friendly——” interrupted the boy. “So was Cornstalk friendly!”

I removed the journey-cake from the grinning mouth and placed the rigid figure in the bottom of the canoe. Before I could push the craft into the current young Cousin grunted with satisfaction and pointed to two bullet-holes, close together, just back of the ear.

“Knew I must hit pretty close to where I was shootin’,” he muttered as he made up the bank.

I shoved the canoe from shore and called after him: “If you will wait until I get my horse we