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