t he
could only protect the front--and was a-settin' fire to our cabin to
smoke us out or roast us alive, jist when the soldiers come with Josiah
from the fort and saved our lives. Then the Injuns made 'emselves
scurce--but they druv off the oxen and all our other stock.

"MORD" LINCOLN, INDIAN FIGHTER

"That was the breaking up of our family. None of us boys was old enough
to take Father's place, an' Mother she was afraid to live there alone.
Accordin' to the laws o' Virginia--Kentucky belonged to Virginia
then--the oldest son got all the proputty, so 'Mord' he gets it all. He
was welcome to it too, for he was the only one of us that could take
care of it. 'Mord' he wasn't satisfied with killin' a few Injuns that
day to revenge Father's death. He made a business of shootin' 'em on
sight--a reg'lar Injun stalker! He couldn't see that he was jist as
savage as the worst Injun, to murder 'em without waitin' to see whether
Mr. Injun was a friend or a foe.

"Oncet when I told 'im there was good an' bad red men like they wuz good
an' bad white men, he said I might jist as well say 'good _devil_' as
'good Injun!' He says 'the only good Injun's the dead Injun!'

"Well, the settlers must 'a' 'greed with 'Mord,' for they made him
sheriff o' the county--he was sech a good shot, too--an' they 'lected
him to the Legislatur' after Kentucky come in as a State. He stood high
in the county. Folks didn't mind his shootin' an' Injun or two, more or
less, when he got the chancet. They all looked on redskins like they
was catamounts an' other pesky varmints.

"Your grandmother Lincoln an' Josiah an' me moved over into Washington
County, but she had hard scrabblin' to git a livin'. Josiah he stayed
with her, an' between him an' 'Mord,' they helped her along, but I had
to git out and scratch for a livin'. From the time I was ten I was hired
out to work for my 'keep,' an' anything else I could git. I knocked
aroun' the country, doin' this, that an' t'other thing till I picked up
carpenterin' o' Joseph Hanks, a cousin o' mine, an' there I met his
sister Nancy, an' that's how she come to be your mother--an' 'bout how I
come to be your father, too!"

Little is known today of Mordecai Lincoln, and there would be less
interest in poor Thomas if he had not become the father of Abraham
Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Mordecai Lincoln
was a joker and humorist. One who knew him well said of him:

"He was a man of great