witted many Indians who
thought that they had him when his gun had been emptied. The West
Virginians looked upon him as their Daniel Boone, and their "right arm
of defence."

[Illustration: Lewis Wetzel loads on the run. (From an Old Print)]

He was credited with twenty-seven scalps, on the West Virginia border,
and as many more elsewhere on the frontier. His brothers swelled the
number to over one hundred.

Jacob reached six feet in height, and a weight of two hundred pounds--a
powerful man like Simon Kenton. He and John also were celebrated
Indian-hunters. But although Lewis himself once was out-lawed by the
military government for shooting an Indian needlessly, Martin was the
really vindictive killer. No Indian of any kind, and whether
surrendered or not, was safe from him, his rifle and his tomahawk.

Indian-hunting and Indian-killing was a business with the Wetzels, and
the name "Wetzel" carried terror through the forests.

Strange to say they, like Simon Kenton and other bordermen who scorned
danger, lived on to a round manhood in spite of the chances that they
took. Lewis died in his bed, of a sickness, near Natchez on the
southern Mississippi River, in the summer of 1808, aged forty-four.
John had died, a few years before, at Wheeling, in similar manner.
Martin and Jacob also passed away peacefully.

Such men as the Wetzel brothers were "shock" troops. They did not
occupy a country, but they broke the enemy's line.

CHAPTER VII

CAPTAIN SAMUEL BRADY SWEARS VENGEANCE

(1780-1781)

AND BROAD-JUMPS LIKE A WILD TURKEY

Samuel Brady the Ranger: the Captain of Spies, the Hero of Western
Pennsylvania--he indeed was a famous frontier fighter in the years
following the Revolution, when the Indians were determined that "no
white cabin shall smoke beyond the Ohio." The struggle to keep the
settlers out of present Ohio and Indiana (the Northwest Territory)
proved long and bloody.

In western Pennsylvania and northern Ohio the name Captain Samuel Brady
ranks with that of Daniel Boone in Kentucky and Kit Carson in the Far
West. Up the Allegheny River above Pittsburgh there are Brady's Bend
and East Brady, to remind people of his deeds; near Beaver,
Pennsylvania, at the Ohio River below Pittsburgh, there are Brady's
Run, Brady's Path and Brady's Hill; in Portage County, northeastern
Ohio, over toward the Pennsylvania line, there are Brady's Leap and
Brady's Lake. So Captain Samuel Brady left hi