"Baby meets this Shawnee and gives him his needings. The red devil's sculp ain't more'n three days old. Good for you, Baby! Good boy! Give him all the 'lasses he can hold. Needn't worry about any raid s'long as he stays here, Davis. You can just take your time in finishing that fort." "If we could only keep him!" sighed Davis. "But you can't," spoke up a young man. "Every one has tried. A day or two, yes. Then he must go back to the woods. When the Injuns failed to finish him off they did a bad job for themselves." "We'll keep him long's we can," said Davis. "Hi, mother! Fill the mixing-bowl with mush and cover it with sweeting." As proud as a boy being praised by his elders, Baby started to strut to the Davis cabin, but quickly fell into a limping walk and whimpered a bit. "Crippled on account of rheumatiz," sighed Runner. "Rheumatiz has put more hunters and fighters out of business than the Ohio Injuns ever did. And poor Baby can't remember to always sleep with his feet to the fire. If we could git him a stout pair of shoes to wear in place of them spongy moccasins it would pay us." Kirst was too grotesque to laugh at, and the settlers were grotesque when they smiled at his ferocious appetite, and in the next moment tried to buy the protection of his presence. Let him regularly patrol a dozen miles of frontier each day, and I would guarantee no Indian would knowingly cross his path. More than one party of red raiders had unwittingly followed his trail, only to turn in flight as if the devil was nipping after them once they glimpsed his bulky figure, heard his whimpering or his loud laughter. The men followed him to the Davis Cabin, each eager to contribute to the general gossip concerning the child-man's prodigious strength. As my horse was straying toward the west side of the clearing I went to fetch him back and spancel him near the fort. I had secured him and was about to ride him back when a rifle cracked close at hand in the woods, and I heard a voice passionately jeering: "I 'low that cotched ye where ye lived, didn't it?" I drove my horse through the bushes and came upon a sickening scene. An Indian man and a squaw were seated on a horse. On the ground was another Indian. A glance told me he was dead from the small blue hole through the forehead. The man and woman on the horse remained as motionless as if paralyzed. Isaac Crabtree stood reloading his long rifle, his sallow face twisted in a smile of vicious joy. As he rammed home the charge I crowded my horse against him and sent him sprawling. Turning to the Indians I cried: "Ride away! Ride quick!" "We are friendly Cherokees!" cried the woman in that tongue. "That man there is called Cherokee Billy by white men." And she pointed to the dead man.