Lewis was now twenty-three: a borderman through and through and skilled almost beyond all others. He was not of the "long" type; instead, he was five feet eight inches; darker in complexion than his swarthy brothers, pitted with small-pox scars, broad-shouldered, thick in body, arms and legs, fiery black-eyed, and proud of his deeply black hair that when combed out fell in rippling waves to his calves. All the brothers had long hair, black and oiled and curled. His was the longest; when not loose it formed a bunch under his fur cap. He grew to be the most famous of the West Virginia Indian-fighters. In daring, and in trail-reading, he won first place. He practiced reloading his thirty-six-inch barreled, flint-lock patch-and-ball rifle on the run (no easy job), and by this trick out-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.