'll find
logs and tie 'em together."

They did. They found two logs, lashed them together with grape-vine,
and half swimming, half paddling, launched out. Shortly after noon
they landed below Wheeling, and were safe.

The people of Wheeling were much astonished to see them toil in. Long
before they had reached home they were heroes. They received many
compliments upon their work. And it goes without saying that there was
a great ado over them in the Wetzel cabin, which had given them up for
lost.

Nine years later Father Wetzel was killed by the Indians. He and a
companion had been down river in a canoe, hunting and fishing.
Neighbors had warned him that this was risky business, but he only
laughed. Now he and his partner were paddling upstream, along shore,
about eight miles below Wheeling. From the brush a party of Indians
hailed them and ordered them to land.

"What! Surrender to you, you yaller varmints?" old man Wetzel rapped.
"Not whilst we live."

They turned the canoe and paddled fast, but the guns spoke and he
received a ball through his body. He felt that he was wounded to death.

"Lie down in the bottom," he gasped. "That'll save you. I'm gone
anyway, but I can get us out o' range."

He acted as target, while paddling his best. They made the opposite
shore, at the mouth of Captina Creek, and he died at Baker's Bottom
settlement, a short distance above. He was buried here. For some
years a stone marked his grave. It said, only: "J. W., 1787."

At the Wetzel home the Wetzel boys vowed relentless war against all
Indians. Their hatchets should never be dropped until not a redskin
roamed the woods.

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-