The frontier in 1777 produced white men so savage as to be men in name only.  These outcasts and renegades lived among the savages, and during thirty years harassed the border, perpetrating all manner of fiendish cruelties upon the settlers.  They were no less cruel to the redmen whom they ruled, and at the height of their bloody careers made futile the Moravian missionaries’ long labors, and destroyed the beautiful hamlet of the Christian Indians, called Gnaddenhutten, or Village of Peace.

And while the border produced such outlaws so did it produce hunters Eke Boone, the Zanes, the McCollochs, and Wetzel, that strange, silent man whose deeds are still whispered in the country where he once roamed in his insatiate pursuit of savages and renegades, and who was purely a product of the times.  Civilization could not have brought forth a man like Wetzel.  Great revolutions, great crises, great moments come, and produce the men to deal with them.

The border needed Wetzel.  The settlers would have needed many more years in which to make permanent homes had it not been for him.  He was never a pioneer; but always a hunter after Indians.  When not on the track of the savage foe, he was in the settlement, with his keen eye and ear ever alert for signs of the enemy.  To the superstitious Indians he was a shadow; a spirit of the border, which breathed menace from the dark forests.  To the settlers he was the right arm of defense, a fitting leader for those few implacable and unerring frontiersmen who made the settlement of the West a possibility.

And if this story of one of his relentless pursuits shows the man as he truly was, loved by pioneers, respected and feared by redmen, and hated by renegades; if it softens a little the ruthless name history accords him, the writer will have been well repaid.

Z. G.

The Spirit of the Border

Chapter I.

“Nell, I’m growing powerful fond of you.”

“So you must be, Master Joe, if often telling makes it true.”

The girl spoke simply, and with an absence of that roguishness which was characteristic of her.  Playful words, arch smiles, and a touch of coquetry had seemed natural to Nell; but now her grave tone and her almost wistful glance disconcerted Joe.

During all the long journey over the mountains she had been gay and bright, while now, when they were about to part, perhaps never to meet again, she showed him the deeper and more earnest side of her character.  It checked his boldness as nothing else had done.  Suddenly there came to him the real meaning of a woman’s love when she bestows it without reservation.  Silenced by the thought that he had not understood her at all, and the knowledge that he had been half in sport, he gazed out over the wild country before them.

The scene impressed its quietness upon the young couple and brought more forcibly to their minds the fact that they were at the gateway of the unknown West; that somewhere beyond this rude frontier settlement, out there in those unbroken forests stretching dark and silent before them, was to be their future home.