THE HUNDREDTH SKULL

In the early part of this century Bill Quick, trapper and frontiersman,
lived in a cabin on the upper Scioto, not far from the present town of
Kenton, Ohio. One evening when he returned from the hunt he found his
home rifled of its contents and his aged father weltering in his blood on
the floor. He then and there took oath that he would be revenged a
hundredfold. His mission was undertaken at once, and for many a year
thereafter the Indians of the region had cause to dread the doom that
came to them from brake and wood and fen,--now death by knife that
flashed at them from behind a tree, and the next instant whirled through
the air and was buried to the hilt in a red man's heart; now, by bullet
as they rowed across the rivers; now, by axe that clove their skulls as
they lay asleep.

Bill Quick worked secretly, and, unlike other men of the place and time,
he did not take his trophies Indian-fashion. The scalp was not enough. He
took the head. And presently a row of grinning skulls was ranged upon his
shelves. Ninety-nine of these ghastly prizes occupied his cabin, and the
man was confident that he should accomplish his intent. But the Indians,
in terror, were falling away toward the lakes; they were keeping better
guard; and ere the hundredth man had fallen before his rifle he was
seized with fatal illness. Calling to him his son, Tom, he pointed to the
skulls, and charged him to fulfil the oath he had taken by adding to the
list a hundredth skull. Should he fail in this the murdered ancestor and
he himself would come back to haunt the laggard. Tom accepted the trust,
but everything seemed to work against him. He never was much of a hunter