on the trail of a noted renegade, and when, after many long days of
patient watching and persistent tracking, the outlaw paid an awful
penalty for his bloody deeds, these lone and silent men were friends.

Powerful in build, fleet as deer, fearless and tireless, Wetzel's
peculiar bloodhound sagacity, ferocity, and implacability, balanced by
Jonathan's keen intelligence and judgment caused these bordermen to
become the bane of redmen and renegades. Their fame increased with
each succeeding summer, until now the people of the settlement looked
upon wonderful deeds of strength and of woodcraft as a matter of
course, rejoicing in the power and skill with which these men
were endowed.

By common consent the pioneers attributed any mysterious deed, from
the finding of a fat turkey on a cabin doorstep, to the discovery of a
savage scalped and pulled from his ambush near a settler's spring, to
Wetzel and Jonathan. All the more did they feel sure of this
conclusion because the bordermen never spoke of their deeds. Sometimes
a pioneer living on the outskirts of the settlement would be awakened
in the morning by a single rifle shot, and on peering out would see a
dead Indian lying almost across his doorstep, while beyond, in the
dim, gray mist, a tall figure stealing away. Often in the twilight on
a summer evening, while fondling his children and enjoying his smoke
after a hard day's labor in the fields, this same settler would see
the tall, dark figure of Jonathan Zane step noiselessly out of a
thicket, and learn that he must take his family and flee at once to
the fort for safety. When a settler was murdered, his children carried
into captivity by Indians, and the wife given over to the power of
some brutal renegade, tragedies wofully frequent on the border, Wetzel
and Jonathan took the trail alone. Many a white woman was returned