The Skeleton Scout

# THE SKELETON SCOUT; OR, THE BORDER BLOCK

By Major Lewis W. Carson (Beadle and Adams, 1870)

This frontier adventure opens on the Wabash River during the era of Tecumseh. Indians under a chief stake out a fortified log cabin and stockade belonging to Matthew Floyd, a fur company agent and staff officer to Governor Harrison. Their observation is interrupted by Seth Spink, an eccentric, extraordinarily tall Yankee (six feet seven) who arrives riding a log downriver. Captain William Floyd, the agent's son, encounters Spink at the shore and eventually invites him inside, where he meets Madge Carlisle, Floyd's beautiful cousin living in the wilderness. Spink's crude, comedic dialect and exaggerated appetite contrast sharply with the genteel household inhabitants. The household also includes Phillis, an outspoken enslaved housekeeper, whom Spink provokes with jests. Floyd mentions recent peaceful relations with local Shawnees, though Spink expresses skepticism about the Prophet's trustworthiness—a prescient concern given the narrative's ominous opening.