Nat was unaccustomed to riding a horse, especially for such long periods of time. In Philadelphia he could get to just about anywhere that he needed on foot almost as quickly (and far less conspicuously) as he would have on horseback. So when his guide, Black Fox, said that they should stop at a creek crossing to water the horses and eat their midday meal, he lodged no complaint.
He sat on the bank of the creek, watching the young Indian who had agreed to guide him into the wild lands that lay ahead of them. He was lean and tall, but Nat could tell that his fur trader’s life had made him muscular as well; he would be tough in a scrap, although Nat did not think he would have to find out for sure. Nat also noticed that he did not wear his hair in what seemed to be a traditional style for the Shawnee or other native people of the area. At the moment, the younger man’s raven black hair hung loose almost down to his shoulders, but during their travels Nat had seen him pull it back and tuck it under the cap that he sometimes wore. It was during this stop that Nat noticed something about Black Fox that he had not noticed before.
“Say, what happened to your hand?” he asked. The Indian had been cutting a piece of bread and Nat had noticed that the little finger on his left hand was nothing but a nub.
“Lost it.”
“I can see that,” Nat said in exasperation. “I’m curious how you lost it.”
“A fight.”
“Come on now. I’m just making conversation with you. What kind of fight was it? Was it a big man? What were you fighting about? I know you Indians love to tell a good story.”
Black Fox stuffed a piece of bread in his mouth along with a small piece of the cured meat that they had purchased at the last village. He chewed it slowly, staring at Nat all the while.
“He was big.”
“I knew it! And you were fighting over a woman too, right?”
“No. Food.”
“That seems a bit odd, even for you people. What kind of food is worth losing your finger over?”
“None, Mr. Aldridge. But you should try explaining that to a bear.”
“What? Wait a minute. You said . . .”
“I said he was big and he was. When I was a boy, long before I went to fur trading, I was fishing in a stream not far from my village. I did not know that the bear thought it was his fishing spot too. I did not see him and he did not see me until too late. He got my finger, but my family got a new bear hide to sleep on.”
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Nat let out a low whistle. “I’ll be . . .” was all he managed to say at first. “That’s quite a story. You managed to kill a bear with your fishing net and escaped with only one lost finger?” Nat was sure that his skepticism came through loud and clear, even if English was not Black Fox’s first language.
Black Fox rose and strode over to Nat. Standing over him, in one smooth motion, he pulled a knife from his sleeve and flicked it effortlessly into the ground between Nat’s legs. He then dropped to one knee and pulled up his shirt, revealing deep, parallel scars that ran the length of his torso.
“No, foolish white man. I killed the bear with that and he gave me these before he died.”
He lowered his shirt, yanked his knife out of the ground, and returned to his food. The only sound for the next several minutes was the rippling of the passing stream and the obnoxious chatter of a nearby mockingbird somewhere above them.
“It just seemed a little far-fetched; that’s all,” Nat eventually managed to say. Black Fox made no response.
He did not seem to trust Nat, and the feeling was more or less mutual. They had been to a handful of Indian villages already and Nat felt no closer to discovering the fate of the missing muskets than he was before. There were muskets around, but all the Indians seemed to be giving the same story: they bought them from a Shawnee camp a little further north and east that they had always traded with and that had always been well-respected among their people. Such a supply of muskets could not simply disappear without a trace; Nat was determined to find some clue--any clue--and follow it to the end.
Later that afternoon they arrived in one of the larger Indian villages in the area. Once again, they trotted out the story about purchasing their muskets from a particular Shawnee camp. Nat had almost had enough of that tale, but didn’t interrupt as Black Fox translated. Black Fox went into the chief’s wigwam to properly thank him for the village’s hospitality (little as it was, Nat thought) while Nat remained outside. He noticed that one of the men had set his musket against the outer wall of one of the other dwellings, and when he was sure no one was watching him too closely, he examined the musket, finding what he had suspected: it was stamped with the name and manufacturer of the muskets that had been lost from Kentucky. He was on the trail, then.
Later, as they rode further north, away from anything Nat identified as civilization, he tried to sift out what information his guide might have. “Seems strange that all of these villages seem to have the same story about their muskets, don’t you think?” he began.
“Perhaps, Mr. Aldridge.”
“They all keep talking about some camp north and east of here. At least I think I understood that part right, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did. In my time as a fur trader this is not unusual. Some camps will do things like this. There are other places you can look for clues and I will take you to them.”
Nat rode in silence the rest of the day. By the time they stopped for the night, his suspicion that his guide was not telling him everything had grown into almost a moral conviction. He resolved to confront him with what he found out about the muskets that day, but he was prepared to wait for the right time. The last thing he needed was to be left out here in the middle of nowhere, with potentially hostile Indians camped out in every meadow or copse of trees, and no guide to get him back into Kentucky. His gut had told him this Indian would be no different than the others; he usually followed his gut and hoped that his decision not to follow it this time didn’t cost him dearly.