June 1791

Shawnee tribal lands, Northwest Territory

A rustling in the underbrush, no more than a few yards away, jolted Black Fox out of his sleep. Instinctively, he kept himself from sitting bolt upright immediately; the only sudden movement was that of his eyelids, though in the dim light of the early dawn his eyes did him little good. His nose was little help either, he soon discovered, when he realized that whatever it was out there was upwind from where he had set up camp for the night. As quickly as he could, without making a sound he began to slide his hand alongside his right leg toward the already-loaded pistol which was his ever-present companion.

The rustling grew louder. Taking the opportunity, he managed to reach his powder and prime the pan for the only shot he would probably be able to get off. He only hoped that it did not turn out to be a bear.

All at once the rustling became a rush of crashing and a deer with a young buck's budding antlers bounded out of the low bushes and straight across Black Fox's tiny camp. The deer stamped through the smoldering coals left over from the cooking fire of the night before and ran off with total abandon in the opposite direction.

Black Fox sat fully up, still holding the pistol, but relieved. He began to gather the coals and stoke them up to make a small breakfast before starting the day's walk. Fortunately, he thought, the reckless deer had only damaged the remains of his fire, and not the pile of furs that he hoped to sell later in the day.

After eating the last of his smoked venison and packing up his meager belongings, he headed south toward the white man's trading post with his pack horse in tow. The Americans had taken up more or less where the British had left off and, at least for his part, there didn't seem to be much difference between the two nations. None of the men with whom he traded seemed to regard him as anything better than an ignorant savage. He spoke their language almost as well as any of the white men he encountered and had even adopted many of their customs when it came to food and dress. But he had long since given up any thought that he would be accepted as an equal. His father, Crooked Tree, had told him as much just before he was killed, but in his youthful foolishness, Black Fox had disregarded his counsel.

Having adapted even as much as he had to the ways of the whites, Black Fox found more and more that his complexion, his familiarity with the land, and the other remnants of his life before taking up the lonely lot of an itinerant fur trader, earned him little respect with the Shawnee and other tribes among whom he plied his trade. Still, every time he passed the blackened, smoking shell of a white settler's house—one more victim of the longstanding clash of cultures—he reminded himself that his skin color did have certain advantages from time to time.

He arrived at the trading post with plenty of daylight to spare, only to find it deserted. As he started to unload and set up for the night, he remembered that there was a quirk about this particular trading post: they refused to trade every seventh day--the "Lord's Day," they called it. It was an odd custom, he thought, but no stranger, perhaps, than many of his own customs were to the white men.

The next morning, the sky dawned blood red. His mother would have called it an evil omen. Black Fox only worried that it meant he would have to walk to his next trading spot in the rain.

He was putting out his fire after breakfast when four men approached the trading post on horses. The one he recognized as Joshua Shelby dropped down from his horse and unlocked the only door to the rough-hewn, flat-roofed building where the traders would spread out their wares and haggle over prices.

Emerging from the door, Shelby said, "Wasekiseki. Hakiwisilaasamamo Waswasimamo."

It was slow and halting and the pronunciation was terrible, but Black Fox judged it, nonetheless, a valiant effort at trying to greet him in his own language. "Niwisilasimamo, Joshua Shelby," he replied. Shelby grinned from ear to ear, displaying an unsightly gap in his teeth.

Inside, Black Fox spread out his remaining furs on the table to which Shelby had directed him. It was rather late in the season for him to still have this many; they were of a very high quality, he thought, but the price he could get for them would depend on whether the whites still needed or wanted them.

Trading was slow that day, but by the middle of the afternoon, Black Fox had sold about half of his remaining store. That was at least as many as he had hoped to sell today; he knew could easily dispose of the rest once he crossed the river into Kentucky. He was almost done packing up when Shelby and another man approached him.

"Black Fox, this is Oliver Johnson. He wanted to ask you something," Shelby began. "You can go ahead, Johnson; he speaks English well."

"Well, what I wanted to ask," Johnson said, hesitantly, "was if there's gonna be another fight. We ain't forgot about the whippin' the army took last winter. Anything like that is in the works, I don't fancy bein' around for it. I was up at Red Rock Creek post t'other day and some of the men there swore that they heard some of your folk talkin' about a fight--a war even. I don't 'spose you know 'bout that?"

Black Fox had heard what he assumed must have been some of the same rumors. He also found it amusing that both Indian men and white men acted more like women when it came to spreading rumors. "I think talking of fighting always happens more than the actual fighting. I have heard these rumors, but I do not believe them. Your Governor Wilkinson across the river has sent his militia marching all around this area. The Shawnee know this and so do the other tribes. I think that neither the whites nor my people want another fight so soon. Little Turtle beat the soldiers; that is true. Can he do it again, when the white generals will come the next time with their eyes wide open and with more soldiers? These are questions I cannot answer. My people will not want to find the answer in the cries of their women and children after a defeat."

"That sounds like a longer way of saying that there is talk of a war," Shelby offered, after a tense silence.

Black Fox nodded in agreement. Those who wanted to believe war was lurking just over the next hill were not likely to be persuaded otherwise. Perhaps it had always been so, with white and Indians alike. He saw no need to stoke their existing fears by telling them that the warriors in the Shawnee and Miami villages he had visited recently seemed to be much better armed than he remembered—and that with muskets that looked too new to have been bartered from some backwoods trading post.

Before he set off down the trail toward the pelewa thiipi (the river that the whites called the "Ohio"), he discreetly counted the coins he had been keeping in a small pouch sewn inside his shirt. He had more than double what it should cost for the ferry across. Based on his previous encounters with the ferrymen, he hoped it would be enough. Casting a glance over his shoulder, Black Fox saw Joshua Shelby step out from under the awning of the trading post and raise his hand. Black Fox returned the gesture, wondering whether Joshua Shelby was the closest thing he had to a friend in the world.