Then Mike Fink led the poleboys over and joined the bucket brigade, and they slowed the fire down until the rain came and put it out.

That night, with all the soldiers drinking and singing, Mike Fink was sitting up sober as you please, feeling pretty good about finally being in the likker business for himself. Only one of the poleboys was with him now, the youngest fellow, who kind of looked up to Fink. The boy was setting there playing with the fuse that used to go into a gunpowder keg.

“This fuse wasn't lit,” said the poleboy.

“No, I reckon not,” said Mike Fink.

“Well, how'd the water get to boiling then?”

“Reckon Hooch had a few tricks up his sleeve. Reckon Hooch had something to do with the fire in the fort.”

“You knew that, didn't you?”

Fink shook his head. "Nope, just lucky. I'm just plain lucky. I just get a feeling about things, like I had a feeling about that gunpowder keg, and I just do what I feel like doing. "

“You mean like a knack?”

In answer, Fink stood up and pulled down his trousers. There on his left buttock was a sprawl of a tattoo, six-sided and dangerous-looking. "My mama had that poked on when I wasn't a month old. Said that'd keep me safe so I'd live out my whole natural life. " He turned and showed the boy the other buttock. "And that one she said was to help me make my fortune. I didn't know how it'd work, and she died without telling me, but as near as I can tell it makes me lucky. Makes it so I just kind of know what I ought to do." He grinned. I "Got me a flatboat now, and a cargo of whisky, don't I?"

“Is the Governor really going to give you a medal for killing Hooch?”

“Well, for catching him, anyhow, looks like.”

“I don't guess the Gov looked too bothered that old Hooch was dead, though.”

“Nope,” said Fink. “No, I reckon not. No, me and the Gov, we're good friends now. He says he's got some things need doing, that only a man like me can do.”

The poleboy looked at him with adoration in his eighteen-year-old eyes. “Can I help you? Can I come with you?”

“You ever been in a fight?”

“A lot of fights!”

“You ever bit off an ear?”

“No, but I gouged out a man's eye once.”

“Eyes are easy. Eyes are soft.”

“And I butted a man's head so he lost five teeth.”

Fink considered that for a few seconds. Then he grinned and nodded. “Sure, you come along with me, boy. By the time I'm through, there ain't a man woman or child within a hundred mile of this river who won't know my name. Do you doubt that, boy?”

The boy didn't doubt it.

In the morning, Mike Fink and his crew pushed off for the south bank of the Hio, loaded with a wagon, some mules, and eight kegs of whisky. Bound to do a little trading with the Reds.

In the afternoon, Governor William Harrison buried the charred remains of his second wife and their little boy, who had the misfortune of being in the nursery together, dressing the boy in his little parade uniform, when the room burst into flames.

A fire in his own house, set by no hand, which cut off what he loved the most, and no power on earth could bring them back.

Alvin Junior never felt small except when he was setting on the back of a big old horse. Not to say he wasn't a good rider– he and horses got along pretty good, they never throwing him and he never whipping them. It's just that his legs stuck way out on both sides, and since he was riding with a saddle on this trip, the stirrup had to be hiked up so far they punched new holes in the leather so he could ride. Al was looking forward to the day he growed up to be man-size. Other folks might tell him he was right big for his age, but that didn't amount to nothing in Alvin's opinion. When your age is ten, big for your age ain't nothing like being big.

“I don't like it,” said Faith Miller. “Don't like sendmg my boys off in the middle of all these Red troubles.”

Mother always worried, but she had good cause. All his life Al was kind of clumsy, always having accidents. Things turned out fine in the end, but it was nip and tuck a lot of the time. Worst was a few months ago, when the new millstone fell on his leg and gave it a real ugly break. It looked like he was going to die, and he pretty much expected to himself. Would have, too. Surely would have. Even though he knew he had the power to heal himself.

Ever since the Shining Man came to him in his room that night when he was six, Al had never used his knack to help himself. Cutting stone for his father, that he could do, cause it would help everybody. He'd run his fingers on the stone, get the feel of it, find the hidden places in the stone where it could break, and then set it all in order, just make it go that way; and the stone would come out, just right, just the way he asked. But never for his own good.

Then with his leg broke and the skin tore up, everybody knowed he was bound to die. And Al never would've used his knack for fixing things to heal himself, never would've tried, except old Taleswapper was there. Taleswapper asked him, why don't you fix your leg yourself? And so Al told him what he never told a soul before, about the Shining Man. Taleswapper believed him, too, didn't think he was crazy or dreaming. He made Al think back, think real hard, and remember what the Shining Man said. And when Al remembered, it come to him that it was Al himself who said that about never doing it for himself. The Shining Man just said, “Make all things whole.”

Make all things whole. Well, wasn't his leg part of “all things”? So he fixed it, best he could. There was a lot more to it than that, but all in all he used his own power, with the help of his family, to heal himself. That's why he was alive.

But during those days he looked death in the face– and he wasn't as scared of it as he thought he'd be. Lying there with death seeping through his bone, he began to feel like his body was just a kind of lean-to, a shelter he lived in during bad weather till his house was built. Like them shanty cabins new folks built till they could get a log house set up proper. And if he died, it wouldn't be awful at all. Just different, and maybe better.

So when his ma went on and on about the Reds and how dangerous it was and how they ought get killed, he didn't give no heed. Not because he thought that she was wrong, but because he didn't much care whether he died or not.

Well, no, that wasn't quite so. He had a lot of things to do, though he didn't know yet what they were, and so he'd be annoyed about dying. He sure didn't plan to die. It just didn't fill him up with fear like it did some folks.

Al's big brother Measure was trying to get Ma to ease off and not get herself all worked up. “We'll be all right, Mama,” said Measure. “All the trouble's down south, and we'll be on good roads all the way.”

“Folks disappear every week on those good roads,” she said. “Those French up in Detroit are buying scalps, they don't never let up on that, don't matter one bit what Ta-Kumsaw and his savages are doing, it only takes one arrow to kill you–”

“Ma,” said Measure. “If you're a-scared of Reds getting us, you ought to want us to go. I mean there's ten thousand Reds at least living in Prophetstown right across the river. It's the biggest city west of Philadelphia right now, and every one of them is a Red. We're getting away from Reds by going east–”

“That one-eyed Prophet don't worry me,” she said. “He never talks about killing. I just think you shouldn't–”

“It don't matter what you think,” said Pa.

Ma turned to face him. He'd been slopping the hogs out back, but now he was come around to say good-bye.

'Don't you tell me it don't matter what I–"

“It don't matter what I think, neither,” said Pa. “It don't matter what anybody thinks, and you know it.”