"Mike Fink," he said, "you‘re the best fighter on the Ohio, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and any other river in the US. of A.!"

"I don‘t want to brag," Mike said, " but I guess l am." He put the feather in his cap and shook Carpenter‘s hand. The two felt so friendly that they promised they would die for each other, if they absolutely had to.

In between fighting and friendship-making, which amounted to the same thing, Mike learned how to be a regular keelboat man. He learned how to ram a long pole down to the bottom of the river and push the boat upstream against the current. He learned to watch out for sandbars or snags that could stop the boat. He could see a dead tree floating in the water almost before it died and dropped there.

Mike became the best keelboat man anywhere. Up and down the rivers he went, from Pittsburgh to St. Louis and to New Orleans. He could load up a boat with cargo in less time then it took the other boatmen to drink a cup of hard cider, and usually they drank so fast, they swallowed before they even got the cider to their mouths. Mike himself could drink so fast that he only swallowed in between two-gallon sips.

By the time Mike had been on the river awhile, he had so many red feathers in his cap that he threw most of them away, for fear people would think he was a bonfire.

There were lazy times on the river, too, when Mike and his friend Carpenter would stretch out on the deck and watch the sun go by, or fish for catfish, or sit on shore at night studying a campfire.

On one of those lazy days, Mike felt the need for a little extra target practice. He took a tin cup full of cider, handed it to Carpenter, and said, "Pace off about sixty yards and set that cup on your head. I’ll shoot it off"

Carpenter looked a bit nervous, but he did as he was told. Mike aimed Bang-All and fired. The bullet whistled through the cup‘s brim, not spilling a drop. Carpenter took his turn with the same trick. He hit the cup on Mike‘s head, but he spilled the cider.