I've been staying with these Indians who found my little camp and took me in my buckskin pants and beaded vest back to their village. I don't really understand their language, but they're nice to me, so here I've been staying. I tried at first to eat animals I caught myself, thinking that maybe if I knew for sure that it wasn't people I'd be able to eat it. I couldn't. After puking up my meals for a couple days in a row, I decided that I'd just live on whatever non-meaty foods I could trade for.

I found out that fresh milk doesn't taste thick and sweet. By asking around, I finally figured out what kind of milk does. Human. So I don't drink milk anymore either, because the thought of it makes me sick, like anything else Oliver tried to give me that was really people. From the white settlements I've talked to under the lie that I'm actually an English-speaking Indian, know that our country is now one of states, the year is 1807, and it's getting dangerous these days to be someone like me in a state that's a certain point South.

So, I decide I'm going to go to the frontier in the farthest West of the country. First, someone like me, who isn't white, needs to figure out a way to get from here to St. Louis, which is where the settlers going West all go, according to everyone else around here. So, I get a map. The map tells me I need to go to the Ohio river and take that to the Missouri territory, and from there, I can go West to Oregon territory.

So, I hiked further South to the river, in an effort to find a boat. It's the middle of summer and it's really hot, so when I see a big field of white cotton that among other things has a boy running back and forth with a water bucket and a dock in the river that's being loaded with cotton bales as fast as this guy at this machine can crank 'em out and the others can press it into the baler, I stop. I wave my hand up like the others seem to be doing and a little boy with a bucket strapped to his back and a dipper in hand runs up to me. I drink and thank the kid and he nods quickly and takes off again. Huh. Maybe this wouldn't be a terrible way to live. Of course, among the slaves on this field, my light skin and straight-ish dark red hair stick out like a sore thumb.

Glancing around to make sure nobody is watching me, I slip off to the dock, where I am going to talk my way onto one of the boats going to St. Louis.

"Hey, hey, yeah, you." I get the attention of the man supervising the loading of the boat. "Official Cotton Inspector from this farm here, I'm here to take a look." The loaders have stopped their loading to look curiously at me, and I flash 'em a smirk and a wink and they all at once start agreeing that I am indeed the Cotton Inspector, Inspector of All Cotton-Hauling Boats On This Plantation. The one thing I find I've come to like about blacks over whites is that blacks always look out for those that need help. I guess when you're the bottom of society, you sort of feel compassion to those who are down. Whites are just mean to you when you're down.

The loading supervisor lets me onto the boat after shouting at the loaders to shut up and start their work again. I look at him and ask,

"Where's this boat going?"

"St. Louis, like all'a the boats here." is the answer I get. I recover fast and nod.

"Yeah, I know, I was just making sure you know, y'know?"

"Yer a bit of a mouthy one, ain't you?" he says. I shrug.

"Maybe, but I gotta stay with this boat all the way to St. Louis, and from there I'll go on to my next task, so you gotta tolerate me." I tell him. He looks me over really hard after I say that, and I stare straight ahead and as he goes behind me I cross my eyes and make a dumb grumpy face at the workers on the docks which gets the little water-boy giggling. Nobody is working now. I guess they want to see if this idea of mine really works.

"If yer part of this here plantation, why're you wearin' Indian clothes?" he asks me.

"So that people think I'm an Indian instead of a runaway when I'm making my way back here after my runs." I say like it's obvious. He goes 'hmph' and motions me into the airy storage area where I situate myself on top of a soft bale of cotton and lay back.

This is gonna be the easiest travel ever, all thanks to my skills in lying.