“Shortly after this Bowie became involved in a difficulty with three desperadoes, who assaulted him with knives. He killed them all with the knife Black had made. After this, whenever anyone ordered a knife from Black he ordered it made ‘like Bowie’s’ which finally was shortened into ‘Make me a Bowie knife.’ Thus this famous weapon acquired its name. “Other men made knives in those days, and they are still being made, but no one has ever made ‘the Bowie knife’ except James Black. Its chiefest value was in its temper. Black undoubtedly possessed the Damascus secret. It came to him mysteriously and it died with him in the same way. He often told men that no one had taught him the secret and that it was impossible for him to tell how he acquired it.” The death of the secret is a part of the story. About 1838 Black’s wife died. Not long thereafter Black himself was confined to his bed by a fever. While he was down, his father-in-law, who had all along been jealous of Black’s growing reputation, met up with him and beat him over the head with a stick. Probably he would have killed him had not Black’s dog seized Shaw by the throat. As it was, inflammation set up in Black’s eyes and he was threatened with blindness. As soon as he had strength enough to travel he set out for expert treatment. A quack doctor in Cincinnati made him stone-blind. Black returned to Arkansas to find his little property gone and himself an object of charity. A Doctor Jones, father of the future Governor Jones, gave him a home. When Doctor Jones died, the blind man went to live with the son. “Time and again,” recalls Governor Jones, “when I was a boy he said to me that, notwithstanding his great misfortune, God had blessed him in a rare manner by giving him such a good home and that he would repay it all by disclosing to me his secret of tempering steel when I should arrive at maturity. “On the first day of May, 1870, his seventieth birthday, he said to me that he was getting old and could not in the ordinary course of nature expect to live a great while longer; and that, if I would get pen, ink and paper, he would communicate it to me and I could write it down. “I brought the writing material and told him I was ready. He said, ‘In the first place’--and then stopped suddenly and commenced rubbing his brow with the fingers of his right hand. He continued this for some minutes, and then said, ‘Go away and come back again in an hour.’ “I went out of the room, but remained where I could see him, and not for one moment did he take his fingers from his brow or change his position. At the expiration of the hour I went into the room and spoke to him. Without changing his position or movement, he said, ‘Go out again and come back in another hour.’