Another story, of a rather different character, is told to illustrate the recklessness of the man. It occurred on the Mississippi river. A negro had come down to the bank to gaze at the passing boat, who had the singularly projecting heel peculiar to some races of Africans. This peculiarity caught Mike's eye, and so far outraged his ideas of symmetry that he determined to correct it. Accordingly he raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired, carrying away the offensive projection. The negro fell crying murder, believing himself mortally wounded. Mike was apprehended for this trick, at St. Louis, and found guilty, but we do not hear of the infliction of any punishment. A writer in the Western Monthly Review for July, 1829, in a letter to the editor of that magazine, asserts that he has himself seen the records of this case in the books of the court, and that Mike's only defense was that "the fellow couldn't wear a genteel boot and he wanted to fix it so that he could." One of his feats with the rifle which Mike most loved to boast of occurred somewhere in Indiana. Mike's boat was lying to, from some cause, and he had gone ashore in pursuit of game. "As he was creeping along with the stealthy tread of a cat, his eye fell upon a beautiful buck, browsing on the edge of a barren spot a little distance off. Repriming his gun and picking his flint, Mike made his approach in his usual noiseless manner. At the moment he reached the spot from which he meant to take aim, he observed a large Indian intent upon the same object, advancing from a direction little different from his own. Mike shrank behind a tree with the quickness of thought, and keeping his eye fixed upon the hunter, waited the result with patience. In a few moments the Indian halted within fifty paces and leveled his piece at the deer. Instantly Mike presented his rifle at the body of the savage, and at the moment smoke issued from the gun of the latter, the bullet of Fink passed through the red man's breast. He uttered a yell and fell dead at the same instant with the deer. Mike re-loaded his rifle and remained in covert some minutes to ascertain whether any more enemies were at hand. He then stepped up to the prostrate savage, and having satisfied himself that life was extinct, turned his attention to the buck, took from the carcass the pieces suited to jerking and retraced his steps in high glee to the boat."[6] He used to say that was what he called "killing two birds with one stone."