Then, tilting his head in birdlike fashion, the white-haired man studied the prisoners and demanded:

“What were you two doing around that boathouse?”

Mr. Brewster kept his lips tightly closed, his eyes staring straight back toward the frothy wake from the cruiser’s propeller. Biff, too, ignored the question.

“Maybe you’d talk if I gave you a drink of water,” the scrawny man suggested, “and maybe I ought to toss you in that big drink out there”—he gestured toward the river—“and let you try to swim ashore. You wouldn’t get far, tied like that.”

The stolid silence of the Brewsters annoyed the white-haired man. His voice rose to a still higher pitch:

“I mean it, every word of it! I’ll find a way to make you talk, as sure as my name is Joe Nara!”

Biff almost gulped the name, “Joe Nara!” before he caught himself. Then he heard his father speak calmly in reply.

“If you are really Joe Nara,” stated Mr. Brewster, “I’ll tell you all you want to know. Only I don’t believe that you are Joe Nara.”

Oddly, the wizened man’s anger faded. His own tone became even as he asked, “And why wouldn’t I be Joe Nara?”

“Joe Nara is a husky chap,” returned Mr. Brewster, “with dark hair, a bit gray, but not white. He’s tough, but he doesn’t get angry and excited. He has too good a sense of humor.”

Biff saw a twinkle in the wizened man’s eyes. The scrawny face relaxed in a genuine smile. In a soft, faraway tone, he asked, “And who told you all that?”

“Joe Nara’s partner, Lew Kirby, before he died.”

“So Lew is dead. I was afraid of that.”

As he spoke, the wizened man’s expression became very sorrowful. He gestured to Ubi, and the Indian cut the crude ropes that bound the prisoners.

“I am Joe Nara,” the white-haired man said. “I’ve grown a lot older in the years since I saw Lew Kirby last. Kind of lost my sense of humor, too, living upriver with nobody but Indians to talk to. What’s your name?”

“Tom Brewster. And this is my son Biff.”

Mr. Brewster extended his own hand, palm up. Old Joe Nara slapped his own hand palm downward, meeting Mr. Brewster’s with a solid whack, followed by a 

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