"I've been giving thought to pulling up stakes. There's a different cabin I know where nobody'd never find us."

The boy understands his meaning perfectly.

"Downriver a few miles."

"Why?"

"Change of scenery."

"I like it here."

"I know it. But sometimes a body gets too comfortable."

The boy chooses not to press but hopes that he will have just one more opportunity to address his work with the handsaw before his father takes him away downriver to some secluded place from which he may not return alive if at all. Another two or three inches on the one side and he'll be free to do as he pleases forever and ever, unburdened by this man and his desires and unburdened even by his own infernal accidental fortune of six thousand dollars, which he has already done his best to wash his hands of to no apparent avail.

"It ain't like me to run," says the man later in the boat, offhand and out of the blue, fundamentally to himself but in the boy's presence and as if, having considered some course of action all the day long, he is now about finished persuading himself to pursue it. The boy takes this for a good sign but vows to redouble his efforts with the handsaw the instant he gets an opportunity.

While they watch, the corpse of a mule comes sagging down the river on the current, miraculously holding to the channel where the water is deep and fast and it can travel without hanging up on rocks or snags or mudflats. High upon its haunch presides a funereal black buzzard, silent and evilly intent, its wings half spread and its shoulders hunched and its talons hooked into flesh like some great grim angel of death. "I'm going upriver," says the man, and the boy does not ask why for he is relieved by the direction and eager to be locked safely inside the cabin just this one last time.

"I TOLD YOU I'd waste no money of mine on your pipedream." Will, not in the least hesitant about making himself clear to his brother.

"You'll pay."

"I won't. I told you." Looking out the window.

"Before I'm through you will."

The brother returns his attention to his immediate problem. "And what on earth might you mean by that?"

"You know what."

"Are you threatening me?"

"A body could say so."

Will rises to his feet and slams shut his desk drawer. "I see you're continuing to get smarter by the day."

His brother, slumped in the chair opposite as if he has grown there like some man-shaped fungus, moves not at all.

"What do you have to gain by threatening me?"

"I'd say it's more in the line of a bargain."

"You'd say that."

"I would."

"Then it's a poor bargain and I'll have none of it."

"You ain't even heard it."

"Where does that leave you?"

"You ain't even heard it."

"I've heard enough."

"No." Eyeing his brother. There is a good deal of sincerity in his look and no belligerence whatsoever, a combination that may as well be calculated to take Will off guard. "I don't mean you no harm."

"How practical of you."

"I don't."

"How foresighted."

"Honest. I been thinking about telling the Judge where his money's been going is all."

"I see," says Will. "You've been thinking." He sits again, incredulous.

"Where's the harm in telling? Ain't honesty the best policy?"

"So they say."

"I don't reckon the Judge'll be as happy with you as you've been with yourself."

"Or as happy as you've been with me," says Will.

"I ain't ungrateful."

"No. You're not ungrateful. You're just stupid and self-destructive."

"He'll cut you off once he knows. I know that."

"And where do you suppose that will leave you?"

"Same place I always been."

"Only worse."

"Maybe so."

"You'll have nothing."

"I can tolerate it. How about you?"

Will does not flinch. "The Judge isn't my sole support. Far from it."

"Is that a fact?"

"Absolutely. Most of what I get from him I steal by cunning."

Finn stirs in his chair.

"And every cent of that I give to you."

"Pshaw. You could take more anytime you want."

"There's only so much leeway."

"There's plenty, I bet."

"I'm only so smart."

"You're smart enough."

"Believe what you like. Do as you see fit. And at the end of the day, any hours I'd have spent managing his affairs I'll spend on some other paying client. No harm done."

Finn takes a deep breath and holds it in for a moment, cogitating. "You'll be disowned." As if he's drawn slow aim and fired. "Just like me."

"Which I've risked from the beginning."

"I reckon you have."

"On your behalf."

"I appreciate it."

"All he needs to do is take a close look at the ledgers."

"He won't."

"He could."

"He don't."

"He might. And I guess if I could take that chance all these years on your behalf, I can take one more on my own. Whatever you care to offer up."

Finn cannot tell if his brother is working on his loyalty or his self-interest, but he sees that the time has come to alter the terms of his argument. "They'll steal him. The boy." Sad-eyed and abject as a mourner.

"Unless you intervene."

"First chance they get."

"Tell me," raising one hand and speaking to him not like his brother but like his attorney, for this is the relation between them most likely to produce an agreeable outcome. "So they take him. Exactly where is the harm in that?"

"He belongs to me."

"You've been something less than assiduous about exercising your parental rights."

"That don't matter."

"It will in a court of law."

"All the same." With dirty fingers he picks at something on the knee of his trousers. "He's mine."

"Here's an idea. If Thatcher and the widow feel so strongly, why not be generous and let them enjoy the use of him for a while?"

"He's all I've got."

"Maybe so. But if you force their hand they'll pursue that lawsuit just as vigorously as they can and take him away for good. No doubt about it. And then you'll have nothing."

"Nothing but you."

"Free legal advice and a roof over your head. You could do worse."

"I have done worse."

"I know it."

"You know and you don't know."

Will cocks an eyebrow.

"It don't matter either way. I'm back on the straight and narrow."

"I can see that."

"That's why I want the boy. Bring him up right."

"You'll get your chance."

"I know it."

"It'll happen."

"By and by."

"Give it time."

"I will."

WHEN FINN RETURNS to the squatter's shack he finds the place transformed by violence. The door is ruined, battered in and splintered all over with ax strokes, hanging listless as laundry from one bent hinge. Before entering he turns by reflex and scans the area close by, the treeline and the riverbank and the patch of grass outspread before the cabin door. Though he finds sign there of neither boat nor intruder, the part of his brain capable of detecting a single fish aslumber in dark water discerns a strangeness in the lay of the dooryard grass and he bends upon one knee to judge for certain. Sure enough there is a trail flattened between the door and the riverbank, as of some heavy thing dragged. He leaves it unexplored for now, this shining path of green within darker green, and pokes his head into the cabin to find the dirt floor soaked with blood.

"You Huck."

No answer comes from within or without, and the single room lies empty not just of his son but of his own every earthly possession. Food and fishlines and matches, skillet and coffeepot and jug. All of them gone. Only the ax remains, bloodied all over and with a bit of hair stuck to the back of it as if from a blow to the boy's head, and from this significantly ostentatious detail he deduces not Huck's actual plan for counterfeiting his own murder and stealing away under cover of it, but a different and more cunning plan altogether-this one contrived by Judge Thatcher and the widow Douglas.

"They think they can steal him that easy," he says to himself as he rubs the axhead clean with the heel of his hand. "They think I'll give him up for dead like a goddamn beast." He plucks away the tuft of hair and brushes it off on his pantleg.