ver, his chest a
throbbing ache.

He was still staring when a door creaked behind him.

Jimmy trembled. A tingling fear went through him, for he found it hard
to realize that the disk had swept around the bend out of sight. To his
overheated imagination it continued to fill all of the sky above him,
overshadowing the shantyboat, making every sound a threat.

Sucking the still air deep into his lungs, Jimmy swung about.

Uncle Al was standing on the deck in a little pool of sunlight, his
gaunt, hollow-cheeked face set in harsh lines. Uncle Al was shading his
eyes too. But he was staring up the river, not down.

"Trouble, young fella," he grunted. "Sure as I'm a-standin' here. A
barrelful o' trouble--headin' straight for us!"

Jimmy gulped and gestured wildly toward the bend. "It came down _over
there_, Uncle Al!" he got out. "Pigtail saw it, too! A big, flying--"

"The Harmons are a-comin', young fella," Uncle Al drawled, silencing
Jimmy with a wave of his hand. "Yesterday I rowed over a Harmon jug line
without meanin' to. Now Jed Harmon's tellin' everybody I stole his
fish!"

Very calmly Uncle Al cut himself a slice of the strongest tobacco on the
river and packed it carefully in his pipe, wadding it down with his
thumb.

He started to put the pipe between his teeth, then thought better of it.

"I can bone-feel the Harmon boat a-comin', young fella," he said, using
the pipe to gesture with. "Smooth and quiet over the river like a
moccasin snake."

Jimmy turned pale. He forgot about the disk and the mushrooming water
spout. When he shut his eyes he saw only a red haze overhanging the
river, and a shantyboat nosing out of the cypresses, its windows
spitting death.

* * * * *

Jimmy knew that the Harmons had waited a long time for an excuse. The
Harmons were law-respecting river rats with sharp teeth. Feuding wasn't
lawful, but murder could be made lawful by whittling down a lie until it
looked as sharp as the truth.

The Harmon brothers would do their whittling down with double-barreled
shotguns. It was easy enough to make murder look like a lawful crime if
you could point to a body covered by a blanket and say, "We caught him
stealing our fish! He was a-goin' to kill us--so we got him first."

No one would think of lifting the blanket and asking Uncle Al about it.
A man lying stiff and still under a blanket could no more make himself
heard than a river cat frozen in the i