Hunting in Today‘s Africa , which fell open to a black-and-white photo of the dreaded tsetse fly.

He closed the book and replaced it on the shelf. So far as he knew Old Sam had never left Alaska.

The next shelf was dedicated to Captain Cook, including a venerable edition of Cook‘s three-volume log bound in worn maroon leather with gilt titles, a copy of Tony Horwitz‘s BlueLatitudes, a favorite of Jim‘s, and the Cook biography by Alistair MacLean. The next shelf was reserved for Alaskana, autobiographies by Wickersham and Gruening and Hammond, histories of the war in the Aleutians and the gold rush, bios of Bush pilots. He opened one at random and found dog-eared pages with copious notes in the margins.

He‘d never thought of Old Sam as a reader. The old man had always seemed to him to be more a man of action than reflection. He shrugged and replaced the volume on the shelf. No law said a man couldn‘t be both.

A chrome-legged dining room table and chairs that would have been new around 1957 took up the center of the room. Overhead was a narrow sleeping loft, reached by a homemade ladder whose uprights were worn smooth from long use. It felt very familiar, and after a moment Jim knew why. Although older and smaller, Old Sam‘s cabin looked a lot like Kate‘s old cabin. Well, why not? Old Sam must have known Kate‘s father. They might even have helped put up each other‘s cabins. Why screw with a floor plan that worked.

This cabin had electricity, though, and a plug-in coffeepot. Jim poured a fluid the viscosity of thirty-weight into a boat mug he found on a shelf and added a precautionary dose from the can of evaporated milk standing providentially near to hand.

The sun was warm on his face as he walked down the dock. The current was running strongly downstream, where other cabins and houses and docks could be seen with their toes in the swift-running water. Old Sam moved over on the bench, which creaked, but not alarmingly. Jim sat down next to him and crossed his heels on the edge of the dock. He took a sip of coffee and hid his wince. Meant to say yesterday, aren‘t you supposed to be down Alaganik way this time of year? I would be if the goddamn fish hawks would call an opener.

Who‘s minding the Freya?

That Jeppsen boy and the Lestinkof girl Kate wished on me.

Who‘s minding them?

Got her anchored up just offshore of Mary‘s site. She‘s keeping an eye out. The two men contemplated the passing river in companionable silence. A pair of eagles chittered from the top of a nearby scrag, three ravens chased each other in a madcap spiral, and a lone seagull zeroed in on the carcass of a spawned-out salmon cast up on a nearby sandbank. Almost immediately half a dozen other seagulls materialized to fight for their share.

Martin Shugak went by in an ancient, paintless dory powered by a seventy-fivehorsepower Mercury outboard engine that looked brand-new. He raised a hand in greeting to Old Sam, saw Jim and hunched his shoulders and looked the other way. Nice outboard, Old Sam said.