As he waited, he thought through the dangers Loaf would surely have warned him of. Saving Kyokay would not be easy. If Umbo saved him by bodily preventing him from going up to the top of the falls, then Rigg wouldn’t have needed to drop all his pelts to try to save the boy from falling, and therefore Umbo—younger Umbo—wouldn’t have “seen” him push Kyokay from the cliff, and so Rigg wouldn’t have been forced to leave town in a hurry, and Umbo certainly wouldn’t have felt any need to go with him to make amends for having nearly gotten him mobbed, and . . .

A part of his mind insisted that none of that could possibly change, because—well, because it hadn’t. But they had made plenty of changes before, and as best they understood the rules of how this sort of thing worked, whoever made the change continued to exist, even if his own past was obliterated. But this change would be Umbo’s alone, so he was the only one who would be preserved.

It wasn’t till the next day—only a few hours before Leaky, or someone else, would catch a glimpse of Umbo jumping over the fence—that a boat came upriver and tied up.

“Not going all the way to Fall Ford,” said the pilot.

“How far then?” asked Umbo.

“Bear’s Den Crossing,” he said.

“Never heard of it,” said Umbo.

“I have,” said the pilot, looking irritated.

“Left bank or right?” asked Umbo.

“It’s Bear’s Den Crossing,” said the pilot. “If you don’t like which side of the river I tie up on, you can cross to the other side.”

“Oh, you mean like you can ford the river at Fall Ford?” asked Umbo.

The pilot did know the river top to bottom, so he got the snide joke. Fall Ford hadn’t had a usable ford in centuries, but nobody bothered to change the name. The pilot glowered. “Every smart remark just raises the price.”

“Then I’ll try to make it up to you by being useful on the trip,” said Umbo.

The pilot looked him up and down, sizing him up. “Slender arms.”

“I sure couldn’t pole the boat alone,” said Umbo. “But I know how to poke and push and lift a stick, and I also know how to sit the prow and watch for debris coming down and call a warning in plenty of time.”

“So you’ve made the voyage before.”

“Only once. Not enough to be an expert like you, sir,” said Umbo, “but there were many days of work, and I worked hard all those days.”

The pilot named a price, then, and promised some of it back if Umbo worked as he claimed. And that was that.