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it.
    â€œHang’m!”
    â€œBash’m!”
    â€œCaw-caw-caw!”
    I stood up and spit angrily. I didn’t enjoy being scared out of my wits by a flock of common crows, but it was surprising to meet up with birds that spoke the English language.
    â€œHey, Glorietta!” I yelled. “Come on back! It’s nothing! Only a bunch of infernal crow birds!”
    She was almost out of sight around a bend in the creek. But she stopped without looking back at me. Something farther along had caught her eye. She stood fixed where she stood.
    â€œWiley!” she yelled. “Look! Look what I found!”
    The morning sun flashed off her glasses, and then she disappeared around the bend.
    So I ran along the creek bed too. And the birds followed along, caw-cawing.
    It wasn’t a moment before I cut around the bend and hauled up short.
    Before me, not fifty yards off, stood a riverboat.
    It stood sunk and dry on the creek bottom. Mooring lines swung like strands of a great spiderweb from the trees along the bank. Weeds and creepers had grown up through the huge side wheels. I looked at the empty pilot-house windows, streaked with dirt. I’d never seen such a lonely and forlorn boat. You could tell it had once been pluckish and grand; it was fancied up with lacy-cut woodwork. But now the white paint hung in peels and tatters like a snake shedding its skin.
    Glorietta was out of breath when we joined up and stepped closer. The crows fluttered down, taking perches like vultures on the crown of the smokestack.
    I gave a shout. “Hello, the boat!”
    Silence. We moved nearer and I called again.
    â€œNo one there,” Glorietta said.
    â€œMust be. Someone taught those crows to speak.” I tried again, cupping my hands. “Anybody here?”
    â€œFool Killer!” The big he-crow was at it again.
    We made tracks along the flat hull and looked up at the wooden nameplate hanging on the side of the pilot-house. The weathered gold letters gave me a start, and Glorietta too.
    It was the Phoenix.
    Grandpa’s boat.

7
    THE FOOL KILLER
    Glorietta ran back to fetch Pa and Ma. A splintery old gangplank stretched between the creek bluff and the middle deck, and I walked aboard.
    â€œGrandpa?” I called out. “Grandpa, it’s me—Wiley.”
    The deck was gritty under my feet. Windblown dirt covered everything and was piled up like sand dunes against the cabins. I saw footprints. Lots of them, going and coming and scuffled about in the dust. They struck me as almighty fresh.
    â€œGrandpa!”
    I had no more than got the word out of my mouth when a hand snatched me by the collar, jerked me off my feet, and held me aloft like a kicking rabbit.
    â€œCuss’d little varmint!” came a dry whisper at my ear. “What for you sneaking around here?”
    He twisted me around to take a closer look. I gazed back at a pair of mean, deep-sunk little eyes and a mouthful of yellow teeth. He was tall and dreadfully skinny—as if he had the dry wilts. Stringy red hair shot down from under the brim of his floppy hat. He had a long horse-face and long bare feet. He was dressed in rags.
    My heart was banging so loud he must have been able to hear it. I swallowed hard and managed to say, “This is my grandpa’s boat.”
    â€œAin’t no grandpas around here.”
    â€œThen reckon I better be going. If you’ll kindly put me down.”
    Those deep eyes of his didn’t blink any more’n a lizard’s.
    â€œWho are you?” I muttered.
    It was an eternity before he answered. Finally, in that whispery voice of his, he said, “The Fool Killer.”
    I think I stopped breathing. As far back as I could remember I’d heard tales of the Fool Killer. He was supposed to carry a bur-oak club on his shoulder and wander the countryside searching for fools. He’d smite them on the head. He was always barefoot, and he had such a long jaw he