by Brand, Max
“If one of you makes a quick start, I’ll have to nail him,” said the voice of the unseen man. “I mean you, Shorty, if that’s your name! Gregor, get the hands right up over your head and try to grab that branch of the tree.”
Gregor was obedient. Bill Naylor decided that this was not the time to take chances — not just now. For there was no hysterical yell in the throat of the unknown man. There was no strain of excitement. There was simply the businesslike intonation of one who is in a familiar situation.
Then, as Naylor got his hands high, straight toward him out of the shadows stepped a big man whose wet slicker glistened like polished steel. He had a gun in either hand, and he held those guns low, about the level of his stomach. He held them with the careless mastery of one who knows his tools. He looked like a brother of big Duff Gregor, an older and a better-made brother. There was more in the shoulders and less in the hips. There was more in the flesh, and more under the flesh, so to speak.
And all at once Naylor cried out as realization struck him sick: “Jim Silver!”
Gregor seemed to feel the words in the pit of the stomach. He gasped, as he bent forward with a jerk: “Silver? Jim Silver?” And he twisted his head and stood there agape. “It’s Jim Silver!”
“I suppose it was in the books for me to meet you one day,” said Silver. “Straighten up and keep those hands high, Gregor.”
A faint, moaning sound came from the lips of Gregor, and Naylor thought it was like the whining of a young puppy exposed to weather such as this.
“Both of you face away from me,” said Silver. “Then you can put your hands down and shell out your guns. Move your hands slowly. I hope nobody’s going to be hurt.”
There was a quiet irony about this. Naylor made no mistakes. He deliberately, slowly, faced around, and then pulled out his pair of guns and dropped them one by one to the ground. Gregor had a gun, too, and got rid of it.
“Is that all boys?” asked Silver.
“Yes,” said Naylor.
And Gregor added: “Every scrap of everything.”
“Get back close to the fire,” said Silver. “You’re cold. Start in dressing. I don’t have to tell you that I’m watching all the time for queer moves.”
Naylor obeyed and began to dress. He was cold, and shuddering a little. He could see that Gregor was so frightened that he was almost incapable of getting the well-wrung clothes back on his body.
When Naylor was dressed, he said: “Well, Silver? What happens next?”
He was surprised to hear Silver say: “I don’t know. Just what do you suggest? What’s your name, again?”
“Naylor. Bill Naylor.”
“I think I’ve heard that name. What do you do?”
Naylor canted his head a little. It never had been very hard to face the lawmen, no matter what they knew about his record. It was not so good to tell things to this man, somehow. It made him feel a little homesick, uneasy in the spirit.
“I live on my face,” said Naylor.
“What do you mean by that?”
“You think over what you’ve heard about me, and you’ll understand.”
“You mean that you live by your wits?”
“What there are of them,” admitted Naylor.
Something happened to the gun that was occupied in covering him. It got a little steadier; it came to life; it took on a certain eager sentience.
“What’s your record?” asked Silver.
“Oh, anything you like. I’ve run chinks over the border and I’ve been a stick-up artist. A lot of things in between. Why?”
“Well,” murmured Silver. “Well, I don’t know. And on the road you and Gregor became friends?”
Naylor grunted.
Silver maintained a long silence. He sighed, at last, and said:
“I thought that Gregor was a rat. I was wrong. No man that has a friend like you, Naylor, is a rat.”
Naylor waited for the new qualification. There might be things lower than and worse than rats. But Silver was not supposed to be a fellow who scattered insults. There was something in the air that was strange.
“I’ve been in the jail in Crow’s Nest,” said Silver. “I know what it means to get out of it. Taxi got me out one night. It was a hard job. And if you’ve taken out Duff Gregor, you have brains and nerve, Naylor. That’s all.”
Naylor saw how the wind was blowing, but he could not believe his eyes and his ears. Big Duff Gregor had finished dressing. He stood straight and stiff by the fire, holding out his hands to the blaze rather as if he wanted to make a shadow for his face than to get warmth into his blood.
“Silver,” he began, “what I want to say is that that other deal — ”
“Don’t!” said Silver. “Don’t say it. I’d rather not talk with you, Gregor. I’d rather not hear from you.”
Gregor’s teeth clicked together in the ecstasy of his fear. He spoke not a word more. And a strange shame suffused the very soul of Naylor as he saw that Silver felt that this jail break had been managed by him, by Bill Naylor, simply because of the friendship that he bore for the big man.
Silver said: “I’ve wanted to know that Gregor was in jail, safely behind the bars. Perhaps another day I’ll be trying to put him where I’ve always thought that he belongs. But there’s nothing in the world as great as friendship. You’ve done a big thing, Naylor. You’ve done such a big thing that I’m not going to spoil it for you. Not to-night.”
Gradually Bill Naylor understood. He could not take in the whole thing at once. He had to feel his way through the idea little by little. Friendship is a sacred thing. According to the understanding of Silver, Naylor had done the greatest thing that can be done; he had offered his life for that of another; he had done it through sheer affection.
What would Silver feel if he knew that the money of Barry Christian had organized this whole deal?
Other things went through the mind of Bill Naylor. He could see that we judge others by what is inside us. That was how Jim Silver was judging Naylor — by what Silver would have been capable of in the same circumstances. He was judging Naylor, too, by what “Taxi” had done for him on that other, that famous night when Taxi took his friend out of the Crow’s Nest jail, through the lynching mob.
Something swelled in the throat of Naylor and tried to speak. He had to choke it down. It was a crazy impulse to confess the truth. It was an insane feeling that he could not bear to be misunderstood, even for the better, by this man Jim Silver.
But there was Duff Gregor, standing straight and stiff, as though his backbone were a rod of ice. One word of the truth about affairs would ruin Gregor. One word connecting his jail break with Barry Christian would be the destruction of Gregor.
On what a mine of danger Silver himself was standing, thought Naylor, with his greatest enemy restored to the world from death! Ignorance blindfolded Jim Silver. Perhaps that ignorance which he could not help would permit Christian to steal up and deliver the fatal blow.
Such a rage of contrasting emotions as troubled Naylor at this moment never had disturbed him before.
Then he heard men from the distant calling, answering one another faintly. Big Gregor heard the sounds, too, and started violently.
“It’s my duty,” said Silver, “to hold you both here until the men from Crow’s Nest come up and get the pair of you. Well, I’m not going to be true to my duty. They’re going to go over this little island with a fine-tooth comb. There’s no way you can get through them. I saw them scattering out to encircle the place. There must be fifty of them. But — well, suppose you drop into this bit of brush right here by the fire. I’ll throw my slicker over the brush to keep it in shadow. I’ll freshen the fire to make the flames dazzle ‘em a little. Here, take these guns. We don’t want ‘em in the way.”
CHAPTER XII
The Posse
BILL NAYLOR found himself crouched in the brush with the shadow of the slicker covering him. When he stooped his head lower, he could look out beneath the
skirt of the big rubberized garment and see the firelit scene.
Jim Silver had said only one thing in conclusion: “You’ve got your guns. Don’t use them. You’ve only got them in trust while I try to handle this crowd.”
And the voice of Gregor had whispered in savage answer: “Yeah, the first shot I’d take would be at you, you — ”
The whispered curses were things that Naylor could not believe. There is such a thing as gratitude in this world. There has to be. Otherwise everything falls to pieces; there is nothing that a man can catch hold of. Substance turns to air unless there is gratitude.
For instance, Barry Christian must feel gratitude for what had been done for him by Naylor. He must recollect that Naylor had picked him out of death in the river; he must remember that the fortune in his hands at the present moment had been placed there by Naylor at the cost of hair-raising peril endured. And again, it was for the sake of Barry Christian, not of Barry’s money, that Bill Naylor had met the jailbird Gregor and endured the peril of the river chase.
Those were the things that kept hunting through the mind of Naylor as he crouched in the brush while the new fuel was heaped on the fire by Jim Silver and the flames rushed upward, throwing shuddering waves of light through the green-and-brown obscurity of the trees. That is what the human soul is like — a dark, entangled jungle except where human faith and trust and affection illumine it. But such light could never penetrate the mind of Duff Gregor, Naylor felt.
Gregor was ready at this moment, at the first touch of danger, to crash a bullet through the heart of the man who had just spared him. And how great was the weight of the past to keep Silver from sparing Gregor. Next to Barry Christian, who was there in the world that Silver had so many reasons for hating?
It was a frightful turmoil that these things made in the mind of Naylor as he reflected upon them. He had the vast picture of Barry Christian in his mind’s eye, a huge brain, a mighty power, endless in resource and craft. That man was his friend. He had bought the friendship of Barry Christian by such acts as he never had performed for any other human being in all of his days. But Barry Christian was a force all for evil. And here was another man greater than Christian, more powerful in brain and in body, but weakened only because he could not help having faith and trust in the goodness of his fellow man. And all the force and the weight of Silver was on the side of good.
Well, it was not strange, thought Naylor, that there were people ready to die for Jim Silver!
For his own part — well, Naylor was a crook by taste, by life, and by training. Therefore he would cling to Barry Christian. But —
He had reached that point in his reflections when the noise of the men of Crow’s Nest came close to the place. They came stamping through the brush. The waves of their lantern light fought with the softer, wider waves of the firelight. They were scanning the trees and hunting every hole as they closed in. Then, with a sudden rush, they were through the trees, on one side of the clearing.
“We’ve got him!” yelled voices. “Hey! We’ve got Gregor! Up with your hands, Gregor! Up with ‘em!”
Gregor shuddered violently. Naylor looked out and saw the men swarming toward Jim Silver, who stood with his hands raised, very calm, saying:
“All right, boys!”
That reminded Naylor of what he had heard — that Silver was helpless against other honest men. That was why he had almost been pulled down by the Crow’s Nest mob once before.
They went in at Jim Silver with a savage eagerness, till one of them shouted:
“Wait a minute! It’s not Gregor! It’s the real Jim Silver!”
“You fool,” said another, “Silver’s gone away. This is Gregor. It’s gotta be Gregor!”
“It ain’t Gregor. It’s Jim Silver. Look at the scars on his face.”
“Gregor made up once before with them same scars.”
“He ain’t had time to make up with ‘em. Besides, it ain’t the same face. It’s Silver. Jim, I’m sorry we rushed you.”
“That’s all right,” said Jim Silver.
“If it’s Silver, where’s Parade?” asked another voice.
Silver whistled. And out of the darkness beyond the fire, in the direction from which the rest of the men of Crow’s Nest were hurrying toward the shouting, sounded a loud neighing. Brush crackled, and Naylor, his face close to the ground, peering out beneath the flap of the slicker, saw a great golden chestnut stallion leap into the circle of the firelight and rush for his master. Other men were in the way. They scattered with a yell of fear from the striking hoofs of the big horse. And now Parade stood at the side of Jim Silver, snorting, tossing his head, defying danger like one who had long been intimate with it.
Horses had always been to Naylor mere means of locomotion. Suddenly he saw that a horse could be to a man like a throne to a king.
Newcomers of the Crow’s Nest men, wet and panting with their laboring through the marshes, scratched and stung by breaking through the dense brush of the island, now came blundering into view with excited faces.
Gradually they realized that it was not the man they had hunted for.
Sheriff Dick Williams suddenly appeared, soaked, bedraggled, looking like a man who had risen newly from a sick bed. He went up to Silver and held out his hand.
“Are we shaking, Jim?” he asked. “Or do you keep hard feelings about the way Crow’s Nest treated you in the old days?”
Silver took the hand willingly.
“I’m not such a fool,” he said, and then took his stand right by the coat which covered the two fugitives. It was not the slicker; it was the great name and reputation of Silver that sheltered the pair, Naylor felt.
“Gregor got away,” said the sheriff. “I won’t have the reputation of a yellow dog in the county. You and Taxi open the jail like an old tin can; and now Gregor gets hold of keys somehow and simply unlocks three doors and walks out while I’m forward in my office. Gregor, and there was another gent with him — the gent that had horses waiting. It’s bad business for me, Jim!”
Silver nodded. Naylor, staring cautiously up into the face of the sheriff, wondered at the man. A few days ago he had been as straight and as honest as any man in the mountains. For his straightness and his courage he had been proverbial. Well, he was a bought man now — and he looked ten years older. He was bought, and Barry Christian’s money had turned the trick.
“Every man has a price,” Christian had said — every man except Jim Silver. But that was not true, either. Silver had been bought and paid for on this night. A mistaken kindness and sentiment had undone his good intentions and made him harbor a pair of rascals.
The men of Crow’s Nest seemed to forget about the man hunt that they had been engaged in.
A big fellow said: “Hey, Jim Silver; dog-gone me but it does me good to see you ag’in.”
“Thanks, Harry,” said Silver.
“But Gregor and the other are gone. We sure seen ‘em get onto the island, all right. Seen anything of ‘em, Jim?”
Silver said nothing. Another man cried, on the heel of the words of Harry:
“If he’d seen ‘em, wouldn’t he ‘a’ grabbed ‘em? If he’d seen Gregor living, we’d be looking at Gregor dead right now. Ain’t you got any sense, Harry?”
“We’ll have to scatter out, boys,” said the sheriff. “We’ll have to get across on the far side of the island. The current’s a lot shallower and weaker there. We can manage it, all right.”
“I’m wet enough for one night,” said Harry, leading one half of the sentiment with his loud voice. “Hey, Jim, what’s brought you back again to Crow’s Nest?”
“I’m not in Crow’s Nest, Harry,” said Silver in his deep and quiet voice.
“Aye, but ain’t you on your way? Tell us, Silver — you aint’ on your way to a wedding, are you?”
There was no answer from Silver. One of the other men said:
“Shut up, Harry. Don’t be such a loud mouth!”
Others grinned. T
heir grins were brief. It seemed that the respect in which they held Silver would not permit them to do otherwise than stare at the man with a consuming awe.
They began to divide into two parties. Half were returning to Crow’s Nest. Others would push on behind the sheriff, who was reminding them that the two fugitives were not mounted. If there were any luck, the pair would be picked up before the night ended. At any rate, there was no use in wasting time on this spot, since the island already had been searched.
“Are you coming on with us, Jim?” asked one.
“I’m staying here — for a while,” said Jim Silver.
Then the two parties separated, a few not too cheerful insults being hurled by the resolute followers of the sheriff after the heads of the weaker members who were returning home to warm beds.
The sheriff shook hands with Silver in farewell.
He said in a quiet voice: “Remember, Jim, we want you in Crow’s Nest. We’re not the only town that wants you, but no other town owes you so much. There’s no other crowd that you can count on so much, eh?”
“Thanks,” said Silver. “You look sick, sheriff.”
“Do I?” said the sheriff in a startled voice.
“You look as though you’d gotten up from a sick bed.”
“I’m all right,” said the sheriff. “Right as a trivet.”
“And the boy?” said Silver.
“Why,” murmured the sheriff, “he ain’t so good.”
“I heard that he needed a change of air,” said Silver. “I got word about it, and, as a matter of fact, Williams, I remembered that I have a good bit of cash that’s not working, and I wondered if you’d let me help you out with the boy.”
“You?” said the sheriff in a groaning voice. “You help me out, Jim?”
And he turned suddenly and fled as if wild wolves were after him. But Naylor understood. If the sheriff had waited one more day, he would have had honest money instead of a bribe to use.
Perhaps on that night, thought Naylor, the great event was not the freeing of Gregor or the great-hearted kindness of Jim Silver; it was the personal tragedy of the sheriff who had sold himself at the very moment when honest help was coming toward him.