CHRISTIAN, walking jauntily up and down in front of the little cabin in the woods near the town of Kendal, said: “Now, Bill, it’s time that we should begin to do something.”
Bill Naylor sat on a stump whittling at a piece of soft white pine which furled away from the edge of his sharp knife in translucent slivers. He squinted at his whittling as though he were trying to make sure that the stick was shaping straight and true; in reality, he was thinking about his ride to Blue Water, and wondering what Barry Christian meant by “doing something” if that trip to Blue Water had not been “something.”
Then he regarded the tall body and the long, pale, handsome face of Barry Christian, so full of mobility and expression.
“All right,” said Bill Naylor.
A squirrel came out on a branch and chattered down at them, bobbing its tail as rapidly as it barked. Christian with a fluid gesture, produced an oversized Colt from under his coat and shot the squirrel off the branch. It dropped at a distance, a red smudge on the pine needles. Naylor stopped whittling and regarded that little blur against the ground. Even children in that part of the world could take a squirrel out of a tree with a rifle, but revolver work was another matter. The great feats of revolver marksmanship were generally talked about, and rarely seen.
Christian said: “Now we can talk in quiet — and in private, eh?”
The remark pleased Naylor very little. The laughter pleased him not at all. There were certain features in the character of the great Barry Christian which were not ideal. That, in short, was the truth, though Bill Naylor still valiantly strove to close his eyes to the unpleasant truth. Of course, the man was a criminal, but he must be a great, important, classic example of crime, not one to do casual murder even on a squirrel.
Bill Naylor forcibly removed his mind from these thoughts.
“All right, chief,” said he. “We’ll do something, then.”
“In the first place,” said Christian, “we must pick up Duff Gregor.”
“Sure,” said Naylor. “All we gotta do is to break the jail, and then, after we’ve unlocked his cell and taken off his irons, we can pick him up. That oughta be easy.”
His irony had small effect on Barry Christian, who merely said:
“Well, it may not be so complicated. Let me tell you what I’d like to have you do.”
“Fire away,” said Naylor.
“First I want you to go through town — Kendal, yonder — and buy a good, fast, tough mustang. Then I want you to drift down to Crow’s Nest.”
“Right.”
“You know the southwest corner of the vacant lot the jail stands in, in Crow’s Nest?”
“Yes, I know.”
“Go there with your two horses after dark, and wait in the grove of saplings. Pretty soon a man will walk into those trees and call out in a quiet voice, ‘Barry!’ You will answer ‘Waiting!’ Can you remember that?”
“Yes. Who will the man be?”
“Why, the man will be Duff Gregor.”
“The devil he will be!”
“Not the devil. Just Duff Gregor. There’s plenty of bluff, but not much devil in Duff Gregor.”
“How’ll he get out of the jail? Bribery?”
“What a thing to say!” replied Christian. “Bribery? How could that be? No, no. Gregor will break out at a time when the sheriff is in the jail all by himself. At a time when the sheriff, in fact, has made sure that all is well, and has gone into his office to do some paper work. At that time the door of the cell of Gregor will push open, just as though the sheriff had unlocked it. And Gregor will steal out, just as if the sheriff had thrown him the key for his manacles. Gregor will go to the side door, and with another key he’ll unlock that. And then he’ll step out into the night and walk straight to you. Understand?”
“By thunder,” said Naylor, “you even managed to get to Dick Williams? You can do anything, then!”
“Give me a purse of the right size and I’ll find any man’s price,” boasted Christian. “It’s simple enough. But you’ll be there with two horses waiting, and you and Gregor will ride out of Crow’s Nest — keeping to the by lanes — and head straight on down the valley till you come to the river. You’ll trail along beside the river till you reach the island. You’ll probably be able to wade the horses across to the island. If not, and if the river’s high and fast, you can swim them across. When you reach the island, I’ll probably be there, waiting for you. If not, take the trail I told you about to that deserted ranch. Better take along some provisions in case we need ‘em later.”
“I’ll do what you say,” said Naylor.
“You don’t seem happy about it, Bill,” suggested Barry Christian. “What’s the matter?”
“Me? Aw, I’m happy enough. I’m just wondering where the whole job is heading.”
“As long as you work with me, old-timer,” said Christian, “you can always be sure that every job is heading for easy money.”
“Unless there’s a Jim Silver in the way.”
From Christian there was a silence after this remark. Bill Naylor, rather frightened by the silence, stood up and prepared to leave at once. He promised himself that he would make no more cracks about the great Jim Silver — not in the presence of Barry Christian.
So, saddling his mustang, Bill Naylor started at once for Kendal town, first rehearsing to Christian exactly what he should do. All of the instructions were firmly in his mind before he left, and he jogged the patient mustang through the sweeping shadows of the pine woods and out into the blue and green and gold of the open day.
In Kendal he got an excellent mustang, mean, but as tough as leather. The meaner the mustang, the more wear to it, is a regular precept in the West.
He made a few purchases of provisions in Kendal, and then resumed the journey in a very leisurely manner. In fact, he had to kill two hours in idleness outside of Crow’s Nest before the coming of sunset, when he was free to enter the town.
As he passed down the streets and saw the lamplight streaking out of the houses, he kept saying to himself that behind every house there was the fortune and the strength of a most corruptible man. If Dick Williams had been bought, then any man could be bought, and Barry Christian was right. Every man in the world could be bought, except, let us say, Jim Silver.
And he was a freak. He didn’t count!
When Naylor came to the big vacant space in the center of which the jail stood, it was pitch-dark. All the houses were subdued, and only occasional voices came drifting through the open windows from supper tables.
In the dark of the grove of saplings he waited, holding the lead ropes of the two horses. He grew tired of standing, and sat down on his heels, then cross-legged, like an Indian.
He expected to hear an outbreak of shouting from the jail, first of all, since it did not seem possible that even with the sheriff’s connivance a criminal could escape without making some disturbance. Instead, it happened exactly as the great Barry Christian had predicted. There was simply the sound of a quiet voice, calling, in a tone that could not be heard more than ten steps away: “Barry! Barry!”
Bill Naylor could have whistled with surprise. It proved to him that Barry Christian, when he laid a plan, knew how to have one part dovetail with another.
Naylor gave the answer, and instantly a dim shadow appeared before him among the trees as he rose to his feet.
“You’re from what?” asked the stranger.
“Barry. And you’re Duff?”
“Shut up!” gasped the stranger. “Shut up, you fool!”
Naylor grinned into the darkness. After all, Gregor had not been spending time in jail for fun, and it was no wonder that his nerves were a little bit frayed out.
“All right,” said Naylor. “Here’s your pony. Here, on the near side. Mind — it’s likely to pitch. I took out most of the kinks to-day, but there may still be a few left.”
Duff Gregor mounted. He was so big that he made the horse look small as a pony indeed. But no wonder he was big. A man who passed for Jim Silver had to have inches, at the least.
Naylor repeated the instructions in a quiet voice.
The only remark of Gregor was: “The island in the lower river is too close to Crow’s Nest. A thousand miles is what ought to be between me and this town. They’re all going to be out on my trail before half an hour.”
Naylor led the way out of the trees. They jogged across the lot, turned down an alley toward the left, and then made the first right turn, and as they entered this new lane, bad luck overtook them.
A house door beside them swung open suddenly, and as a pair of men came out, the shaft of the lamplight struck full on Gregor. The mustang, startled, reared up, and in so doing, held Gregor in the light for an instant and caused the brim of his sombrero to flare away from his face.
As the horse pitched forward again, well-ridden, a voice said from the porch of the house:
“That’s Jim Silver, by thunder!”
And the other voice gasped: “No, that’s Duff Gregor — out of jail!”