THE mind of Bill Naylor slashed through several reflections and one great regret as he heard that voice. He looked straight at Duff Gregor and saw the shock strike the big fellow like a bullet. It paralyzed Gregor. It froze him in mid-gesture, so to speak.
“Right up, friends,” said the soft, deep voice.
It seemed to Naylor like the sort of a voice that one would expect from the spirit of the island, half obscured and dark. There was music in it that went with the sound of the storm. And then the wind, following after, screeched suddenly through the near-by treetops.
Gregor groaned.
Naylor shoved up his hands slowly. Firelight is not good light to shoot by. If he took a dive backward, rolling on the ground, he could get himself into a tangle of brush, and from that behind the trees, and it would take very snappy and straight shooting to get him. Not every man can do much with a revolver in the daylight. Not one in a thousand is any good at night.
“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.”