"Well?"
"You tap at the door, an' he'll come. You're alone—see? I stand back in the dark, behind a post. He never sees me. 'Good evenin',' says you. 'I just want a word with you, if you'll step out.' And so he does."
"And what then?"
"Nothing else—not for you; that's all your job. Easy enough, ain't it?"
Viney turned where he sat, and stared fixedly at his confederate's face. "And then—then—what——"
"Then I come on. He don't know I'm there—behind him."
Viney's mouth opened a little, but with no grin; and for a minute the two sat, each looking in the other's face. Then said Viney, with a certain shrinking: "No, no; not that. It's hanging, you know; it's hanging—for both."
Dan laughed—an ugly laugh, and short. "It ain't hanging for that," he said; "it's hanging for gettin' caught. An' where's the chance o' that? We take our own time, and the best place you ever see for a job like that, river handy at the end an' all; an' everything settled beforehand. Safe a job as ever I see. Look at me. I ain't hung yet, am I? But I've took my chances, an' took 'em when it wasn't safe, like as this is."
Viney stared at vacancy, like a man in a brown study; and his dry tongue passed slowly along his drier lips.
"As for bein' safe," Dan went on, "what little risk there is, is for me. You're all right. We don't know each other. Not likely. How should you know I was hidin' there in the dark when you went to speak to Cap'en Nat Kemp? Come to that, it might ha' been you outed instead o' your friend what you was talkin' so sociable with. An' there's more there than what's in the pocket-book. Remember that. There's a lump more than that."