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His hat had struck Quinnion full in the face. Then Lee again sprang onward, again struck out with his clubbed revolver. The blow missed Quinnion's head but caught him heavily on the shoulder and sent him staggering back against the wall. Lee could hear the bulk of his body crashing against the boards. And again leaping, he struck the second time at Quinnion.
"I'll see you in " began Quinnion, as something of the old bluster came back to him. "Shut up!" snapped Lee. "Carson, let me have your gun." Carson, wondering, gave it. Lee dropped it on the floor at Quinnion's foot. "Pick that gun up and we'll finish what we've begun," he said coolly to Quinnion. "I won't shoot until you've got it in your hand and have straightened up. Then I'll kill you.
She could move more swiftly now and confidence had begun to com to her that she could elude Quinnion. But now, suddenly, she heard Mad Ruth's voice screaming a shrill answer to Quinnion's shout; knew that Ruth had been in her cabin across the gorge and was running to intercept her at the foot of the cliffs. Well, still there was a race to be run and the odds not entirely uneven.
"Better do the hot foot, Bud," he grunted softly, "while the trail's open. Steve will be mixing in again." But Lee seemed in no haste now. When the match had burned out, he dropped it and slipped fresh cartridges into his gun. That done, he stooped, gathered up Quinnion's feebly struggling body in his arms and carried it to the window. "Here," he said coolly to Carson. "Take him through."
Carson's man, Shorty, was sought by Emmet Sawyer and his disappearance was like that of a pricked bubble; it seemed that Shorty had no actual physical existence or that, if he had, he had taken it into some other corner of the world. Quinnion's friends had also gone from Rocky Bend, like Quinnion leaving behind them no sign to show where they had gone.
Bayne Trevors, or one of Bayne Trevors's gang, was even at this instant holding Judith somewhere until this colossal deal could be put over. Trevors or one of his gang and Lee's face went whiter, his hands shut tighter into hard fists, as there came to his mind the picture of Quinnion's twisted face and evil, red-rimmed eyes. "Well?" snapped Carson. "What now?"
They were the nucleus of what was spoken of as Quinnion's crowd. "Quinnion," said Lee quietly, "you are a damned dirty-mouthed liar." The words came like little slaps in the face. Of the four men still in the room with Quinnion three of them moved swiftly to one side, their eyes on their leader's face, which showed nothing of what might lie in his mind.
She had been gone for three full days; she was somewhere in the clutch of Trevors or of one of his cutthroats. He thought of her, of Quinnion's red-rimmed, evil eyes, and as he had not prayed in all the years of his life Bud Lee prayed that night. Lee left Hampton securely bound and under Tommy Burkitt's watchful eyes in the old cabin, and rode straight back to the ranch-house.
A red flare of flame from where Quinnion crouched, and Lee stood very still, refusing the temptation to fire back. For Quinnion's bullet had sped wide of the mark, striking the wall a full yard to Lee's left. Quinnion's eyes had not found him, would not find him soon if he stood quite motionless.
Judith, even as Quinnion's second shot tore into the door, laughed softly. "Finish it as you began it, Bud Lee! Even George Washington swore at Monmouth, you know!" So Bud Lee amended his words and spoke his thought: "Then, pardner, let's give 'em hell!"
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