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Updated: May 14, 2025
"Maybe I'm cursed, right enough, but, Quade, I'd let 'em burn me, inch by inch in a fire, before I'd quit a partner, a bunkie in the desert! You hear? It's a queer thing that a gent could have much pleasure out of plugging another gent full of lead. I've had that pleasure once; and I'm going to have it again. I'm going to kill you, Quade, but I wish there was a slower way! Pull your gun!"
Slim Barker was in Quade's place behind the counter. Barker was Quade's right-hand man at Miette, and there was a glitter in his rat-like eyes as Aldous leaned over the glass case at one end of the counter and asked for cigars. He fumbled a bit as he picked out half a dollar's worth from the box. His eyes met Slim's. "Where is Quade?" he asked casually. Barker shrugged his shoulders.
"Sure! But what of that? Expect me to lead an attack on a jail, eh? Throw my life away? By guns, I think you'd like that!" "You don't have to lead. Just give them the money they need and then spread the word around that Riley Sinclair is really an honorable man who killed Quade in a fair fight. I know what they thought of Quade. He was a bully. No one liked him.
With his pistol ready in his hand he stepped out into the lighted room. "Good evening, gentlemen!" he said. For a space of perhaps twenty seconds after John Aldous announced himself there was no visible sign of life on the part of either Quade or Culver Rann. The latter sat stunned. Not the movement of a finger broke the stonelike immobility of his attitude.
But why does Donald talk as though we are surely going to be attacked by them, or are surely going to attack them? I don't understand it, John. If you don't care for the gold so much, as you told me once, and if we find Jane to-morrow, or to-night, why do we remain to have trouble with Quade and Culver Rann? Tell me, John."
But it ain't in the law of the mount'ins to be careless. We've got to watch." "I agree with you there, Mac," replied Aldous. "We cannot afford to lose our caution for a minute. But I'm feeling a deuced sight better over the situation just the same. If we can only get there ahead of them!" "If Quade is in the bunch we've got a chance of beating them," said MacDonald thoughtfully.
That is why she was crying because of the dread of something up there. I'm going with her. She shouldn't go alone." Voices interrupted them, and they turned to find that Jack and Bruce Otto had come out of the bush and were quite near. Aldous was sorry that Joanne had spoken of his trouble with Quade. He did not want to discuss the situation, or waste time in listening to further advice.
He knew that she was staring ahead into the blank wall of gloom as she spoke, and that it was not thought of the bloodshells, but of Quade, that made her fingers close more tightly about his own. His right hand was gripping the butt of his automatic. Every nerve in him was on the alert, yet she could detect nothing of caution or preparedness in his careless voice.
For a moment Aldous hesitated. Then he turned in the direction of the camp. Quade was bolstered up on a stool, his back against the thin partition, when John Aldous sauntered in. There was still a groggy look in his mottled face. His thick bulk hung a bit limply. In his heavy-lidded eyes, under-hung by watery pouches of sin and dissipation, there was a vengeful and beastlike glare.
If Quade and Rann are in the next valley they can't get over the mount'ins to get at us. Quade, with all his flesh, couldn't climb over that range to the west of us inside o' three days, if he could get over it at all. They're hikin' straight for the gold over another trail, or they're behind us, an' mebby both." "How both?" asked Aldous.
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