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If Quinnion still carried his old six-shooter he had but two shots at most left to him, for there had been no time which he would risk in reloading. Lee swept off his hat and tossed it out before him to the spot where he believed Quinnion was and dropped swiftly to his knee as he did so. There was a snarl, Quinnion's evil snarl, and a shot that sped high above his head.
Steve, the bartender, had taken a hand. The card-room was plunged in darkness so thick that Lee's frowning eyes could no longer make out Quinnion's head above the table, so black that to Quinnion's eyes the tall form of Lee against the wall was lost in shadow.
Ever since, Carson had been yearning for the chance to get his two hands on Shorty's fat throat. Before the smash and tinkle of falling glass had died away Carson, plunging as Shorty had plunged, was lost to the bulging eyes which sought to follow him, gone head first into the darkness without. Lee kept his eyes hard on Quinnion's. He moved a little, so that the wall was at his back.
And Bud Lee, seeing no better way ahead for them, blew out the candle, forced Judith to stand close to the rock chimney of the fireplace, took his station near her, and answered Quinnion, saying shortly: "Come ahead when you're ready. We're waiting." Quinnion's curse, the crack of his rifle, the flying splinters from the cabin door, came together like one implacable menace.
Could she but once get down into the gorge below, could she slip along the course of the racing stream, she might run and the sound of her steps would be lost even to her own ears in the sound of the water; the sight of her flying body would be lost to Quinnion's eyes. Then she heard him laughing above her. Laughing, with a snarl and a curse in his laugh, and something of malicious triumph.
To Judith, Lee had said that night they fought together at the Upper End that he had recognized Quinnion's voice; "I played poker with that voice not four months ago." That he had had ample reason to remember the man as well, he had not gone on to mention. But Carson knew.
The man lay there a moment blinking at the lights above him and at the faces around him. At length his eyes came to Lee. "Damn you," he muttered, trying to rise, and slowly getting to his feet with the aid of a chair, "I'll get you " Then Bud Lee gave his brief explanation, cutting Quinnion's ugly snarl in two. "This is Quinnion's farewell party," he said bluntly.
"The better to see you by, my dear!" was Quinnion's word of greeting. Judith made no answer. She drew a little farther back into the shadows, a little closer to the things she had hidden among the fir-branches. "Ho," sneered Quinnion, his mood from the first plain enough to read in the glimpses of his face and in the added harshness of his voice. "Timid little fawn, huh?
"If you're on your way to little ol' Rocky hunting trouble, if they's going to be shooting-fun, why can't you let me in on it?" Lee stood a moment framed in the doorway, frowning down at Carson. Then he turned on his heel and went out, saying coolly over his shoulder: "Come on if you want to. Quinnion's in town."
As their horses' hoofs hammered the winding road for the forty miles into Rocky Bend the two riders were for the most part silent. All of the explanation which Lee had to give, or cared to give, was summed up in the brief words: "Quinnion's in town."
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