The silent Scanlon leaped up and snarled in unimaginable ferocity.
“If there’s any more shilly-shally there’ll be a Standing Room Only sign on the gates of hell and the devil sending out a hurry-up call for the police!” His voice swelled in breathless crescendo. “I’m sick of you—the whole pack and pilin’! I want to get so far away from here it’ll take nine dollars to send me a postcard; so far east they’ll give me change for a cent; so far north the sun don’t go down till after dark.” His eyes were ablaze with blistering scorn. “Gawd! Look at yourselves! Quinliven—the honorable, high-minded, grave-robbing pardner——”
“Here!” bellowed Quinliven savagely. “I came through with the cattle, straight as a die! That’s as far as I was any pardner of Drake’s. You don’t know how that man treated me! It wasn’t only me doing all the work—but his cold, sneering, overbearing——”
“Shut up, you polled Angus bull!” yelled Scanlon with a howl of joyous truculence. “And Bennett—faugh! P-t-t-h!”
Scanlon spat in the fire, and wheeled on the other gambler. Beck’s face was black with concentrated hate. The little man pointed a taunting finger.
“Look at Beck!” he jeered. “Guess what he knows I think of ’im! And I know him—he’s me pardner! Fish mouth and mackerel eye—— Yah! And all three of you knuckle down to Baca! Year after year you let yourselves be bullyragged, browbeaten, lorded over by a jury-packing, witness-bribing shyster—a grafter, a crook, a dirty Mexican——”
Without hesitation or change of countenance Baca walked across the open space toward him.
“Not one step more!” said Scanlon.
Baca stopped in his tracks.
“You nervy little runt,” he said, half in admiration, “you mean it! Well, I mean this, too. If I’m a crook—and there is much in favor of that contention—it is because my personal inclination lies that way, and not in the least because of my Mexican blood. I am quite clear on that point. Leave out the part about the dirty Mexican and I don’t take that other step. Otherwise, I step! Choose!”