"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. Unless first you admit that you are the contemptible liar every one knows you are, and second, get out of town and stay out. It's up to you, Quinnion."
Knowing Quinnion, the men moved swiftly so that they did not stand behind either him or Lee. Sandy Weaver, shifting a few feet along his bar, shook his head and sighed.
"It'll be both of them," he muttered.
Quinnion turned his head a little, his red-rimmed eyes going from face to face, his tongue moving back and forth between his lips. For an instant his eyes dropped to the gun at his feet, and a little spasmodic contraction of his body showed that he was tempted to take up the weapon. But he hesitated, and again turned to Lee.
"It's up to you," repeated Lee. "If you're not a coward after all, pick it up." Lee's hands were at his sides, his own revolver in his pocket. Quinnion was tempted. The evil lights in his eyes danced like witch-fires. Again he hesitated; but his hesitation was brief. With his whining, ugly laugh he lurched to the bar.
"Gimme a drink, Sandy," he commanded.
"Neither now nor after a while," Sandy told him briefly. "I ain't dirtyin' my glasses that-a-way."
"There you are," jeered Quinnion, with a sullen sort of defiance. "You swat me over the head while I ain't lookin' an' then bring me in here where they're all your friends. If I drop you I get all mussed up with their bullets. No, thanks."