“What, the daughter of General Treveling?” he cried.
“Yes,” replied Murdock, wondering at the look of fierce delight that swept over the face of the other.
“Satan’s fires!” cried the other, in triumph. “I’ll do the job for you. I owe the father a bitter grudge. I struck him one blow, some twelve years ago, just after he wronged me. I doubt if he’s forgotten or forgiven it to this day. It’s about time for me to strike him another.”
“Why, how did General Treveling ever wrong you?” asked Murdock, in wonder.
“I was a scout under him in Dunmore’s campaign. One day he told me openly, and before a dozen others, that I lied. I gave the lie back in his teeth, for I never took insult from mortal man. Then he struck me. I didn’t think even for a moment that he was my superior officer; all that I knew was that I was struck—degraded by a blow. I measured him with my eye and felled him to my feet with a single stroke. Then I was seized—tried by a drumhead court-martial, and sentenced to be publicly whipped in presence of the whole army, and I was whipped, too. As the lashes fell upon my naked back, and cut long, quivering lines in the yielding flesh, with every lash I swore a bitter oath of vengeance. Then, my punishment done—a whipped, degraded slave, a man no longer—they untied me. I sunk down at their feet almost helpless. They raised me up; I was covered with my own gore. This General Treveling—then only a colonel—looked on me, his victim, with a scornful smile—ten thousand curses on him! I was maddened with rage. I shook my fist defiantly in his face, and before all I said: ‘Your quarters shall swim in blood for this!’ I kept my word. I have shed white blood enough along the Ohio for me to swim in. My vengeance, too, against this man was fearful. I stole his eldest child—left it to die in the forest. I tore his heart as his lashes had torn my back. And now, I strike him a second time.”
Murdock gazed at the rage-inflamed countenance of the dark-skinned man with a feeling akin to awe.
“It is a bargain, then, between us?” the young man said.
“Yes; to get another chance at him, I’d go through the fires of Hades!” the other replied.
And so the compact was made.