“Save your sympathy. I shall not kill him. And now, friend Ashley, I believe I’ll go to bed. I have been riding all day and I am as tired as a dog. At daylight we start.”
“At daylight it is. It is not too late to accept my offer to exchange places with you. I can’t hit a playing card at fifty yards, but at least I am alone in the world, and, barring a few excellent friends, would not be especially missed. It is as much my quarrel as yours, you know.”
“My dear Ashley,” says Navarro, with much emotion, “I am deeply sensible of the goodness of heart that prompts your offer, but, I repeat, this affair must proceed as it has begun.”
“Well, good-night to you, then,” says Ashley, and he goes off to bed, wondering what manner of man is he who speaks of a thrill at the sight of the most beautiful of all flags streaming out upon the breeze, and yet claims the distinctly Spanish name of Emilio Navarro.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
JUANITA.
The sun is creeping up the range of hills when Ashley and Navarro leave the Hotel Royal and set forth at a smart pace for the meeting with Capt. Raymon Huerta. Ashley is in his usual good spirits, and the enlivening influence of his society is appreciated by Navarro, whose thoughts are plainly of a dejected nature.
Half a mile or more down the beach that stretches east of the city three men are in waiting. Two of them are Capt. Huerta and Senor Cardena; the third is evidently a surgeon.
The preliminaries for the exchange of shots are quickly arranged. Ashley, with the fifty-yards range in mind, proposes the comfortable distance of twenty-five paces, and Cardena assents. Then the revolvers are handed out and carefully scrutinized, and Huerta and Navarro face each other on the sands.
“How’s your nerve, old man?” Ashley asks Navarro, as he gives the latter’s hand an encouraging squeeze.