My gasp of disappointment slipped out—or in—before I could prevent it, and it did not go unremarked by Pettus.
“What’s that, Dick? You sigh like the furnace of affliction itself. Twice, already, you have changed your mind about this little riffle with Seytoun. It is far too late to change it again. I warn you as a friend.”
“Truly, it is indeed far too late,” I echoed, agreeing parrot-wise. Then: “You arranged the business as we talked?——to-morrow morning, in the grass cove at the mouth of the creek?”
“How else would I arrange it?” said Pettus querulously. “You were as precise in your instructions as any girl prinking herself for a rout.”
“It is well to be precise,” I offered half absently. The worst had befallen now, and my brain was busy with the shameful consequences which must ensue.
“Cardrigg haggled a little over the trooper’s swords,” Pettus went on reflectively, after a moment. “He is a chip of the same upstart block out of which our red-faced captain was hewn. He said you might have chosen rapiers, if only out of consideration for the captain’s standing; meaning to imply thereby that the captain, at least, was a gentleman, and should be allowed to fight with a gentleman’s weapon.”
“You yielded him the point?” I questioned, trying to show an interest which I could not feel.
“Not I, damn him. I gave him to understand flatly that we stood upon our rights, and that the trooper’s sword was good enough for his principal—or for him and me, if it came to that.”
“It is a small matter,” I said, thinking bitterly that Pettus could not vaguely guess how small a matter this dispute over the weapons had suddenly become. Then I saw how I might perhaps fend off the last and worst of the consequences of the morrow’s revealments; but it was necessary first to pave the way cautiously and carefully.
“The captain is a good swordsman, whatever else may be said of him,” I began after another interval of silence. “It may easily happen that the man who fights with him will cross a wider river than this Hudson of ours, Jack.”