Pettus saved me the trouble of replying; saved me more than that, I think, for the red haze was rising again, and Seytoun’s great bulk was fast taking the shape of some loathsome thing that should be throttled there and then, and flung aside as carrion.
“Captain Page lodges with me to-night at Tappan,” I heard Jack say, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance. And then: “I shall be most happy to arrange the business with your friend, Captain Seytoun, the happier, since my own mother’s mother was a Page.” After which I was as a man dazed until I realized that we were out-of-doors, Pettus and I, in the cold frosty mist, and that Jack was pitching me into the saddle of a borrowed horse for the gallop to the camp at Tappan.
“I’ve taken it for granted that your leave covers to-night and to-morrow morning,” said this next friend of mine, when we were fairly facing southward.
“It does,” I replied; and then with the battle murmur still singing in my ears, and the hot blood yet hammering for its vengeful outlet: “Let it be at daybreak, in the grass cove at the mouth of the creek, and with trooper swords.”
It was coming on to the early December dusk when we rode through the headquarters cantonments below Tappan village, and the four miles had been passed in sober silence. I know not what Jack Pettus was thinking of to make him ride with his lips tight shut; but I do know that my own thoughts were far from clamoring for speech. For now a certain thing was plain to me, and momently growing plainer. By some means Seytoun had learned that I was under bond not to fight him, and he knew what it would cost me if I did. Wherefore, his repeated provocations had an object—which object would be gained, and at my expense, whichever way the morning’s weather-cock of life and death should veer.
Hot on this thought came the huge conviction that I had merely played into my sworn enemy’s hands. If he should kill me, I should certainly be the loser; if I should kill him, I should still be the loser, with the added drawback of being alive to feel my loss.
We were walking the horses, neck and neck, up the low hill leading to the legion cantonments when I asked Jack what I had said and done in Van Ditteraick’s, and if it were past peaceful, or at least postponing, remedy.
“Never tell me you don’t know what you said and did, Dick,” he laughed.
“But I don’t,” I asserted, telling him the simple truth. “I saw things vaguely, as if the place were filled with a red mist, and there was a Babel of voices out of which came a great silence. Then I saw Seytoun with his handkerchief to his face.”
“You saw and heard and did quite enough,” he replied, and his smile was grim. “And there is no remedy, save that which the doctors—and sundry hot-blooded gentlemen of our own ilk—are fond of; namely, a bit of blood-letting.”