Before I had struggled clear of my horse, Shipley's hand was on my shoulder, and his hurried whisper in my ear.
"What shall we do? Will you surrender?"
Now, though I knew already that I had escaped with a flesh-wound from a spent bullet, I felt that I could not hope to make quick tracks that night. Certain reasons—wholly independent of personal convenience—made me loth to part with my saddle-bags; besides this, I own I shrank from the useless ignominy of being hunted down like a wild beast on the mountains. So I answered, rather impatiently:
"What the deuce would you have one do—with a dead horse and a lamed leg? Shift for yourself as well as you can."
Without another word I walked towards the party in our front, with an impulse I cannot now define; it could scarcely have been seriously aggressive, for a hunting-knife was my solitary weapon; but for one moment I was idiot enough to regret my lost revolver, I was traveling as a neutral and civilian, with no other object than my private ends; the slaughter of an American citizen, on his own ground, would have been simply murder, both by moral and martial law, and I heard afterwards that our Legation could not have interfered to prevent condign punishment. But reason is dumb sometimes, when the instincts of the "old Adam" are speaking. I suppose I am not more truculent than my fellows; but since then, in all calmness and sincerity, I have thanked God for sparing me one strong temptation.
Before I had advanced ten paces the same voice challenged again.
"Stop where you are—if you come a step nearer, I'll shoot."
I was in no mood to listen to argument, much less to an absurd threat.
"You may shoot and be d——d," I said. "You've got the shooting all your own way to-night. I carry no fire-arms,"—and walked on.
Now, I record these words—conscious that they were thoroughly discreditable to the speaker—simply because I mentioned them in my examination before the Judge Advocate (after he had insisted on the point of verbal accuracy), and from his office emanated a paragraph, copied into all the Washington journals, stating that I had cursed my captors fluently. I affirm, on my honor, that this was the solitary imprecation that escaped me from first to last.