“Because I can’t get the place I want till war is declared and we begin to send men. I’ll wait for that.”
“That means months, even if Congress loses no more time.”
“You know better. Our regulars will go mighty soon after we declare war. I’ll find my place with them.”
“And what’s the place you want?”
Black looked at him steadily. “You know, don’t you?”
Red nodded, grimly. “I suppose I do. Tom told me—but I wouldn’t believe it. Look here, man! Give up that fool notion that you’ve got to stick to your cloth, and go in for a man’s job. Come over with me and enlist in one of your Scottish regiments—that’s the place for you. Then you’ll see the real thing. You’ve got the stuff in you.”
Black’s face was going slowly white. “I’m an American. When I go I’m going as chaplain of an American regiment.”
“Oh, what damned rot!”
Red Pepper Burns was powerfully overwrought, or he wouldn’t have said it. The next instant he realized what he had said, for the lithe figure before him had straightened and stiffened as if Red had brought the flat of his hand against the other man’s cheek. At the same instant a voice cold with wrath said with a deadly quiet command in the ring of it: “Take that back, Doctor Burns.”
“I take back the word, if you like—but not the thought. I can’t do that. A chaplaincy isn’t a man’s job—not a young man’s job. Plenty of old priests and middle-aged parsons to look after the dying. A good right arm like yours should carry a rifle. I’d rather see you stay out of it altogether than go in for the army-cut petticoats of your profession.”