“You came into this place, the place of my people, under false pretenses. I made you welcome; you were my guest, sir. Yet you used your opportunities to insult my sister.”
Cartaret got slowly to his feet. He knew the probable consequences of what he was about to say, but, never shifting his gaze from the Basque’s, he said it quietly:
“That’s a lie.”
Don Ricardo leaped backward. It was doubtless the first time in his life that such a phrase had been addressed to him, and he received it as he might have received a blow. Both in mind and body, he staggered.
“My sister has told me——” he began.
“I don’t want to hear any more, señor. I’ve said all that I have to say.” Cartaret thrust his hands into the pockets of his riding-breeches and, turning his back on Eskurola, looked out of the window.
“Now,” the Basque was saying, as his mental balance reasserted itself—“now we must indeed fight.”
Cartaret himself was thinking rapidly and by no means clearly. To say that dueling was not an American custom would avail him nothing—would be interpreted as cowardice; to fight with a man bred as Don Ricardo was evidently bred would be to walk out to death. Cartaret looked at the panorama of the mountains. Well, why not death? Less than an hour ago his whole life had been mined, had been sent crashing about his head. The only thing that he cared for in life was taken from him: Vitoria had herself declared that she hated him. Nor that alone—the thought burned in his brain: she had told this wild brother of hers that he, Cartaret, had insulted her; she had incited Eskurola to battle—perhaps to save herself, perhaps to salve some strange Basque conception of honor or pride. So be it; Cartaret could render her one more service—the last: if he allowed himself to be killed by this half-savage who so serenely thought that he was better than all the rest of the world, Don Ricardo’s wounded honor would be healed, and Vitoria—now evidently herself in danger or revengeful—would be either safe or pacified. The Twentieth Century had never entered these mountains, and Cartaret, entering them, had left his own modernity behind.
“All right,” said he, “since you’re so confounded hungry for it, I’ll fight you. Anything to oblige.”
He looked about to find Eskurola bowing gratefully: the man’s eyes seemed to be selecting the spot on their enemy’s body at which to inflict the fatal wound.