I replied, with a little embarrassment, that as yet I had seen no active service, but that for three years I had been trained for it at West Point.
“At West Point, the deuce you have!” said Aiken. His tone was now one of respect, and he regarded me with marked interest. He was not a gentleman, but he was sharp-witted enough to recognize one in me, and my words and bearing had impressed him. Still his next remark was disconcerting.
“But if you’re a West Point soldier,” he asked, “why the devil do you want to mix up in a shooting-match like this?”
I was annoyed, but I answered, civilly: “It’s in a good cause,” I said. “As I understand the situation, this President Alvarez is a tyrant. He’s opposed to all progress. It’s a fight for liberty.”
Aiken interrupted me with a laugh, and placed his feet on the table.
“Oh, come,” he said, in a most offensive tone. “Play fair, play fair.”
“Play fair? What do you mean?” I demanded.
“You don’t expect me to believe,” he said, jeeringly, “that you came all the way down here, just to fight for the sacred cause of liberty.”
I may occasionally exaggerate a bit in representing myself to be a more important person than I really am, but if I were taught nothing else at the Point, I was taught to tell the truth, and when Aiken questioned my word I felt the honor of the whole army rising within me and stiffening my back-bone.
“You had better believe what I tell you, sir,” I answered him, sharply. “You may not know it, but you are impertinent!”