“Naturally,” Gastineau laughed. “All the same I shall be obliged if you will listen to a word from me. A question. Are you going to mention our late unfortunate set-to to your friend Quickjohn? I ask merely for information.” He spoke quite casually, as though careless what the answer might be.
“I have not thought of it.”
“Ah!” Gastineau exclaimed, with a smile of patronizing doubt. “Or that I am in the land of the living?”
“Nor that, as yet.”
“Ah! Now, my dear Herriard,” he went on in his easy tone, with just a suspicion of restrained mockery behind it, “I don’t expect you to take advice from me any longer, and I am perfectly ready to meet any contingency; at the same time I am here to offer you—shall we say an armistice?—and to suggest that to make a fuss about my little explosion of temper would not be a wise thing to do.”
“I suppose that is a threat,” Herriard said sternly; “if so——”
“A threat?” Gastineau raised a deprecating hand. “My dear fellow! The idea of threatening an angry man who stands over you with a loaded—presumably loaded—revolver in his hand! It is nothing but a piece of common-sense advice, of which the most cocksure of us occasionally stand in need. Perhaps I ought to explain why mine is worth considering; the question, that is, of leaving well—or ill—alone.”
“I don’t want your advice, Gastineau, of all men’s,” Herriard said.
“And yet,” the other retorted, gently persuasive, “I am, so far, the only man capable of giving advice in the present crisis. You had better hear what I have to say. Please be careful of that revolver. If you mean to shoot, shoot; but I should hate to have an accidental bullet through me. Now, the world, my dear Herriard, is, putting aside for the moment our little difference, wide enough for both of us. It is not likely that I shall come back to that stuffy, crowded square mile on which I formerly and you lately have bustled and quibbled and sweated. I have lost nearly five working years of my life; I must make them up, and the great West, my dear Geoffrey, offers me the best chance of overtaking them. There is a fortune for me in five years over there. And the American intellect attracts me; I long to pit myself against it; I have never been fully extended here; was brought into the world for worthier competitors than your slow, stupid Englishmen; I’m sick of fighting rapier against bludgeon. So, as at present advised, I am off.”
Herriard bowed acceptance of the statement.