“I will to-morrow—as soon as Patton Anderson can take him a note. I’ll challenge him, and I’ll kill him.” He came up closer to Jack.
“It’s not you and what he said I’m thinking of. You only give me the chance. I’ve been wanting to kill him ever since that cowardly night.”
“You could not prove it before a court-martial, General.”
“No, d—n him—no—I wish I could. But there are things a man knows he cannot prove by the red-tape letter of the law which—no—no—he is too smart to be caught. But I know it and you know, and every man of sense, that he treacherously instigated and led the mutiny of those starved and homesick troops in the Creek wilderness. When—ha, Jack, you know it was he!”
The General was getting hot.
“But you—you stopped it,” smiled the other.
“Yes—with a rifle in their path, and I wish I had shot him then. No, I am not fighting your battles, young man. You may take care of yourself, as I said to him—I am going to kill him for instigating that mutiny when the life of the army and the fate of the war hung on our fighting it to a finish.”
“But you will not challenge him, General—you must promise me you will not.”
The General turned purple with anger—his eyes flashed indignantly into those of the younger man. He stuck his bony finger in Jack’s face and fairly shrieked:
“D—n you, Jack, and your sissy, foolish silence! Yes, sir, I will, unless you tell me you are guilty—that you are not worth Juliette’s love—that the boy is your son. And if you are silent, why then—”