Grasping my hand, ‘my friend,’ said he—‘you must help me in this. You must stand by, and see me fall, if fall I must; and then—bear the news to—to—’ his sobbing choak’d his utterance.
I asked him if there were no means of avoiding it.
‘None—none in the world.’ He said this in a tone, which forbade argument: and I said no more.
I draw a veil over the remainder of that evening.
Before the sun, he met me at the bottom of the hill in front of his dwelling, with his pistols in his hand. He requested me to load them. I did so, and without a muscle’s shaking; for from my childhood, I had been incapable of every kind of fear; nevertheless, I thought of the form which might be stiff before evening—of eyes that might be glazed—and of the fond heart which I knew would be broken.
He told me he had left his wife sleeping: and as he hung over her, and kissed those lips, the music of which he might hear no longer, she breathed his name in her slumbers. ‘That—that parting’—and he grasped my hand, with an energy sufficient to crush it—‘that parting,’ said he, ‘has killed me. I cannot feel worse. No! not if I felt my adversary’s bullet in my heart, could I feel worse. And she—O! who will take care of her? who will dry her tears? who bind up that heart, which will certainly break with mine?’
He gave way but a moment to feelings of this nature; for, commending her to me in case of his death, he walked forward to the place agreed on, with the most perfect calmness. All the difference to be observed in him was, perchance, a degree of paleness; nothing else betrayed the fact, that he was walking to his grave.
The place selected for the rencontre, was a wild and beaten spot on the river-shore, where the rocks, rising abruptly to the altitude of some hundred feet, swept round like a horse shoe in two projections, and then thrust themselves into the stream, leaving a hollow curve of smooth wet sand within them, of about three rods in length. The beach was white as snow, the blue waters of the Mississippi went by with a low groaning sound, the hoarse screaming of the flamingo swept out from the rocks overhead, and the sun was just blazing out from the lazy mists of the morning, as the party entered.
I shall never forget how the combatants looked, at that moment. Glenning was calm, stern, and sorrowful—Ralle looked like a devil. He scowled horridly, as he marked the tall, handsome figure of his adversary; and seemed joyed that he had it in his power, to spoil such a fine piece of God’s workmanship.
I approached Glenning, and asked his wishes.