“That looks like the cot where O’Sullivan and the Prince put up a month ago,” said Creagh.
Macdonald ruffled at the name like a turkeycock. Since Culloden the word had been to him as a red rag to a bull.
“The devil take O’Sullivan and his race,” burst out the Scotch Captain. “Gin it had not been for him the cause had not been lost.”
The Irishman’s hot temper flared.
“You forget the Macdonalds, sir,” he retorted, tartly.
“What ails you at the Macdonalds?” demanded the gentleman of that ilk, looking him over haughtily from head to foot.
Creagh flung out his answer with an insolent laugh. “Culloden.”
The Macdonald’s colour ebbed. “It will be a great peety that you hafe insulted me, for there will presently be a dead Irishman to stain the snow with hiss blood,” he said deliberately, falling into more broken English as he always did when excited.
Creagh shrugged. “That’s on the knees of the gods. At the worst it leaves one less for the butcher to hang, Scotch or Irish.”
“It sticks in my mind that I hafe heard you are a pretty man with the steel—at the least I am thinking so,” said Captain Roy, standing straight as an arrow, his blue eyes fixed steadily on his opponent.