Through Russian Snows (20 page)

"Well, I will try to go on a little longer if you say so, Wyatt, but—"

"There are no 'buts' in it, Wilmington. You must give me your word of
honour that you will go on as you have done. Don't be afraid of anyone
thinking you a coward. There is no cowardice in refusing to fight a man
who is so much your superior in skill that it would be nothing short of
suicide in standing up against him. I have a private reason for
believing that it won't last long."

"In that case I will give you my word of honour, Frank."

A week later there was an unusually large party at mess, the depôts were
very strong, and some forty officers sat down; and it being a guest
night, four or five civilians were present. Dinner went on without
incident until one of the mess waiters asked Wilmington whether he would
take sirloin of beef or goose. He replied, "B-b-b-b-beef." There
happened to be a slight lull in the conversation at the moment, and
Wilmington's effort to get the word out made him raise his voice so that
it was generally heard.

"Waiter," Captain Marshall said loudly, "bring me some g-g-g-g-goose."

Wilmington's face flushed and then turned deadly pale. He looked
appealingly at Frank, who was sitting next to him. The latter whispered,
"Remember your word of honour. Get up and leave the room." There was a
dead hush from those present as the young cornet rose and left the room,
and then a low murmur of indignation. Captain Marshall looked round
searchingly, as if to pick out one of those who had thus shown signs of
resentment. But directly the door closed upon Wilmington, Frank rose to
his feet.

"I wish, Mr. President," he said in a clear, steady voice, "to ask you,
whether a man who, relying upon his skill with the pistol, wantonly
insults another, is not a blackguard and unfit for the society of
gentlemen?"

Had a thunderbolt fallen in the room those present could not have been
more surprised. Some of Frank's comrades knew that he often went to
Woodall's shooting-gallery to practise with the pistol, but they had no
idea that he had attained any great skill in its use, and their
impression when he spoke was that he must have gone out of his mind thus
publicly to insult Marshall. The latter was at least as much astonished
as anyone else. He started as if struck with a blow, and then, leaning
across the table, he said in a low voice to Frank, who was sitting just
opposite to him:

"Of course, you are prepared to answer to me for this, Mr. Wyatt?"

"Certainly," Frank said carelessly; "and at any time you please."

There was a strange hush in the dining-room until the cloth was removed.
The guests, under one excuse or another, took their departure almost
immediately after the king's health had been drunk; the officers talked
in low tones together, and very soon rose from the table.

"Will you act for me, Captain Lister?" Frank said, going up to him
quietly.

"Certainly, lad; but this is a horrible business. If it had been merely
an ordinary quarrel the colonel would have interfered to stop it, but
after what you said before us all, and with strangers present too, I am
afraid it must go on. You must be mad, lad. I have not seen you shoot
since that first evening when we went down, and two or three times
shortly afterwards. Woodall told me that you were getting on well; but
however well you may have got on, you can be no match with a pistol for
a man like Marshall; and you may be sure he won't spare you after so
public an affront."

"I must take my chance," Frank said quietly. He had himself begged the
gunmaker to say little to anyone about his shooting. "Come across to my
quarters. I suppose he will be sending over there at once."

They had just taken their seats when there was a hurried knock on the
door, and Wilmington came in, pale and agitated.

"This cannot go on, Wyatt!" he exclaimed. "You put me on my word of
honour and then take it up yourself. Don't you see that I am hopelessly
disgraced in letting you be Marshall's victim for what he said of me. I
shall go to him and insist upon my right to take the matter up myself."

"Sit down a minute, Wilmington, and be reasonable. If I get shot you
can, if you like, go out and get shot next day. But I don't mean to get
shot. There is one broad distinction between you and me—you can't
shoot, and I can. Marshall could kill you without the slightest risk to
himself, and I flatter myself that if I chose to do so, I could kill him
with the same certainty. I shall not choose to do so. I don't want the
blood of any man—not even of a ruffian like this—to rest upon my head.
I shall simply prevent him from ever fighting another duel."

Captain Lister and the young cornet gazed at Frank as if they doubted
his sanity.

"Do you quite know what you are saying, lad?" the former said kindly,
after a pause. "You don't look as if you had been taking anything before
dinner, and we know that you are always abstemious at mess; still you
are talking strangely."

"I daresay you think so," Frank replied with a smile. "You fancy the
excitement of this quarrel has a little turned my head. But it has not
done so. In the first place, I have learnt to be so quick in firing that
I am sure to get first shot."

"Yes, you might do that, lad," Captain Lister said sadly; "but it would
be the very worst thing you could do. With a hurried shot like that it
would be ten to one you missed him, and then he would quietly shoot you
down."

"Not only shall I not miss him," Frank replied, "but I will lay you any
wager you like that I will carry off his trigger-finger, and probably
the second and third. Feel my hand. You see I am perfectly cool—as cool
as I shall be to-morrow—and I do not think there is anything wild about
my eye. It is simply as I say: I am a first-rate shot—probably as much
better than Marshall as he is better than Wilmington. Ah, here is his
man! Please arrange it for to-morrow morning, if possible. The sooner it
is over the better."

Captain Lister nodded and went out. He returned in a quarter of an hour.

"It is to come off to-morrow," he said, "at six o'clock. It is to be in
the field outside the wall, on the other side of the town. I have told
my man to have the dogcart ready at half-past five. It did not take us
long to arrange matters. His second is Rankin, of his regiment; and I
don't think he liked the job at all. He began by saying:

"'I am afraid, Captain Lister, that there is no chance of our arranging
this unhappy business. Nothing short of a public apology, and the
acknowledgment that Mr. Wyatt was in liquor when he uttered the words
will satisfy my principal, and I had great difficulty in bringing him
even to assent to that.'

"I said that you had not the most remote idea of making any apology
whatever. Therefore, we had only to arrange the preliminaries of a
meeting.

"This was soon done. I could see that the young fellow was very much cut
up over the affair, and that he had undertaken to act for Marshall
because he was afraid to refuse. It did not take us five minutes
altogether. I looked in at the doctor's after we separated, to ask him
to go with us.

"'It is none of my aid you are likely to want, Captain Lister,' he said,
'and I protest against the whole affair; it is nothing short of
cold-blooded murder. Still, of course, I will go.'

"And now, lad, let us hear something more about your shooting."

"It is just as I told you, Captain Lister. I suppose I have an unusually
good eye and steady hand, and have a sort of natural aptitude for
shooting. Woodall said that he considered me as good a shot as any man
in the country, if not better. I am afraid we mustn't fire a pistol
here, or I think I could convince you."

"No, we mustn't fire in barracks at this time of the evening, Wyatt. But
if you are as good as that, the prospects are better than I thought they
were. What can you do, lad?"

"I can hit a penny spun up into the air eighteen times out of twenty
with my right hand, and sixteen or seventeen with my left."

"Is that so? Well, that ought to be good enough for anything," Lister
said. "It sounds almost miraculous. Now, let us have a look at your
pistols, lad."

"They are all right," Frank said. "I was using them this afternoon, and
cleaned them when I came back."

"And you really mean to aim at his hand?"

Frank nodded.

"Well, of course, if you go a little high or a little low you will still
have him; but if you go an inch or two wide you may miss him altogether.
I would much rather, lad, that you aimed at the body. The fellow has
never shown mercy to anyone, and there is no reason why you should show
mercy to him."

"Don't be afraid of my missing him." And Frank spoke so confidently that
his hearers felt satisfied he must at least have some good foundation
for his faith in his skill.

"Well, I think you had better turn in now, Wyatt. Will you come across
and have a cup of coffee with me before you start?"

"Thank you. Will you mind sending your servant across to call me at a
quarter to five? I am not at all good at waking myself."

"All right, lad; I don't think I am likely to get much sleep."

"Don't say much to the others when you go out," Frank said. "You can
tell them that, from what I say, it won't be such a one-sided affair as
they seem to think."

"All right. I will tell them as much as that, for they are in such a
state of mind about it that it would be kind to give them a little
consolation."

"By the way, Captain Lister, do I go out in uniform or in mufti?"

"In mufti, lad. Put on a gray or dark-coloured suit. Gray is the best;
but, above all, don't take a coat with conspicuous buttons or anything
to catch the eye, that would be a fatal mistake. Good night, lad; I
shall turn in in better spirits than I expected to do."

Wilmington did not speak, but grasped Frank's hand warmly.

"Don't come out to-morrow," Frank said.

"I couldn't," the lad replied in a broken voice, "but I shall see you
before you start."

"The major will come on with the doctor," Captain Lister said, as, after
taking their coffee next morning, they went out to the trap standing at
the door. Frank looked round the barrack yard, but no one was about. "I
sent them all away before you came, Wyatt. The lads all looked so
woebegone that I put it to them whether they considered that the sight
of their faces was likely to improve your nerve. As to young Wilmington,
he was like a ghost. I had almost to threaten to put him under arrest
before I could persuade him to go without seeing you. No one will be
there but the major. He told me that he considered it his duty to
represent the regiment, but he quite approved of all the others staying
away. He said the fewer there were present at an infamous business like
this the better. By the way, I made a condition with Rankin that you
were to be placed back to back, and neither was to move until the signal
was given; and I insisted that this should be by pistol shot, as
otherwise you could not both see the signal equally well. I said that
this was fairer than for you to stand face to face, and would increase
the chances of the affair not being a fatal one."

"Thank you, Lister. I was wondering whether you had made that condition,
for if we stood ready to fire he might draw his trigger before I did,
and things might go quite differently to what I had decided on. A bad
marksman might hold his fire, but Marshall would rely so implicitly on
his skill that he would be sure to try and get first shot; for if I
fired first and missed, he would know that the feeling against him if he
shot me down afterwards would be very strong."

"Now jump up, lad; I will take the reins. All right."

The soldier servant standing at the head of the horse released the hold
of the reins, swung himself up behind as the horse started and they
drove out through the barracks gates, followed by the eyes of all
Frank's comrades who, as soon as they heard the sound of the wheels, ran
to their windows or doors to take, as they believed, their last look at
him. They had, indeed, obtained slight consolation from the words with
which Captain Lister had sent them off to their quarters—"Keep up your
spirits, lads. There is many a slip between the cup and the lip, and I
have strong hopes that the affair is not going to turn out as bad as you
fancy."

A DUEL

Captain Lister was very much more nervous than his principal as they
drove on to the ground. In spite of Frank's confidence he could not
bring himself to believe that the young fellow could be a match for a
practised duellist, although he had, after he had left Frank's room the
evening before, gone into the town and knocked up the gunmaker, who had
sometime before gone to bed. When, however, Captain Lister confided to
him the nature of his errand, he fully confirmed what Frank had said.

"Of course, I have not seen him stand up before a man with a pistol in
his hand," he said, "but as far as shooting goes I would back him
against any man in England; and I don't think, Captain Lister, that you
need be afraid of him in the matter of nerve. Pistol shooting depends
upon two things—nerve and eye; and he could never be the shot he is if
he had not an extraordinary amount of both qualities. I will wager that
he will be as cool as a cucumber. How are they to stand?"

"Back to back, and to turn at the signal of a pistol shot."

"Then he is all right, Captain. You need not worry about him. He is as
quick as lightning, and he will get first shot, never fear, and more
than that, I wouldn't mind betting that he carries off one of the
fellow's fingers."

"Why, how do you know that?" Captain Lister asked in surprise. "He can't
have been here since I left him."

"No, sir, he has not been here; but he told me that if he ever got into
a duel he would aim at his opponent's hand, and he has been practising
specially for that. He had a target made on purpose, but that did not
please him, and we rigged out an arm holding a pistol and fixed it to
the target just in the position it would be if the painted figure were
firing at him. We had to have a rough sort of hand made of iron, for it
would have cost a fortune if had been made of anything else. Sometimes
he would have it painted white, sometimes gray, sometimes black, either
of which it might be, if a man wore gloves, but it did not make any
difference to him; and I have seen him hit it twenty times following,
over and over again."