“I shall say no more to you,” he said. “You must do as you please. If
you regard my warnings as vapors, I have at least warned you. If you
are willing to share my danger, in such degree as my very neighborhood
is always full of danger, you do so at your own risk. If you consider
it advisable to have no more to do with me, say so now.”
“I see no reason,” I told him without even a preliminary puff, “why
your utterances should make any difference in my treatment of you.”
“I thought you would say that,” he said. “But my conscience is clear.”
“Shall we proceed to business?” I asked.
“There is one point more,” he replied. “Have you ever been in mining
camps or amid other frontier conditions?”
“Several times,” I answered, “and for some time at that.”
“Have you ever noticed that when two men have been mutually threatening
to shoot each other at sight, pending the final settlement, neither
will expose women or children to danger by being in their neighborhood
or permitting them in his, if he can prevent their nearing them?”
“Such scrupulosity can be observed,” I told him dryly, “nearer home
than mining camps or frontier towns.”
“So I have heard,” he replied stiffly. “When I left America the
personal encounter had not yet taken the place of the formal duel in
these regions.”
He puffed a bit.
“However,” he continued, “it makes no difference from what part of the
world you draw the illustration; it is equally in point. The danger of
being near me is a hundred times, a thousand times greater than that of
running the risk of stopping a wild or random bullet. I cannot bring
myself to expose innocent beings to such danger.”
“How about Jeff and Cato?” I asked.
“A nigger,” declared Colonel Case (and he looked all the colonel as he
spoke it) “is like a dog or a horse, he shares his master’s dangers
as a matter of course. I speak of women and children and unsuspecting
men. I am resolute to sit at no man’s table, to enter no man’s house,
uninvited or invited. All who come to me knowingly I shall welcome.
When you bring any one with you I shall assume that he has been
forewarned. But I shall intrude upon no one.”
“How then are you to inspect,” I queried, “the properties I expected to
show you?”
“Business,” said Colonel Case, “is different. When people propose to do
business they assume any and all risks. Are you afraid to assume the
risk of driving me about in that buggy of yours?”
“Not a particle,” I disclaimed. “Are you willing to expose the people
of Brexington to these dangers on which you descant so eloquently and
which I fail to comprehend?”
Colonel Case fixed me with a cold stare. He looked every inch a
warrior, accustomed to dominate his environment, to command and be
obeyed, impatient of any opposition, ready to flare up if disbelieved
in the smallest trifle.
“Radford,” he said, slowly and sternly, “I am willing to take any pains
to avoid wronging anyone, I am unwilling to make myself ridiculous by
attempting impossibilities.”
“I see,” I concluded. “Let us go.”