XVI

NATAWAMMET and I left Paul at dawn, followed the winding sixteen-mile course of Cobosseecontee Stream and came out into the Kennebec at Gardinerstown, six miles below Fort Western.

On the Kennebec we found rafts of lumber moving down river toward Reuben Colburn’s shipyard, which was in a turmoil of shouting and pounding. The shore was covered with bateaux, acres of them, knee deep in shavings and smelling of fresh-worked pine. The place was alive with carpenters, swinging adzes and nailing pine boards to white oak ribs and bawling at each other to keep out of the way and pass the nails.

Of all rowing boats I know, I hold the Kennebec bateau in the lowest esteem, because of its weight and clumsiness. In Arundel we use a boat called a dory: a high flat-sided affair with a narrow bottom, clumsy-looking, but easy to row because of the small resistance to the water, and almost impossible to overturn, even by standing on the gunwale. The Kennebec bateau, which had its origin with the lumbermen of the lower Kennebec, is double the size of our dories, and somewhat the same shape, the bow pointed and overhanging, the stern flattened and less overhanging than the bow, but the sides built of overlapping boards, whereas the sides of a dory are smooth, the boards fitted tight together. To my mind, this overlapping of boards is a defect if there is to be rough going among shoals and reefs, since the boards catch easily against rocks, and there is more likelihood of leaks. It may be a good boat for lumbermen to use on the lower Kennebec, where tides are swift and rocks few; but on the upper Kennebec, where smooth water is unknown and quick movement essential to safety, I would as soon travel in a pine coffin.

Colburn was a chunky, quick man; intelligent, but overdesirous, I thought, of doing everything himself to make sure it was done properly. I had known others of a like temper, and it had seemed to me they courted trouble by thinking the things they could not do themselves would of necessity be done badly. Expecting bad results, they would select their agents carelessly; consequently their fears were frequently justified.

I was prepared to mislike Colburn as being responsible for Washington’s and Arnold’s fondness for bateaux; but I had wronged him.

When I said mildly that these craft were overly heavy, he kicked contemptuously at one of them.

“Green!” he said. “All green boards! Heavy as wet paper! No seasoned lumber this side of Falmouth!”

He added that time was too short to bring seasoned planks from Falmouth by schooner. “If there’s delay,” he said, as we walked toward his house, “let it be at the other end! Two hundred bateaux they ordered, and two hundred there’ll be when Arnold gets here.”

I said it seemed to me there might be worse delay if the green boards opened up in quick water.

“Mister,” he said, tapping my chest, “they want bateaux, and the only way we can give ’em bateaux is to build ’em out of green boards. What you got to say to that?”

I said he might give them canoes as well.

“Hah!” he said. “They want bateaux and I give ’em canoes! Then what happens if things go wrong? God ain’t to blame! The weather ain’t to blame! Reuben Colburn’s to blame! Just building boats is bad enough, mister. Will I get my money for ’em? God knows! I won’t if we don’t whip England! Sylvester Gardiner’s got more brains than I’ve got, and he’s sticking with England. Well, I believe in Washington and Arnold, mister, but I ain’t going to try to make ’em take things they don’t ask for!”

“What got them so excited over bateaux?”

He led me into the hall of his house, a spacious dwelling on a rise at the bend in the river. “Mister,” he said, “I wish I knew; but Washington and Arnold, they keep their own counsels.” He rummaged in a desk and produced a letter from Colonel Arnold.

SIR [it started off]: His excellency General Washington desires you will inform yourself how soon there can be procured or built at Kennebec two hundred light bateaux capable of carrying six or seven men each, with their provisions and baggage.

“You see,” Colburn said, “they had the idea already.”

I nodded, and noted, farther down in the letter, the order:

You will also get particular information from those people who have been at Quebec, of the difficulty attending an expedition that way, in particular the number and length of the carrying places, whether dry land, hills or swamp. Also the depth of water in the river at this season, whether an easy stream or rapid.

“Did you get the particular information?” I asked.

“I sent four men from above Fort Western. Conkey and Slike and two of their friends, with an Indian.”

“To go to Quebec?”

“No. To go to the Chaudière and back, and see the state of things. They ought to be back now.”

There was a receipt in his desk, signed Patrick Conkey, acknowledging

115 pound salt Pork, 106 pound Shipp Brad, ½ a Bushshall of Com, 6 Gallons Rum for Journey toward Quebec.

“Good men?” I asked.

“Good as any hereabouts,” he said indifferently.

“As good as Abenakis?” I asked in surprise.

“Well,” Colburn said, “they talk English better than Abenakis. Me, I like Abenakis, but you know how General Washington feels about Indians. We got to remember that if people ain’t accustomed to red men, they feel safer if their scouting’s done by white folks, even if it ain’t done so well.”

“I saw Paul Higgins,” I said. “He and his men say they won’t go with the army.”

Colburn nodded gravely. “What’s done’s done. I got eight rounded up to go along and paddle and carry messages.”

“This Conkey?” I asked. “How far can he travel on a gallon of rum?”

Colburn laughed. “These people up here have to have rum. They’ll go without corn and they’ll go without bread, if their money’s low; but you can’t make the price of rum too high for ’em.”

“Well,” I said, “they’re not much different down my way. What I’m wondering is how much Patrick Conkey and his friends could see or hear when they were loaded with rum.”

“There’ll be no trouble,” Colburn said reassuringly. “It’s a plain trail, sticking to streams and ponds all the way. An army wouldn’t scarcely need a guide.”

“Have you been over it recently?”

“No,” Colburn admitted. “I haven’t ever been over it, but I know about it from hearing people talk.”

“Did you ever talk to anyone that had crossed the Height of Land?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t know as I ever did.”

“No, nor I,” I told him, “only to one man when I was a boy. There’s no streams or ponds to follow on the Height of Land. Nobody goes near it unless he must. I’ll bet you a sable skin to a jack knife that Conkey sits down with his rum on this side of the Height of Land and never crosses it at all.”

Colburn shook his head. “You can’t get anything done nowadays unless you do it yourself. I’ve got to provide bateaux, and setting-poles for ’em, and buy sixty barrels of salt beef, and all the pork and flour on the river, and ride down to Falmouth to get the commissary that’s coming from headquarters to look after supplies, and God knows what all. There’s times when it seems as if they expected me to fight the whole damned war alone.”

“When are they expected?” I asked, thinking of Natanis, and in a turmoil inside for fear something might go wrong to keep me, at this late day, from reaching Mary. “If there’s time I might try the trip myself, with Natawammet, to see how it looks.”

“You can’t do it! They’ll be here any time—in three days, four days—a week anyway.”

Determined to have word of Natanis, Natawammet and I filled ourselves with cider and dumplings at Smith’s Tavern, above the shipyard, and set off upstream for Patrick Conkey’s cabin, ten miles beyond Fort Western.

By good fortune I found Conkey, dirty, unkempt, and newly returned from his scouting trip, seated on the ground outside his cabin, comfortably wriggling his bare toes in the afternoon sun and engaged in a spitting contest with his brother Michael and one of his scouting companions. In front of them, removed from the line of spitting, stood a gray stone jug. I gave them good-day and offered them my letter from Colonel Arnold. Conkey took it, looked at both sides with half-closed eyes and returned it without comment.

I asked if there had been changes in recent years on Dead River. Conkey asked who I might be. I said I was Steven Nason, as he had read in the letter. Conkey said, “I thought it was a map.”

After some meditation he said he had heard of me. He spat carefully, protecting his chin by a quick outward and upward motion of his lower lip, and his companions followed his example. Conkey out-spat them. I asked if he had crossed the Height of Land on this trip. He shook his head, tersely remarking, “Dangerous!”

From Conkey’s thick and fragmentary conversation I gathered he and his companions had carried from the Kennebec to Dead River and there encountered Natanis, who traveled with them for one day but would go no farther, though they offered him a dollar a day. Their suspicions were aroused by his refusal of such riches. The only explanation that could reach their rum-fuddled brains was that somebody had paid him more money to remain where he was. Since there could be no one but the English who would pay money for any such service, Conkey had accused him of being in the pay of the English. Conkey declared Natanis had confessed this to be true, and had threatened to carry word to the English if they attempted to force him to go farther. Because of this, he mumbled, they had proceeded a little along Dead River, then returned to the Kennebec and come home.

I sat and whittled at a twig, looking down on the tumbling quick water of the river. Inwardly I damned this drunken, lying fool until my stomach tightened with rage. I was sure I knew how it had come about: how Natanis, having received my message, would not go far from his camp lest I come for his help and find him gone; and how, when accused of spying for the English, he had joked derisively with them, threatening to perform an impossibility—to race on ahead and tattle to the English, which would have been of no use to anyone.

“If he said he was a spy and would tell on you,” I said to Conkey, “why didn’t you shoot him? We’re at war with England.”

Conkey made no answer, but spat repeatedly. Then I knew he was a coward as well as a drunkard, and had run home with his tail between his legs without bringing a farthing’s worth of information concerning the carries on the Height of Land and beyond it, as he had been told to do—bearing only lies concerning one who would be of more value to the army than a thousand Conkeys.

I knew it was no duty of mine to reach over and cram his blackened teeth down his throat. Arnold and the army would require his services, worthless as they were. My only duty, as I saw it, was to give Natanis whatever protection I could from this strange patriot. Not only was Natanis my friend; but he could, I knew, guide the army more skillfully than any other man, and so must be protected at all hazards.

We left Conkey to his drinking and spitting, and went rapidly downstream, as if hell-bent for Fort Western. No sooner, however, were we safely out of sight of Conkey’s hovel than we ran ashore, made camp, and took trouts for our supper. While the trouts were broiling, skewered between slices of salt pork, I said to Natawammet: “If Natanis isn’t warned that he’s supposed to be a spy, he may have trouble and we might lose his help. This we can’t afford. Someone must warn him; but I can’t do it, for Colonel Arnold expects me to meet him on his arrival. What do you think? Can you travel alone to Dead River?”

Natawammet nodded. “Easily, if you’ll give me all the salt pork and all the powder.”

“You’re a good friend, Natawammet,” I said. “You can have whatever of mine you want. You’ll have to be off at daybreak and travel fast, for there’s little time remaining. When you find Natanis, tell him what we’ve learned. Tell him never to show himself to white scouts or war parties, for fear they might shoot first and ask questions afterward. Tell him I’m his friend and brother, always, and in need of his help. Tell him to be on the lookout for me.”

Natawammet lifted the trouts from the fire and laid them on a strip of bark. “I’ll stay with him,” he said, “watching for you.”

“One more thing,” I said. “This is important. Natanis must draw a true map, showing the path across the Height of Land: showing also the length of the carries between his cabin and the Chaudière. Tell him to put it where the advance scouts will find it. They need such a map; and it may be helpful to Natanis if it’s known that he provided it.”

Natawammet nodded, stuffing himself with trouts and salt pork.

I racked my brains, but could think of no other way to help Natanis; and I hoped nothing more would be needed.

At the crack of dawn Natawammet daubed his face with red paint, rolled his blanket, and set off afoot toward the north. At the same time I slid the canoe into the river and went back to the southward, past Fort Western and down to Colburn’s shipyard.

… The place was busy as a beehive with preparations for Arnold’s arrival; but busiest of all was Cap Huff, who had come up from Swan Island and was engaged, he told me loudly, in helping the Commissary from Cambridge buy provisions. He had risen in the world, for he had a canoe of his own, paddled by Hobomok. It was a sort of public canoe, he said, loaned to the army by Jacataqua, and when he got through with it, anybody could have it who wanted it—and have Hobomok too. Hobomok, he declared, made him nervous—not because of anything he did, but because of what he might do. The truth seemed to be that Cap lived in dread of hearing Hobomok scream again.

In his canoe Cap darted up river and down at all hours, looking for things, as he put it, to pick up. He had picked up aplenty; not only cornmeal packed in deer bladders to help feed us on our journey to Quebec, but so much hard money that he had been at a loss how to carry it, and so had stitched it in rows to the tail of his shirt, where it covered the lower portion of his body like a sort of armor. He was vague as to where he got it; but I gathered he had accepted it from settlers who sought his influence to keep from being drafted into the army.

Jacataqua was there, too, with buckskin shirts and leggins for Arnold and his officers; but from the manner in which she avoided the affectionate slaps aimed at her by Cap, I somehow sensed that the two of them had not, as our Arundel people say, hit it off together.

… Those of us who knew the river and the Maine woods were in a stew over Arnold’s slowness in arriving. The season had been dry, and the water was low. As is always the case after a dry summer, the leaves turned early; so we waited amid a profusion of colors such as can be seen nowhere else in all our eastern country—gold and russet and crimson, flame red and orange and pink, pale green and dark green.

They were the colors of advancing autumn—a sure sign that winter was not far away; and autumn being what it is along the Kennebec, we knew the need of setting off before the northern frosts took too high a toll of us.

With each passing day we said to ourselves that Arnold was never coming; and we fumed and swore and snapped at each other until we forgot our hatred of England in our desire to fight among ourselves.

Cap and I, with some of the workers on the bateaux, were at Smith’s Tavern eating a dinner of soggy dumplings and corned beef, sour because of having been killed in the hot weather, and we were fretful because of the delay and the bad food and the flies that buzzed about us, walking on our faces and hands, very persistent. We bickered somewhat over the date—Friday, the 22nd of September—which is why I remember it, for Cap was bawling that all we needed to make everything perfect was to have Arnold get here on a Friday—when a boy rushed in screaming that a schooner and two sloops were coming upstream.

We ran to the shipyard, leaping over the long lines of bateaux that covered acres of the shore, and saw the reach full of sail, white and gleaming against the glowing leaves that fringed the river.

We could see crowds of men on the decks, and among the sloops and schooners a number of birch canoes; and from all the craft there rose such a clamor of shouting and laughter that we would have started with them that minute to storm the gates of London itself, and counted ourselves certain of success, Friday or no Friday.