XXII

I HAVE often puzzled over the difference between a brave man and a man who is not brave, and it is a thing that will always baffle me. Indeed, I dislike to say this man is brave and that man a coward, because often a man will do a cowardly thing that requires more courage in the doing than a brave thing. There are many who have done brave things because they were afraid to do the cowardly things they would have preferred to do. Also some are cowards about fighting but heroes over money; some brave before audiences but cowardly alone; some brave alone but cowardly before audiences; some deadly afeared of sickness but contemptuous of a storm at sea, and so on. When I think about these things, my brain is muddled; and I arrive at no conclusion, save that every man, somewhere, has in him the spark of bravery.

At the council of war that night there was no one, I learned from Oswald, who voted for returning. The remaining provisions, Arnold admitted, would provide scant rations for a dozen crows; but determined men, he insisted, might keep alive for days by depending on what heaven sent.

“I can get a little food from Enos,” Arnold said, “and dash ahead myself to the French settlements so to send back supplies to the rest of you. All that can happen to us has happened, God knows! Anything that happens after this can’t help but be a lesser evil.”

At this Morgan, unshaven and red-eyed, his huge wrists covered with water blisters and his thighs all scratched and whipped above his Indian leggins, roared in his hoarse carter’s voice: “Go on, for God’s sake! We can feed on hope for a week!”

“I trust,” Arnold said, “we can count on something more solid. Even when everything’s gone, we can’t help but find food in these forests and the waters we’ll cross. I believe we should have a shot at it. If we’re successful, it will be a feat remembered for a thousand years to come.

“More than that, General Washington depends on us. I for one don’t propose to run home like a child, moaning I couldn’t go where I was sent because I was hungry.”

There was a growl from all the officers. Captain Dearborn, who became an ambassador afterward to some country in Europe—and a horrid sight he was, Captain Oswald declared, with tangled black whiskers that could scarce be told from the coat of the curly-haired dog between his knees, and a face as white as a clam-shell from some sickness that gnawed him—spoke up softly and said: “Sir, if I correctly gather the sense of this council, these gentlemen are for Quebec, even if they have to eat their breeches to get there.”

“You gathered correctly,” Colonel Meigs said, “but from the looks of my breeches, I’ll have nothing to eat after the first ten minutes.”

“There’s one more thing,” Arnold said, after he had thanked them. “It seems to me we should rid ourselves of those we can’t depend on. We must send back the sick, certainly; but I’m also in favor of sending back any man who’s faint-hearted about continuing.”

“I have some sick,” growled Morgan, “but no faint hearts! If I found any, I’d take ’em by the slack of their breeches and throw ’em all the way across the Height of Land!”

Late that night Oswald summoned me to the colonel’s tent. I found him writing, as was his habit when alone at night. He stabbed his pen at me over the top of his field desk when I came in.

“Now for the reward of virtue,” he said. “Back you go to a land flowing with milk and honey, and take care you don’t eat yourself sick.”

“My stomach’s shrunk,” I said. “I don’t need the food I needed a month ago.”

“All the more reason to beware when you find yourself among the flesh pots.” He picked up two letters. “Here are messages for Colonel Enos and Colonel Greene. Greene is waiting for Enos to come up with the reserves of food; so you’ll find ’em close together. This is important! Some of us are going to be in desperate need of food, and before you know it, too. Listen to this, now, in case you lose it.”

With that he read me the letter to Colonel Enos, dated, “Dead River, thirty miles from Chaudière Pond,” the latter being the lake my father called Megantic.

We have had a council of war [said the letter, after mentioning the extreme rains and floods], when it was thought best and ordered to send back all the sick and feeble with three days’ provisions, and directions for you to furnish them until they can reach the commissary or Norridgewock; and that on receipt of this you should proceed with as many of the best of your division as you can furnish with fifteen days’ provisions; and that the remainder whether sick or well should be immediately sent back to the commissary to whom I wrote to take all possible care of them. I make no doubt you will join with me in this matter as it may be the means of preserving the whole detachment, and of executing our plan without running any great hazard, as fifteen days will doubtless bring us to Canada. I make no doubt you will make all possible expedition.

“I’ll start at dawn,” I said, “and be as far as Colonel Greene’s division by night.”

Arnold rose from his camp stool to drive with his fist as though hitting at somebody. “Tell ’em to hurry! Hurry, hurry, hurry! We’ve been a month in the coils of this river, and a third of the distance still to go! If we could have hurried we’d have walked through the gates of Quebec by now. Get at it, and hurry; and hurry back with the news of how many are coming up!”

Natanis crawled into our lean-to that night and lay with us, the air being bitter cold with a feel of snow in it. Because he was a better hand with a paddle than Hobomok or myself, I determined to take him with us for speed and safety, both in going and returning. This, I felt, I could safely do because his face was known only to Eneas and Sabatis; and those two had gone to Quebec with messages from Arnold.

In the gray of the dawn, therefore, Natanis left us silently and circled behind the camp so we could pick him up unseen.

When Hobomok and I slid our canoe into the water, the sick men were coming down to the bateaux, so they could be sent back: men so weak from the flux they couldn’t walk, but must be dragged to the river side; men so swollen and lamed from rheumatism that the sweat poured from them in the biting morning air when they were picked up and carried. There was one, a Pennsylvania rifleman with bones near sticking through his skin from the flux, who made such an uproar that men came from all over the encampment.

“Leave be!” he shouted, his voice shrill as a woman’s from rage and weakness, “leave be! I ain’t going back! There ain’t nothing wrong with me that a day won’t fix! I ain’t going back, I tell ye!” Yet he was so weak he could not struggle with those who dragged him. “There’s sicker men than I be!” he cried, “hiding and pretending to be well! I ain’t going back! Leave me lay in the woods alone! I’ll catch up!”

Daniel Morgan, hearing the commotion, came striding down among the ragged, bearded riflemen and looked into the face of the sick man.

“Stand him up on his feet,” he said to those who had him under the arms.

They lifted him up until his feet were flat on the ground; then released their holds. He slumped down in a heap, making a panting noise, like a tired dog.

“Put him in the bateau,” Morgan said. He glanced at the riflemen, glowering at their impassive stares. “Don’t any of the rest of you get sick! That’s an order! You men keep well long enough, and England won’t know whether she’s standing on her head or her fat behind!”

There may have been twenty to twenty-five sick men in all, not more. I looked for James Dunn among them, but couldn’t find him, nor could I say whether I was fearful or hopeful of seeing him.

We picked up Natanis, who took the stern paddle while Hobomok moved to the bow. Thus driven we went down the swollen waters faster than I thought possible.

On both sides of the stream were sad reminders of the flood—tent canvases caught against tree trunks and draggling mournfully in the current; tangles of setting-poles and ropes jammed into the tops of bushes; boards of bateaux broken apart on the falls; chunks of salt pork turning slowly in the eddies at the base of rocks; burst barrels tilted among half-submerged trees.

By noon we came up with Greene’s division, camped a few miles below the spot where the flood had hit us. Sending Natanis and Hobomok down the stream, I went in search of Greene and found him with his officers, Major Bigelow, Captain Thayer, Captain Topham, and Captain Hubbard, all talking about food; and I have found that when there is a shortage of provisions folk will talk about eatables to the exclusion of all else.

Colonel Greene tore open the message, signaling me to wait, and read it aloud. He asked in his mild voice, a voice that seemed abashed at its boldness, how we had stood the deluge, and what was the state of our food. Those who served under Colonel Greene esteemed him highly, for he was gentle, always; thoughtful of those with him; more eager to know what other folk were thinking than to air his own thoughts. There were times when all of us would have been better pleased if he had raged and roared, like Morgan; for in armies, in time of war, the noisy man is listened to first, and then the quiet man; and since wars are noisy and violent, it may take long for the ability of quiet men to be recognized, or for their voices to be heard above the bellowing of incompetents.

I told him how near we had come to drowning, and how the officers and men were set on going to Quebec, even though they must eat their breeches.

Greene smiled gently, as though someone had said the morrow would be pleasant; but Captain Thayer, a maker of perukes before he came within a whisker’s width of losing his life at Fort William Henry, and the most harmless-seeming dare-devil that ever was, said mildly that the idea was all right so long as everyone ate his own breeches.

I asked where to find Colonel Enos, at which they looked at each other with the look men have when they hold someone in disregard, but feel a reluctance to speak their minds before a stranger.

“Broadly speaking,” Major Bigelow said, giving me the faintest suspicion of a wink, “you’ll find him in the rear.”

“Broadly speaking,” Thayer murmured, “he is the rear.”

“No, no, no,” Major Bigelow said genially, “he must stay where he can watch the provisions and make sure nobody ever has enough to give away.”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” protested Colonel Greene, as though a little frightened at his temerity. To me he added: “I think you’ll find the colonel a little below us. It might be well if Colonel Arnold’s message reached him at the earliest possible moment. We’ve heard some of his men are”—he cleared his throat apologetically—“slightly disaffected.”

“I’ve heard,” Major Bigelow said carelessly, “they’re damned well scared. I’ve heard that if a twig snaps near one of ’em, he jumps like a doe that’s backed into a thorn bush.”

“Would you be so kind,” Colonel Greene added, “as to tell Colonel Enos, if he asks for us, that we’ll wait for him to come up with provisions.”

Major Bigelow and Captain Thayer burst into an indecorous laugh, and Colonel Greene wagged his head at them in mild reproof.

Misliking these tidings concerning Colonel Enos, I was on my way back to the river when I was stopped by young Burr, ragged as to shoes and breeches, but cleanly shaved, and with his dapper appearance somehow preserved.

“Here’s luck!” he exclaimed. “What’s happening up ahead? Have they got any food up there?”

“Mighty little! Probably less than you, since the flood.”

“Less than we! That’s beautiful! That’s wonderful! At last we have something smaller than nothing!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Why, bless your soul,” Burr said, “the only food I’ve had in seven days is what Jacataqua shoots for me! Food? Why, we’re on starvation rations! To-day I saw men cutting tallow candles into their gruel to give it body.”

“But Enos was ordered to send up his surplus food to you!” I protested.

“Enos!” Burr cried, his eyes malevolent. “Enos! Rot him and rat him! He said he had none for himself! Gave us only two barrels of flour! Two barrels of flour to carry two hundred men to Quebec! Why, he might as well have offered us a dozen apple cores!” He called Colonel Enos names that would have turned the stomach of his reverend father who, I had been told, was the president of Princeton College.

“But what became of his surplus?” I asked. “He carried enough to cover our retreat!”

Burr laughed unpleasantly. “I think he still has it. Why do his men hang behind, never coming up with us, unless they fear we’ll take supplies from them by main strength when we see how much they have? We would, too, God knows!”

I went to the river and signaled to Natanis and Hobomok. “Look here,” Burr said, “is there any talk up ahead of turning back?”

“Yes,” I said, “there’s talk of it. The talk is that anyone who turns back is worse than a roach. A roach likes water.”

Burr smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. Then he caught sight of Natanis bringing the canoe to the bank. “Ho! There’s a new face! Who might your new Indian be?”

“A friend. You can call him Mr. Pitt.”

“Indeed,” Burr said, “I’ll call him Benjamin Franklin if he’ll go down and relieve Enos of a few of the barrels of flour that he’s keeping from us.”

I left him cursing Enos, and meaning every word of it.

We met Enos moving slowly upstream, as though he had a year to make the journey. Far behind him two bateaux straggled around a bend.

The bow paddle of Enos’s canoe was in the hands of John Treeworgy. He had been so often on my mind that I recognized his long, gray, glowering face as far as I could see it. An Indian paddled stern: one I couldn’t place. Hobomok flung me the information over his shoulder: “Swashan, the sachem from St. Francis: the one you bearded at Cobosseecontee.”

“Does this man know you?” I asked Natanis.

“I never saw him before,” Natanis said. I took no pleasure in seeing Swashan with Treeworgy, or the two of them together with Enos. I could feel in my bones there was something wrong about Treeworgy. I had my suspicions of Swashan as well; and I would have liked to put both of them out of the way. Yet I couldn’t shoot them in cold blood, no matter what my suspicions were; for even in war times it’s murder to kill a man unless you can prove him an enemy.

Colonel Enos had lost none of his importance; so I was as full of politeness as a Boston hairdresser when, on coming up with him, Natanis swung our canoe alongside.

“Colonel Arnold’s compliments and a letter,” I said, handing it to him and keeping tight hold of his gunwale to see as much of Treeworgy as I could. So far as I could tell, Treeworgy took no interest in any of us after his first glum nod at me.

As the colonel read, he continually scratched at his knees and made a sucking sound with his tongue to show displeasure. He read the letter twice from beginning to end; folded it and put it in his pocket; then snatched it out and read it again. “Well!” he said. “Well!” and fell to scratching himself, his forehead all wrinkled.

At length he looked up, puzzled-like. “How do the men feel up ahead? Are they for going on, Morgan’s men and Meigs’s men?”

“Yes, sir. Even the sick we’re sending back.”

“Gah!” He made a noise in his throat, such a noise as a cleanly housewife makes on seeing a kitchen in a mess, “Gah! These sick men! If I could be rid of ’em, I might do something! Sick men! Sick men! Sick men! All to be looked after and fed like a lot of yowling babies!”

He glared at me. “How do Arnold and Morgan and Meigs have provisions for fifteen days, when all I’ve heard from ’em is calls for food? Food! Food! Food! Don’t they do anything but eat?”

“Sir,” I said, “I only know what the colonel writes. They lost a deal of supplies from the flood and overturned bateaux, so they’re on half rations; but they’d go on if they had no rations at all.”

“Morgan and Meigs and the colonel are good officers: they wouldn’t permit such a thing,” he said pompously. “The first duty of an officer is to his men.”

I thought of the tales I had heard of General Braddock at the Monongahela in the last war; how he beat our men with the flat of his sword to make them come from behind their trees and stand in line like good British soldiers, to be shot to shreds by the hidden French and Indians. There also came into my mind the many times I’d heard my father say the first duty of most British officers sent to America was always to themselves. But since I was facing a soldier who believed in discipline, I made no reply.

“I have no such supplies as Colonel Arnold speaks of,” he said querulously. “My men have barely three days’ provisions left! It’s common knowledge among ’em that if they advance another day’s march into this howling wilderness they’ll starve whatever they do: starve if they go forward; starve if they go back.”

“Up ahead,” I said, “they think that since Colonel Enos’s division had more provisions at the start than any of the others, it still must have more.”

“ ’Tain’t true!” he shouted, hammering his fist on the canoe thwart. “We’re near starvation ourselves! We lost food from rains and the damned leaky bateaux; then we fed the sick and gave flour to Greene’s division.”

“I was told,” I said, meaning to be sarcastic, “that what Greene got from you was two whole barrels of flour.”

“Yes,” said Enos petulantly, seeing no sarcasm in it, “and now I’m told to send on as many men as I can supply with fifteen days’ provisions, and send the rest back! How in God’s name can I do two things at once when I haven’t the means to do either!”

I gave him the message Greene had given me for him—that he was waiting for provisions. Enos made his housewifely noise in his throat, “Gah!” and prodded Treeworgy’s shoulder. “I’ll go ashore. Go back, Treeworgy, and tell Captain McCobb to hurry up here with the rest of the officers. I want to talk to ’em.” To me he added, “I’ll need you, too! There may be questions you’ll have to answer.”

He strode up and down the bank, rumbling to himself and making sucking sounds against the roof of his mouth, like a toothless old woman.

This, Natanis told us while we waited, was good hunting country. Not far from us, on the west side of Dead River, there was a wide brook rising in two ponds, thick with beavers. On this brook, he said, he had a burying place, as well as on the next stream above, and on the fourth pond of the Chain of Ponds and the first pond on the far side of the Height of Land.

I’d almost forgotten that spare canoes are often buried in the winter by all Northern Indians for safety and preservation; that a diligent Indian in rough country, where there are many falls and bad carries, will have several canoes scattered through his territory, either buried or, in the summer, carefully covered with branches.

When the bateaux of Colonel Enos’s division came up I sent Natanis and Hobomok away again, telling them to get game if possible, but to keep an eye on me in case I wished to move. There was a slow surliness about these men of Enos’s. They seemed more wretched than any of those in the other three divisions, though it was impossible that they had suffered greater hardships.

Two of them, Connecticut men, came over to me to ask whether I had come from up front. When I said I had, one asked when the front divisions were starting back.

“What makes you think they’re starting back?” I asked.

“Everybody says they’re starving to death,” he said. “Everybody says we’ll starve to death ourselves if we go beyond here. They can’t go on! They’ve got to come back.”

“I haven’t heard anybody say so,” I said. “Probably you’ve been listening to some crazy man: somebody that never left his mother before. Some cry-baby, maybe.”

“No,” the bateauman said, “all the sick from Morgan’s division are saying it.”

“Did they say it to you? Did you hear them?”

“No,” he said, “but Treeworgy was talking with them. They told him.”

Well, I thought, there it was, what I had been sure of at Fort Western: Treeworgy spreading fearsome tales!

“I’ll bet they didn’t tell him the worst of it, though,” I said, hoping they’d tell me more.

“Prob’ly not,” said the bateauman. “They told how the officers have to lick the men with whips to git ’em to carry their bateaux over the bad spots, so’s their backs are all bloody.”

“Well, well!”

“Yes,” the other bateauman said, “and how the water beyond here is poisoned by the rains so them as drinks it are all swoll up, and can’t walk.”

“Is everybody swoll up?” the first bateauman asked.

“You gosh-blamed idiots!” I said, “do I look swoll up?”

“No; that’s what Treeworgy said,” growled the first bateauman.

“What was it he said?”

“That they’d be sending back somebody as wasn’t swoll up, to say everything was all right, and git our food away from us.”

“There ain’t going to be nobody git no more of my food away from me!” the second bateauman growled.

“Me neither,” said the first.

The two guffawed. “Anybody that gits food out of us from now on,” said the second, “will have to git our muskets away from us fust.”

I turned to look at Enos, who stood on the bank, pinching his lower lip and staring down river.

“The damned old woman!” the first bateauman said, following my glance.

“Yes,” said the second, “he’s gave away enough provisions to fellers that say they’re sick. To hell with him and to hell with them! If we don’t look out for ourselves, nobody will!”

“Well,” I said, “they don’t feel that way up front. They’d rather die than give up.”

The first bateauman snorted. “What’s the good of that? It’s like Treeworgy was saying: if it’s sure death to go some place, you’re more use to your country if you don’t go there.”

Rain had begun to fall again, a cold drizzle that might, I knew, change to snow.

“Look at this!” the second bateauman cried. “Look at this stinking country! Look at those damned mountains! I go no further!”

I heard Enos calling. Sickened by their talk, I left the bateaumen and went to him. Other bateaux had come up, and some of the officers of the Fourth Division—Williams, Scott and McCobb, captains; Lieutenant Hyde and Lieutenant Peters. A fire had been lit for them and a tent pitched, whereas I doubt there was a single tent left in all of Morgan’s and Meigs’s divisions. They sat disconsolate in the tent, looking out at the rain. I marveled how it was possible for men of the same size and muscle and upbringing to be so different. The minds of Morgan’s, Meigs’s and Greene’s officers worked swiftly, seizing on favorable and happy things; but those of Enos’s officers worked slowly and moved little, like a cow quivering the skin over her shoulder to drive away flies on a hot afternoon. They saw no ray of light or hope in anything.

“Here’s the messenger that brought the letter,” Colonel Enos said as I came up.

They glowered at me. Captain Scott, a heavy-paunched man with a thin face and a red nose on which a drop of moisture hung, asked gloomily whether I knew what lay between us and Quebec.

I said I knew from hearsay, whereupon Captain Scott asked me to tell him honestly whether I would undertake to travel the route with insufficient provisions.

“Why, sir,” I said, “I’d travel it if all I had was a handful of salt and a lump of pork to cook with trouts.”

“That’s quibbling!” Colonel Enos said. “I detest quibbling! Answer truthfully, now: if you had provisions for only a few days, and couldn’t get more, would you be willing to make the journey to Quebec from here, especially if it was your duty to conduct others who looked to you for safety?”

“Sir,” I said, “you’re a colonel. I’m only a guide. If I should speak out, my words might be held against me. I might be accused of disrespect. I know little about the ways of an army. Some of them seem to me to be thought out by lunatics.”

“Disregard our rank, sir,” Colonel Enos said. “Give us the information we’re seeking.”

“Well, then,” I said, “there’s two ways of going to Quebec: one in wartime and one in peacetime.”

“Now you’re quibbling again!”

“Sir,” I said, “I’m not quibbling! I’d go to Quebec in wartime with no provisions at all, so long as there was another man left to go with.”

“Let’s get at this another way,” said Captain Williams, a pleasant, polite man. “Do you know the instructions in Colonel Arnold’s letter?”

“Yes. He ordered Colonel Enos to send forward all the men to whom he could give fifteen days’ rations, and send home all the others, both sick and well.”

“That’s correct. Now let me ask you what you’d do about going to Quebec in this case: Suppose you could only send forward thirty men with fifteen days’ provisions, while the rest of your men, three hundred and more, would have to be sent back with no provisions of any sort—sent back to struggle through these forests and bogs and keep up their strength for a week—two weeks, maybe—without a damned thing to eat.”

“Now you’re asking about an impossibility,” I said.

“Not at all, sir; not at all!” Enos cried. “That’s our predicament exactly! Tell us what you’d do in such a situation?”

“Well,” I said slowly, “I think I’d put all my provisions in one place and count ’em.”

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“Why, sir,” I said, “I mean there’s no doubt in my mind you’ve got more provisions than you think.”

“Drat you!” the colonel began, purple with rage; but Captain Williams stopped him.

“We invited it, Colonel.” He spoke to me politely. “We’d like you to see this as something apart from your personal desires. Our own men are sullen from fearing their food will run out. We have others to consider, too. We’re obliged to support all the sick sent back by Morgan and Meigs and Greene. I suppose you think it’s our duty to let these sick men starve in the wilderness?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”

“Then you think it’s our duty to give them enough food to get back to the settlements, because without food they’d certainly starve?”

“Yes,” I said, “I do.”

“Then if you think that’s our duty,” Captain Williams said, “you must think it’s our duty to return home with the entire division.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” I exclaimed in disgust.

“But we can’t do two things!” Captain Williams protested. “We can’t send the sick home, and go forward at the same time. You say yourself it’s our duty to supply the sick with food. As soon as we do that we can’t give anyone enough provisions for fifteen days. Colonel Arnold asked only for such men as could be supplied with provisions for fifteen days. It seems to me you think it’s our duty to return home.”

“That would be all very well,” I said, choking with rage, “if you had as few provisions as you say.”

“Well, do you think we’re better judges of that, or you?” Captain Williams asked sweetly.

“I think I’d be, if I could count your provisions without getting a bullet through the head from one of your bravehearted boys.”

“We couldn’t think of exposing you to danger.”

“No,” I said, “and damned good reason, too! You can’t think of exposing anyone to danger, including yourselves.”

I have often waked up at night regretting what I said next; but I was in a fury at being talked in a circle by this sea lawyer of a Williams.

“Here’s another thing I think,” I added. “I think if I were in your place, and thought as you think, I’d pack up my bateaux even if I had provisions for a thousand men for fifteen days! I’d run off home with ’em, leaving the heartbreak and fighting for those who don’t live by measurement: for those willing to trust to God and their own efforts to have shoes on their feet and air in their lungs and food in their bellies in a week’s time.”

With this I walked out of the tent, hot with anger and expecting a bullet or a club in the back of the head.

Natanis and Hobomok drove the canoe across the river when they saw me. As I climbed in, too disquieted to rejoice at the two raccoons and the bundle of fat spruce partridges that lay in the bottom, I heard Enos’s peevish voice behind me. “Tell Colonel Greene to wait for me in the morning. I’ll hold a council of war when I come up with him.”

In his voice I sensed a number of unspoken words; and I wished I could pick up one of the partridges and jam it down his throat.

The rain turned to snow as we went up to Greene’s camp in the semidark—a gurry of weather that made it hard to pick our way around the falls, nor could we have done so without Natanis to guide us. Even so I stumbled perpetually, my mind being on the lack of provisions of which Enos and his men complained. I didn’t believe their food was as low as they claimed, nor do I believe it to-day, it being in my thoughts then and now that the men, affrighted out of all reason by Treeworgy’s tales, had hid provisions so they might run home, uncovering the hoards as they ran. Yet if it was true, Enos and his officers were indeed in a parlous situation; for if they went on, leaving sick men to suffer and starve, they would be damned for cruelty; and if they turned back, leaving the rest of the army to go on without them, they would be equally damned for cowardice.

Also there rested heavy on me the knowledge that Treeworgy from the first had sown discontent among Enos’s men, and that I had failed to get at the bottom of it in spite of my suspicions. Nor was it, I thought, any great comfort to know that if Enos’s division turned back, Treeworgy would turn back with them.

It was dark by the time we saw Greene’s campfires through the snowflakes, and I was in no pretty frame of mind, what with my anger and the burning of my feet from tramping over the carries in shoes broken in a dozen places, so that I might as well have been barefoot.

But when I left Natanis and Hobomok kindling a fire in the lee of our canoe and went with the raccoons and partridges to Greene’s tent to give him Enos’s message, the welcome I got was as good as warm clothes on my body and an opened window in my head to let out the darkness and gloom that had filled me at Enos’s camp.

It’s doubtless a fine thing to be serious-minded, preserving a dignified and ponderous demeanor toward life; but if I must fight or march I prefer to do it with frivolous, light-minded folk; for they are the ones who fight and march while others give serious thought to how it should be done.

“Dear, dear! Dear, dear!” said Colonel Greene, feeling of the raccoon absent-mindedly and passing it to Major Bigelow, who cuddled it as though it were a child, “I’m sorry to hear these tales about Enos’s division, though it’s no more than I expected. I’m sure the colonel will do what’s best.”

Bigelow, a wiry, brown-faced officer with heavy black eyebrows and a peculiar habit of breaking into imitation peals of laughter at unexpected moments, had placed the raccoon’s body on his knees and was parting its hair carefully at various spots. He whistled shrilly, pointing with apparent horror at the parted hair of the raccoon. A large black flea moved languidly against the white skin. “Colonel Enos!” Bigelow said gravely.

“Moves a little fast, doesn’t he?” Captain Thayer asked.

“Yes,” Bigelow said. “He’s going south.”

“He can go south for all of me,” said Captain Topham. “If he doesn’t, and we take Quebec, we’ll have to stay there twenty years waiting for him to catch up.”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” Colonel Greene protested.

“Gentlemen hell!” said Bigelow. He went to the rear of the lean-to and tossed the raccoon to the cook, who was working over a kettle under a pine tree. “Put this in the gruel, Luke,” he shouted, “and see if you can get it strong enough to hold up a hair.”

He turned back to Greene. “He’s an old woman and you know it, Colonel! Don’t be so easy on him! If he was a hen, he wouldn’t cackle till he’d looked under himself twice to see whether the egg was really there. If I can get him behind a pine tree with nobody looking I’ll kick him all the way back to Norridgewock. Don’t say Gentlemen to me! I’m nothing but a carter where Enos is concerned!”

“It may be,” the colonel said, “that he’s out of provisions, as he says. If it’s true, I don’t envy him, with all our sick on his hands.”

“Stuff and feathers!” Thayer said. “How can he be out of provisions when he started with twice what any of us carried!”

“What do you think?” the colonel asked me.

“Sir,” I said, “I don’t know. I was in a rage at him and Williams and McCobb, thinking they were shameful cowards; but the men are frightened and sulky, bound to save their own skins and be damned to Enos and everybody else. It may be they wasted food, cooking more than their needs. They may have hid some, unknown to Enos and the rest.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Bigelow cried, “he could chance it with some men, couldn’t he? Do you think we’ll turn back if we have less than fifteen days’ provisions, such as the colonel tells us to have in his letter?” He struck an attitude. “I shall go forward even though I have provisions for only fourteen and one half days!” He burst into shrill, false laughter; and the rest of us laughed at his clowning, knowing he would go forward with the colonel and the rest of the division if he had nothing more than a cupful of flour to get him to Quebec.

I make no pretense of reading men’s minds, since I have found so many of them cheerful in war when they might reasonably be sad, and sad when there seems fair cause for cheerfulness. Yet if Colonel Enos was dispirited when I gave him the message from Colonel Arnold, he had more reason for being so on the following morning.

There was a blanket of snow on the ground; and the air had an edge to it that took men piercingly in the knees and behind the ears. It may be I speak overmuch of the biting nature of the cold along the Kennebec; but I do so because it was one of the enemies we fought, as well as the British, and because it seemed a peculiar racking cold that slid down from the Height of Land, creeping and twisting along the winding coils of the river, undulating in a sort of clammy mist that clung to the valley through its whole length.

Then there were the sick men coming down on him, bateau after bateau filled with them, more than twenty-five men from Morgan’s and Meigs’s divisions, and some sixty from Greene’s, men so weakened with the flux that they could scarce stand, and so racked with rheumatism that if they fell, which they often did when out of the bateaux, they dragged themselves along on hands and knees until someone came to lift them up.

Greene sent off his division as soon as it was light, staying behind himself with Bigelow and the other officers to wait for Enos and the council of war.

“When the council’s over,” he told me, “I’ll give you a message for the colonel.”

I watched the men set off, churning the new snow into slush. There were barely a hundred of them, all badly off in the matter of clothes, and two with no shoes at all, though I make no doubt their feet were tough as leather.

I caught Burr on the run and asked him the whereabouts of Jacataqua.

“Gone ahead to hunt,” he flung at me over his shoulder. “Send your Mr. Pitt to get food if there’s time. I could do with a juicy crow to-night!”

This I did, telling Natanis and Hobomok they were safe in hunting for a matter of three hours, though it was a move that did me no good. Yet I cannot rightly say I regretted it; for it has always seemed to me that if we regretted and sought to avoid all the small movements that lie behind our misfortunes and disappointments, we’d spend our lives in regrets and our days in immovability.

It was noon when Enos came up the river with his officers, Williams, McCobb, Scott, Hyde, and Peters; and after all these years I cannot set down their names without cursing them, even though I know in my heart there may have been good and sufficient reason for what they did. They were in a bateau, driven by Treeworgy and Swashan. I knew at once they were going no farther; for in the bateau was neither baggage nor provisions.

They crowded into Colonel Greene’s tent, and after a time I crouched beside it, to hear, if possible, what might be going forward. Major Bigelow was speaking, as careless as though he spoke of scraping barnacles off a sloop.

“There’s no use huffering and chuffering about what Colonel Arnold would have us do if we can’t live up to the letter of his instructions,” he said, “because Colonel Arnold has gone beyond our reach. He said he wants no sick men and no faint hearts, but must have fighters; so I’m going on, and my men with me, and all the talk in the world can’t change that!”

“But you’ve got to figure,” Enos complained, “that it takes three days to cross the Height of Land and two more to reach Lake Megantic and another three—”

“Begging the colonel’s pardon,” said Major Bigelow, “I haven’t got to figure, and I’m not going to. I’m going to go, and not waste time figuring.”

“That’s what I’m figuring on doing,” said Captain Thayer, mild and pleasant as always.

“But an officer is responsible for his men,” Colonel Enos objected. “I must think of my men.”

“Holy mackerel! begging the colonel’s pardon,” Bigelow cried. “What are you going to do if we have to ram our men against the guns of Quebec? We haven’t any written guarantees from England that we won’t have to. I hope we wouldn’t be supposed to wrap ’em up in feather beds until the British are all dead!”

“That’s another matter entirely,” said Colonel Enos. “I have to think of my men.”

“So do I!” said Bigelow. “I have to think of them, and of Colonel Arnold, and of the men in Morgan’s and Meigs’s divisions. That’s why I’m going!”

“My men refuse to continue,” said Captain Williams.

“So do mine,” said McCobb.

“And mine,” said Scott.

“Sir,” said Enos, seemingly speaking to Major Bigelow, “I protest against your manner of spitting when my officers have stated a fact calculated to enable us to arrive at a decision. It’s an act unworthy of an officer and a gentleman!”

What reply Major Bigelow made I never learned; for a hand touched me on the shoulder. It was Natanis.

“Where is the canoe?” he asked.

“Our canoe?”

He nodded. “It is gone, with our blankets and food.”

“Treeworgy!” I said under my breath. We ran to the spot where we had camped. There was no need to look at the tracks leading to the river. Treeworgy and Swashan had robbed us. From the marks on the bank we saw they had gone upstream.

“How far,” I asked Natanis, “to your laid-up canoe?”

“Ten times the flight of a partridge, on the opposite bank.”

This was about a mile. “Quick,” I said, “get across with Greene’s bateau, you and Hobomok, and uncover it! For God’s sake, hurry! This Treeworgy is up to some deviltry! He’s a spy and there’s no two ways about it!”

I recall no particular despair at our situation, despite our lack of food and blankets and the loss of my musket, but only a longing to have Treeworgy at the end of my sights, or my hands on his lying throat. Both Hobomok and Natanis had muskets and carried fishing lines, flints, and steel in their pouches, so that there was no danger of starvation. But Treeworgy’s dash toward the front of the column was something on which I hadn’t counted. There was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that it had something to do with me—something bad.

I ran to Greene when he and Enos came out of the council, followed by the other officers. Enos bawled for Treeworgy; and Bigelow and the rest of Greene’s officers went off toward their bateau without so much as a farewell glance toward Enos’s men.

“My compliments to Colonel Arnold,” said Greene, with a look about his mouth as though he had eaten something hateful. “Tell him my division, reduced to one hundred and seven effective men, will join him with the others.”

“And the council of war?” I asked.

“That’s a message I hate to send,” he said mildly. “Colonel Enos’s officers voted against proceeding, on the ground that their provisions were insufficient and their men unruly. Colonel Enos voted with us to proceed, but yielded to the pleas of his officers and will return at the head of his division.”

We stared at each other. “Is that all, sir?” I asked.

“Yes, I think that’s all,” Colonel Greene sighed. “It’s difficult and painful. He’ll have to stand a court-martial when he gets back, of course.”

“That shouldn’t be hard to stand,” I said, “with Williams and McCobb testifying for him, and no Bigelow or Thayer to distract them.”

Greene nodded and turned away, a fine gentleman, but a little overkindly and obliging, it seemed to me, for an army not officered exclusively by gentlemen, which our army wasn’t, any more than was the British army.

I hid in the pines near the camping ground, watching Enos fuming and fussing in the snow and occasionally whooping for Treeworgy. At the end of an hour Natanis and Hobomok came around the bend, driving a small canoe against the current so that the water curled away from its stem, showing it was well loaded. There was an odd hump in the middle, and over it a blanket. They came up on the far side of the river: then, as I showed myself, cut across. Beside the blanketed hump lay a spare musket.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“Half a barrel of flour,” said Natanis, “that Mr. Pitt was asked to get.”

I heard Colonel Enos bawling behind me, so climbed in. “Here!” he shouted, as we pushed upstream, “set me down to my camp!”

“Begging the colonel’s pardon,” I said, mindful of Major Bigelow’s military forms, “but the colonel can go to hell.”

He was bawling furiously for Treeworgy when we had our last sight of him, nor did I care if I never had another.