General Washington nodded. “I hadn’t heard,” he said to Cap in a pleasant, deep voice that vibrated as though from overmuch giving of orders in harsh weather, “I hadn’t heard you’d been made a colonel.”
Cap shook his head like a dog with a fly on his ear. “Who hit me?” he asked.
Colonel Arnold tweaked his sleeve. “The general asked you a question.”
Cap fumbled for his sword and leaned on it. “I hadn’t heard it, either,” he said, “and damned good reason! A scurvy rat in Ports mouth bribed the gaoler to lock me up and let no word reach my friends. I’ve heard nothing since Jonah got out of the whale!”
“Then you’re not a colonel?” General Washington said impassively.
“Why, hell, General,” Cap growled, “I’ve been in gaol! If it hadn’t been for Colonel Arnold sending me a letter I wouldn’t have this sword or this uniform, or be out of gaol, even, the dirty weasels!”
“In time of war,” General Washington said, “a person found within the lines in a uniform to which he’s not entitled is liable to be shot for a spy.”
“A spy!” Cap bawled. “I’ll go back and kill that damned son of a goat!” He threw his sword on the floor with a clatter, and wrenched an arm from his coat.
General Washington got up from behind his table and placed a hand restrainingly on his arm. “Let’s have the full tale,” he said. He glanced grimly at Colonel Arnold; but it suddenly came to me there was no grimness about his look; merely a sober intimation that what he was about to hear would be enjoyable.
“Well, sir,” Cap said, “there ain’t much to tell. There was a tailor that dealt with the British officers, and I suspicioned he’d been the ringleader of them as put me in gaol. So when I was let out I went to his house and took him by the collar and held him over his stove, and he promised to make me a uniform. Well, General, he done it, and gave me a sword and a hat to boot. Yes, sir, and to show his affection he let me have a silver tea set and a bag of hard money that your honor might find handy for the army.” Growling ferociously, he finished stripping off his coat and threw it on a chair, placing his sword across it. Under the coat he wore a shirt of India goods. I wondered where he got it. “Anybody that wants that coat can have it,” Cap said.
“We’re all needy,” the general said. “I make no doubt we can find a taker.”
“Is there anything the matter with it?” Cap asked.
“Why, no,” the general said. “It’s fitting enough, in the proper place. It happens to be the field uniform of a colonel in the Royal Marines—the rarest of all military ranks. There are only four marine colonels in the entire British army. I think, sir, you’ll find a leather hunting shirt more suited to your needs.”
He turned to me then; and I repeat now what I have always said: that a man had to be careless and thoughtless not to straighten up under his cold blue eye and do the best he could.
“Sir,” he said, “Colonel Arnold tells me you set off for Quebec as a boy by way of the Kennebec.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You had no fear of making this trip successfully?” he asked.
“Why, no, sir. My father was with me.”
“Would you be as sanguine to-day, without your father?”
“Certainly, sir, if I could pick my companions.”
“So you wouldn’t travel that route to Quebec with anyone?”
I studied for a time. “Sir, I’d prefer to go with somebody who knew the woods or had some special desire for going. Then I’d be sure of getting there.”
“Would you be willing to go with Colonel Arnold?”
“Not only willing, sir, but happy.”
“And with your friend here?” The general meant Cap Huff.
“I’d count myself fortunate.”
General Washington turned to his desk and consulted a small map. “Now,” he said, “when you traveled toward Quebec as a boy did you experience any difficulties?”
“No, sir. Not while our canoe was driven by good paddlers.”
“How did it happen you never got there?”
“We learned the man we pursued had got clean away.”
“But you could have made it?”
“Easily, sir, so far as we knew.”
“In how long a time?”
“From Swan Island, near the mouth of the Kennebec, in eight or nine days, sir, if all went well.”
“What do you mean by ‘If all went well’?”
“If we found no drought, sir, and no floods. If we got food when we wanted it. If we hit no rocks—kept from spilling in rapids. If all our muskets weren’t lost, and none of us broke a leg.”
“And if such things happened?” the general asked. “How long would you be then?”
“God knows, sir.”
“Do you know others who made the trip?”
“Yes, sir: the Abenaki Natanis, my friend, made it several times.”
“Several times?” the general asked quickly. “Then this Natanis has been in Quebec more than once since the British have held it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I saw him shoot a quick look at Colonel Arnold.
“Do you know of others?” he asked.
“Many others. Lieutenant Hutchins of Rogers’ Rangers took a message from Amherst to Wolfe by way of the Kennebec three weeks before my father and I went up. I’ve read the wampum rolls of the Abenakis, and seen the records of how Father Drouillettes went twice from Cushnoc to Quebec and back, and how Father Rale went up from Norridgewock. There was an Englishman named Montresor who traveled that road a year after my father and I. Natanis says Montresor drew a map, though I never saw it. Many Norridgewock Indians traveled to Quebec each year to trade or see relatives. Now all of them have gone to St. Francis, which means they went by way of the Kennebec, squaws and all. Assagunticooks from the Androscoggin make the trip often. It’s no great trick for a woodsman; but no one ever made it without knowing he’d been on a journey that near graveled him.”
“Let me ask you, sir,” General Washington said, “whether there are men in your section capable of making such a trip?”
“Plenty, sir; good woodsmen and hunters, hardy in the woods.”
“Then if we could get an army of such men, they’d all be capable of making it?”
“An army!” I cried.
“An army, sir, capable of taking Quebec.”
“What would it do for food?” I asked, thinking of the tumult an army would make in passing through the forest; thinking of the tumbled mass of rocks at the carrying places: of the bogs, the rapids, the trackless wilderness.
“It would carry its own food,” the general said, “but that’s not the question. The question is whether, if we could get an army of men like Colonel Arnold and you and Huff, it would be capable of traveling to Quebec by way of the Kennebec?”
“Gosh all hemlock, Stevie!” Cap exploded. “Yes! Capable of traveling there and carrying Quebec away in our pants pockets!”
“Sir,” I said, “with favorable conditions, I think an army could do it.”
Colonel Arnold had sat gnawing his nails while the general questioned me. Now he spoke. “General, we’ll make our own favorable conditions!”
“Colonel,” the general said, “I know you’ll try, and I hope you’ll have better fortune at making favorable conditions than has fallen to my lot when I’ve attempted it.”
XIV
GENERAL WASHINGTON spoke through tight lips, which made him seem angry, though I learned later he compressed his lips to prevent his teeth from slipping or clacking, they being badly fitted to his mouth and therefore insecure. “You’re familiar with this Northern country, gentlemen,” he said, “and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“General,” Cap roared, obviously attracted to him, “you go right ahead and ask anything!”
The general studied a paper on his desk while I might have counted five. Then he eyed Cap grimly. “I have been told by Colonel Montgomery, in whom I repose great confidence, tha
t every New Englander is a general, and not one of them a soldier. Therefore I’m pleased to find a New Englander who invites questioning, but doesn’t insist on forcing his opinion on us.”
While Cap Huff stared blankly, the general turned to me.
“What, in your opinion, should be used for the transportation of the supplies of such an army: bateaux or canoes?”
“Both,” I said, thinking of the labor of transporting heavy Kennebec bateaux across the Great Carrying Place.
“I’m told,” the general said, “that the roughness of the water and the sharpness of the rocks would endanger supplies carried in canoes.”
“They might,” I admitted. “And they might be dangerous for bateaux, too. Those who make the trip always go by canoe. You don’t know what the carries are like, sir! Miles of ’em! Miles! To carry bateaux would be—would be—”
“You’ll have to admit,” the general said, “that wherever a canoe can be carried, a bateau can be carried too.”
I was silent, unwilling to say either Yes or No.
“A bateau, General, requires less skill than a canoe,” declared Colonel Arnold. “Canoes are more easily broken.”
“Sir,” I said, “I can find you enough Indians to take canoes safely wherever we’d have to go.”
General Washington got up to stand at the window, staring out at the dusty elm on the common and the knots of militiamen and officers who straggled back and forth beneath it. Then he turned to us, speaking over our heads, so I couldn’t tell whether he spoke to Colonel Arnold or me. “Sir, I know Indians. They’re cowardly, plundering, murdering dogs, contemptuous of treaties, devoid of humanity. On the darkest day of my life, twenty years ago, when we were retiring from Fort Necessity, where the damned French had spotted my honor with tricks of words, I was deserted by Indians, threatened by Indians, attacked by Indians, my medicine chest destroyed by Indians, and two of my wounded murdered and scalped by Indians.”
“Dirty, ill-begotten, diseased, bug-eating sons of goats!” Cap Huff muttered.
“For years,” the general said, “I saw those red hellions let loose on us by the French, in defiance of all the rules of civilized warfare. I won’t have it said I’m responsible for their use in this war.”
“Sir,” I protested, “you’re speaking of another breed of Indians. The Abenakis of the Kennebec and Androscoggin are honest and brave. I’ve lived among ’em and traveled with ’em. They’d be our friends. There’s no man could give us more help in reaching Quebec than the Abenaki Natanis and the Abenaki Hobomok and the white man Paul Higgins, a sachem of the Assagunticooks.”
“You see!” the general said to Colonel Arnold. Then he turned to me. “Unknowingly you’ve damned yourself out of your own mouth. We’ve had reports from the Kennebec. This Natanis is one of the spies of Carleton, who commands at Quebec. The help he’d give you would be to carry information straight to Carleton, and our army would never cross the St. Lawrence.”
“Sir,” I said, “I don’t believe it! Where’d you get your information?”
“When did you speak with him last?” the general snapped.
“Not for two years—for three years; but I saved his life, and I sent a message to him only this summer, saying I wanted his help against my enemies.”
“Ah,” the general said, “and what was his answer?”
“Why, he hasn’t answered yet; but no answer’s needed. I saved his life.”
Seeing from the amused glint in his eye that he took little account of what I said, I would have pressed the matter further, but he stopped me with a peremptory gesture.
One more thing. I gather Colonel Arnold wishes to use you as a guide and counselor. It seems to me your friend here, being less familiar with the upper Kennebec, ought to be subject to your orders. What rank, should you say, would be likely to make you most valuable to such an army as we have discussed?”
I recalled the purple-faced colonel who wished to be saluted, and Burr’s remarks about officers, and said I would wish to remain as a guide with no rank at all, so that there might be no jealousy of my movements, and freedom from the supervision of small and ignorant men.
“Then, gentlemen,” General Washington said, “I make both of you guides, with the seniority going to Nason. You shall have a captain’s pay, with the chance of a commission at the end of the campaign, if this seems satisfactory.”
“All I want,” I said, “is opportunity to go to Quebec.”
“If you’re asking me,” Cap rumbled, “I’d ruther be a colonel on this journey and nothing afterward; or nothing at all on this campaign and a colonel afterward.”
“I greatly hope,” said General Washington politely, “you won’t be disappointed.” He turned abruptly to Arnold. “Take them along, Colonel, and give them their orders. It’s a hazardous enterprise; but if successful it will realize results of the utmost importance. It may be of the greatest consequence to the liberties of America; and on your conduct and courage, and that of your officers and soldiers, may depend not only your own success and honor, but the safety and welfare of the whole country.”
To us he added: “There’s another thing to remember: we’re engaged in a war with a people so depraved and barbarous as to be the wickedest nation on earth. They’re ruled by a king who’s a tyrant, and ministers who are scoundrels. The British people, inspired by bloody and insatiable malice, are lost to every sense of virtue; and it’s essential that no news of this proposed army reach the ears of the enemy.”
At this he gave us his hand and we came away, Cap absent-mindedly picking up his sword and coat as he came. He might even have donned them again had not the general called after him to leave them, together with his spurs, in General Gates’s office.
As Colonel Arnold hurried us to his headquarters near the college buildings, he was saluted respectfully by everyone we passed, which led me to say we had heard in Arundel of his brave attack on Ticonderoga and St. John’s, and that Maine was proud of his success.
He made no reply until he had led us into his reception room and thrown himself down at his desk. Then he scowled at us, his face as black as newly plowed earth, and puffy from anger.
“Success!” he cried sharply. “Didn’t you hear how they investigated me?”
We shook our heads.
He thumped the table with his fist. “By God!” he said, “it was I who suggested taking Ticonderoga; but because I waited to be commissioned by the Massachusetts Congress, so to do it legally and in order, I found the Bennington mob ahead of me, acting on money supplied by Connecticut. A mob: that’s what it was: without commissions or standing, and headed by three of the greatest boors that ever lived—Ethan Allen, James Easton, and John Brown! The Green Mountain Party, they called themselves, and they fired on me twice, by God, for refusing to obey their thieving orders! Rum and loot was what they wanted; and before I could make a start on fortifying the places we’d captured, I had to bring matters out of the confusion caused by Allen’s men, save citizens from being plundered of their private property, and make it possible for persons to go about without being constantly in peril of abuse and death at the hands of these Green Mountain Boys!”
He seized the edge of the table, lifted it six inches and thumped it down again. “And what did they care about fortifying Ticonderoga and Crown Point?” he demanded. “What did they care about strengthening them so they couldn’t be recaptured by the British? Not a thing! Not one damned thing! What Easton and Brown wanted was position, and titles that would let them wear handsome uniforms! Those two Berkshire yokels wanted to be colonels—Colonel Easton and Colonel John Brown—when they were no more fit to be colonels than Job’s turkey was! They wanted to be colonels—wanted to get me out of the way so they’d have a free hand; and to do it they resorted to politics!”
“Politics?” Cap Huff asked. “Ain’t this a war? It was politics got me put into Portsmouth gaol! I dunno as I want to be in a war if there’s anything as dishonest as politics connected with i
t!”
Arnold snorted. “A politician can’t keep politics out of anything! You ought to know that! Easton and Brown got a Connecticut colonel on their side—poor, weak, helpless Hinman; and then they let it be known that the Connecticut troops who had come up to help garrison Crown Point and Ticonderoga objected to serving under me. I held a Massachusetts commission, they said; and Connecticut troops would suffer keenly if obliged to serve under an officer who had been commissioned by Massachusetts! So I got ’em together and talked to ’em. All they had to do, I said, was show me a better leader, and I’d get out and let him command in my place. And by God, sir, Easton—Easton, the coward, who wet his gun when we crossed the lake to attack Ticonderoga, and so had to go into hiding and dry it out while the rest of us attacked—Easton, by God, had the effrontery to say the Connecticut men would feel safer under him! Safer!”
Arnold laughed sourly. “I took the liberty of breaking his head; and on his refusing to draw like a gentleman, he having a hangar by his side and a case of loaded pistols in his pocket, I kicked him heartily and ordered him from the Point!”
“But,” I protested, “a man like that couldn’t—”
“Listen,” Arnold said, “a dirty politician can do anything! Anything! God protect me from a country politician! Even with two thirds of his body paralyzed, he can be twice as dirty as any city politician! Easton and Brown are country politicians, and they’re dirty! They ran to Massachusetts and Connecticut, playing dirty politics in holes and corners; and just as I was making a start on fortifying Crown Point, sir, up came three gentlemen from the Massachusetts Congress to investigate my spirit, capacity, and conduct! My spirit, capacity, and conduct, for God’s sake, when spirit, capacity, and conduct are as rare in these colonies as blue horses! What was more, they had full authority, and they ordered me to turn over the command to Hinman—to Hinman and Easton and Brown!”
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