From behind me I heard the report of a musket and saw Hobomok stagger, so I knew he was shot.
Thus, in a trice, we seemed undone, so sudden, sometimes, are the overturnings that may befall men just when they are most cocksure.
We four, Natanis, Hobomok, Cap and I, had no thought that misfortune could overwhelm us in any such manner. Opposed to us were only two men, attacked by surprise, and a man tied to a chair, and a girl; and in less than half a minute they had turned the tables against us and we were on the point of ruin. Nay, for myself, I was worse than that: I was at the point of death, and I knew it: my sight wavered, and such spouts of pain burst through all my upper parts and zigzagged in lightnings of anguish through my brain that never had I felt the like before, and was all too sure no one could thus suffer long and yet be alive.
It is wonderful that a man can be in so desperate a posture and still think; yet I did have thoughts, and wonderings, even then. It seemed to me there was something in what men call the ironical: to have dreamed of Mary Mallinson so long; to have come, after all my dreaming, to rescue her—to rescue her who would not be rescued, but despised me; and then, to top this off, to perish ignobly in such a pass, with my neck broke by an Indian spy. And what I wondered was how the devil it could be happening.
That helpless question is one that Cap Huff will, to his last hour, resent my putting to him. When Eneas leaped upon me Natanis ran to help me, Hobomok being engaged with Hook; and Cap made the blunder of going to the door to see how we fared. Rightfully I should not reproach him for this. It was his solicitude for me that caused the error; but he had two alert and quick-moving enemies behind him in the room, and they were not likely to miss their chance. Mary got a knife from the table and cut Guerlac’s ropes. Hobomok had left his musket in the room, and Guerlac used the stock of it upon the back of Cap Huff’s skull, then fired at Hobomok to save Hook.
The blow with the stock must have been delivered with a mighty swing, for it carried the whole weighty person of Cap as far as my leap from the door carried me, and laid him beside me, out of action. He was no worse than out of action—a fact for which credit must be given to his ancestors, who left him, as that very blow demonstrated, the thickest head-bone structure, undoubtedly, on the North American continent. But the fight was over; for he sat up and joined me in a great mutual puzzlement as to whether we were alive or no.
It was Natanis who saved us. His hatchet finished Eneas abruptly; my head, almost unseated, resumed its proper posture upon an aching neck; the intolerable weight upon my back was removed; and with eyes still wavering I saw Hobomok halt. He was not running away: it was Hook who was running away, with Hobomok after him—Hobomok with a bleeding left shoulder, as we saw from the red stain on his white blanket coat. He poised his tomahawk and threw, using the overhand swing with which the Abenakis hurl this weapon. The hatchet struck Hook in the middle of the back, near the waist; and he bent backward as if his body had been hinged, falling into the snow and lying there with no movement save a groping of his right hand, as if to catch hold of something and drag himself up.
I did not know until later that day how well and quickly Natanis thought and acted in these, our moments of overthrow. The blow fell upon Cap Huff at the very instant of the hatcheting of Eneas; and if Natanis had not sprung instantly back to the door, that door would have been closed: Guerlac and Mary would have run through to the front of the house and raised the town upon us.
But Natanis was too quick, and he was at the door before the latch could fall; Hobomok returned, running, and together they forced their way back into the house; so that even before I got Cap, groaning, to his feet, Guerlac was fast to his chair again, and Mary sat white and staring in hers.
Natanis and Hobomok ran out to Hook, took him by the arms, dragged him into the kitchen, and laid him on the floor. Cap and I staggered in. We shut the door and bolted it. Cap found a rag, soaked it in water, applied it to the back of his head, and stood looking at Guerlac with profound respect.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” he said. “You might have hurt me! And besides, if this happened to be any other day, shooting off a gun like that right in town might have made a whole lot of folks come around to see what was going on. Of course, after all the bim-banging and everything last night and this morning, I expect no body’s going to notice it; but don’t you do it again! You know yourself we don’t want the neighbors in here.”
Natanis took the white coat from Hobomok and dressed the latter’s wound, Hobomok sitting impassive, which was more than I could have done; for the ball had lacerated the shoulder muscles, and Natanis’s methods of bandaging were heroic. Not a moan escaped from the Indian’s lips; he was silent as the dying Hook upon the floor near by.
While I hated Hook more than any man in the world—more, even, than Guerlac—my hatred seemed to go from me when I saw his eyes rolling from me to Cap and from Cap to Hobomok and Natanis with the same fierceness I had seen in them when he went away from our inn with a broken jaw, leaving my father dying upstairs.
It was the look, I thought, of a wounded fish-hawk; and it flashed into my mind that there was more joy in having an enemy to pursue than in catching and destroying him.
“Well,” I said to Cap heavily, “there it is. That’s what we suspected: a connection between Hook and Guerlac: between Eneas and Hook and Guerlac.”
We left Hobomok in the kitchen to watch the three of them, while Cap and Natanis and I began a search of the house. Wherever there was a locked door we broke it open. We examined every drawer, tapped the floor of every room for hiding places; pried beneath the stoves in search of loosened bricks. It was Cap who felt a weakness at the top of a column which supported the mantel in the front room. When he forced it from its position he found it concealed an opening in which lay a long tin box.
“Here,” said Cap, handing it to me, “see if this ain’t what you want.” He went on with his search, thumping the walls and looking behind pictures.
There were maps in the box, and deeds to property, and a roll of gold coin. Last of all, at the bottom, was a bundle of letters. The uppermost letter was addressed to John Woodward, Esqre., Le Chat Qui Péche, Quebec. There it was before me: Guerlac had received the messages written to Woodward. Woodward was Guerlac.
When I slipped the band from these letters and flipped them over, I found one addressed to Captain William Gregory in Colonel Arnold’s handwriting. I knew I needed to look no further; for Colonel Arnold had told me that he had asked questions concerning the Kennebec of Captain William Gregory, and that under the seal of Captain Gregory’s reply had been the information that John Woodward was the man who knew these things.
It seemed to me I should be filled with pleasure at discovering the letters in Guerlac’s possession and having Guerlac where I could put my hand on him. Yet I had no such feelings: only a sense of loss and unhappiness. I picked up the roll of gold and hefted it, saying to myself it would buy many a fine article for Phoebe’s cabin on the Ranger.
So thinking, I dropped it in my pocket. As it left my fingers there dawned on me a sudden understanding of my own utter blindness and stupidity, and of the manner in which Phoebe had grown around me and into me so that my world was no world at all if I couldn’t have her a part of it.
Then I saw that Phoebe had always been first in my thoughts, no matter where I went or what I did; and I, like a surpassing fool, was where I might never see her again. I burst into a sweat at my folly, remembering how I had let her go into the hands of James Dunn, nor even known why I was in such a rage at both of them when they were married. Other foolishnesses popped out of the corners of my mind until I was revolted to think I could have been so witless.
There swept over me such a longing for her and for Arundel, and for the sight and the smell of the sea and the marshes, that I went in search of Cap to tell him my troubles.
He had returned to Mary’s sweet-smelling bedroom; and when I found him he was playing with glittering shoe bu
ckles, oval ones studded with brilliants.
“Were they the papers you wanted?” he asked, stuffing the buckles into his pocket.
“Cap,” I said, “there’s no greater fool in all New England than I!”
“Has somebody found us?” he asked, looking apprehensively over my shoulder.
“Cap, I’ve sent Phoebe home! And look at us—the fix we’re in!”
“Yes, I hope she’s a damned long way nearer home than we are! I take it you’d like to see her again?”
“Yes, I would.”
He scratched his head. “So would I, if she’s anywhere near home. This is a nice house: an awful nice house; and the hell of it is, we’ve got to stay here till after dark, and even then get buried somewhere, near and handy, if we ain’t awful careful—and maybe anyhow, no matter how careful we are!”
What he said was the truth. “Well, what was your plan for getting out?” I asked.
He scratched his head again. “Stevie, it seems to me I’ve been altogether too busy learning how to get in. What was your own plan for getting out?”
“Me? I didn’t have any.”
“Well, we can’t go by the Lower Town. If we try to go down those steps we’ll have more holes in us than your ma’s lace collar!”
“No, not by the Lower Town. God knows I’ve seen enough of those barricades. We’ll decide what to do with Guerlac and then how we’ll get out.”
“You mean how we’ll try to!” Cap said.
If there was any change in Guerlac’s face when I returned to the kitchen and threw the tin box on the table, I couldn’t detect it. It may be his eyes watched me more closely; but certainly his face was no paler, nor his bearing less haughty and unafraid.
I emptied the box on the table and ran through the letters. “Now,” I said, “here’s the proof of certain things. Hook, who was called Tree-worgy in our army, was sent to Quebec by the Tories of Boston to help the British. He was an intelligent man, who knew the Abenakis and the forests; so they made him a paid spy. When he had fooled Colonel Arnold into entrusting him with letters, he brought all of them straight to Guerlac. Here are letters from Carleton to Guerlac about Hook, and from McLean to Guerlac, thanking him for his efforts, and assuring him his services won’t be forgotten. So Guerlac, you see, was a spy also.”
“How much did they pay him?” Cap asked.
“Well, now,” I said, watching Guerlac closely, “I think they didn’t pay him anything. I think his travels among us taught him he could never be happy living among the bigots and hypocrites of America—men so intolerant as to throw him in the mud instead of reverencing his sneers, and to spoil his beauty with a slit ear when he grew too free with women. I think he’d cast in his lot with any king to keep canting peasants like us from his houses and goods.”
Guerlac smiled his lofty, contemptuous smile, and said nothing.
“Well,” I said, “here’s Arnold’s letter to John Woodward, whose name was given to Colonel Arnold in Captain Gregory’s letter. Here’s Arnold’s letter to Captain Gregory. Hook brought the letter to Guerlac instead of to Gregory, and Guerlac forged the reply. It’s plain from these letters that Guerlac himself was John Woodward. In return for whatever it was that the English government gave them, money or security or honor, he and Hook undertook to do what they could to defeat Colonel Arnold’s expedition.”
“If they’d worked harder,” said Cap, draining a bottle of Mersault, “they might have kept us from getting onto this side of the river.”
“They did enough! It was John Woodward who recommended the use of bateaux. It was John Woodward who sent Arnold the forged proof that Natanis was a spy. Thus if all the bateaux were not destroyed, which they were almost certain to be, they made sure Natanis would either be killed or shunned, and the army robbed of the one guide who knew every trail and by-path between Dead River and Quebec. That meant the army would probably starve in the wilderness.
“It was John Woodward who instructed Hook to spread discontent and fear among the poorest soldiers of the expedition, so they would turn back, as you can see by this letter from Hook to Guerlac. It was Eneas, at Hook’s orders, who betrayed Arnold by delivering his private letters into Guerlac’s hands. Thus the Lieutenant Governor of Quebec was warned of our coming. It was Hook who ran to McLean in Sorel and blabbed to him of Arnold’s approach, so he was able to hurry down the St. Lawrence with a few defenders on the very same day we came marching up to Point Levis.”
“Can you prove all that?” Cap asked.
“It’s all here.”
We sat silent. Natanis spoke to me in Abenaki, asking whether Guerlac was the man who had done all the evil to us. When I said he was, he asked how I would kill him. At this Guerlac spoke up, smiling a cold, level smile, and I saw he had not forgotten the Abenaki tongue.
“I warn you,” he said, “not to touch me. Your turn-coat general, Montgomery, was killed at the barrier under Cape Diamond last night, and the rest of his beggarly rabble ran like whipped dogs without even attempting to pick him up. All of Arnold’s men were either captured or killed in the Sault-au-Matelot, all of them. You’re alone in the city, and you’re sure to be caught. Do you think you’ll have a better chance to escape hanging if I come to any harm at your hands?”
We stared at him, sickened by what he told us. It seemed to be the truth.
“Well,” I said at length, “I know we’ll never leave the town alive if you get free; so we’d be showing only simple caution if we killed you.”
Mary, it seemed to me, had not sensed the meaning of our words until just now. She had sat with a distant look on her face and her head poised a little to one side, as though absorbed in secret contemplation of her own perfection, and sure all those in the room were casting admiring looks at her pale beauty, which we were not, God knows.
At my last words, however, she looked quickly at me. The languidness went from her eyes. “What are you talking about? What’s this talk of killing?”
“Haven’t you understood? I think you have!”
“You’re trying to blame Henri for something that happened. It’s not true!”
“Yes, it’s all true! Because of what he and Hook did, there are dead men rotting in the forest beside the path we traveled.”
She laughed lightly. “Well, why shouldn’t there be?”
“We’re done with Hook,” I told her then. “His back’s broke. He’ll never leave this room alive. But we aren’t done with Guerlac.”
“You’ll not touch him.” She laughed again. “You’ll not touch him.”
“Why hasn’t he ever married you?”
“Pouf!” she said. “What a boor you are! I never cared whether he did or not, and he has a wife in France.”
At that I turned away, for I could no longer look at her. So this was Mary Mallinson!
XXXV
I HAD found a map of Quebec among Guerlac’s papers, and I laid it on the kitchen table, studying it.
We had seen no good maps of Quebec, only the rough ones deserters had made for us; and this of Guerlac’s was good, the streets marked out neatly, the houses inked in by hand, and the ports in the ramparts indicated, together with the guardhouses and the steps to the parapets. I found the long stairway from the Lower Town, and traced our route to Guerlac’s house. I found the sites of the old palace and of La Friponne, where we had lain on our bellies in the snow to pop at the sentries on the walls above.
No sooner had the tip of my finger touched them than I shouted for Cap. It had come to me how we could go safe from the city and take Guerlac with us as a present to Arnold—if Arnold was still alive!
Darkness fell by mid-afternoon—a thick, snow-sprinkled darkness; for the wind hung in the northeast and seemed to be of two minds about inflicting another storm on this snow-covered world. We ate once more, and studied the map, rehearsing the parts we must play. We had put Mary and Guerlac in the bedroom, making sure they couldn’t escape from their ropes.
Cap, bulging with brandy
bottles and other knickknacks, saw that what had happened in this strange meeting with Mary had weighed heavily on me; and he strove to hearten me against a merciful inclination, of which I had muttered something to him.
“Stevie,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “I’ve learned a heap about women these last few years. They’re all alike about one thing, so far as I can see. It never bothers ’em when they lose a man. Somehow they all bear up, Stevie! It appears to me Mary ain’t different from the rest of ’em. She’ll have another man in a week, Stevie, if Guerlac doesn’t come back to her; and she’ll never know the difference! There ain’t been a woman in Kittery or Portsmouth either, for that matter, to die because of the loss of a man; and the widows, whether seventeen or seventy, get other husbands and act smugger than ever!”
He poured me a drink of brandy. I took it and put a little more zest into our preparations.
It must have been five o’clock when Cap went into the cellar and readjusted the bindings of one of the serving maids—the one who had sat mending her stocking when we entered the house. He trussed her to a chair with a rope knotted in a hundred places, and fastened her to the wall so she must free herself to reach the others. On her hands he put no rope at all. Thus, in an hour or more, she might unknot her bonds and loose her fellow captives.
When it came to tying Guerlac so we could carry him with us, Natanis said here was one prisoner who would have no opportunity of escaping. He and Cap labored long and diligently over the Frenchman’s bonds. Both his arms were lashed tight to a rope that passed around his waist, so they hung straight at his sides and appeared to be unbound. His legs were joined below the knee by a slender rope that permitted him to walk, though not to run; and to this rope was attached a longer rope to be held by one of us. His gag was left in his mouth and his jaws held together by a cloth running under his chin and knotted at the top of his head. When we pulled down his cap over his ears and pinned the collar of his blanket coat so it was turned up around his mouth, there was little to show, even in broad daylight, that he was tied in any way.
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