Arundel (31 page)

“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 it!”

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!”

“I’d ’a’ seen ’em in hell first!” Cap Huff bawled.

Arnold nodded. “That’s what my men said. They mutinied at the order, and I had to disband ’em! God help the man that’s hounded by a dirty politician! There’s no He too black for him to tell: no insinuation too foul for him to make! At all events, Easton and Brown got what they were after; and Ticonderoga and Crown Point are just as I left ’em! Not one stroke of work did Hinman or Easton or Brown do on either place!”

“I hate a man like that man Easton,” Cap declared, “always getting people investigated and interfering with peaceable folk! All you got to do is show him to me, Colonel! I’ll pull his hat down over his nose so he’ll never get it off!”

The colonel smiled faintly, so that the lumps and knobs of anger were ironed from his face. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s ancient history now! We have other business on hand, and it’s time you were off on it. I’m obliged to you, and so is the general, for confirming our opinions of the expedition we’re undertaking.”

“His opinions about bateaux are wrong,” I said. “Also about Natanis.”

“His opinions are my opinions, sir,” Arnold reminded me. “The loggers on the Kennebec use bateaux; and we’ll use bateaux. That’s been decided, and the bateaux ordered.”

“Sir,” I said, “I’ve waited years to go to Quebec. It’s the same to me whether I go by canoe or bateau or dough-trough. However we go, I’ll get there. I’d have advanced no opinion unless I thought my advice was needed as well as asked.”

“That’s better,” said the colonel genially. “Now here’s the plan.” He unrolled a bad map of New England and the St. Lawrence.

“It’s the same old scheme of a double attack on Canada, with one element added: that of surprise. General Schuyler, an able soldier, will come openly down the St. Lawrence and attack Montreal, thus drawing all available British forces in Canada to the defense of that city. Meanwhile, we’ll ascend the Kennebec, a route regarded as impossible by the British. We’ll come down the Chaudière River onto the St. Lawrence directly opposite Quebec. The fortifications of Quebec are crumbling; the armament bad; the French inhabitants disgruntled; there’s no garrison of any moment. With speed and good fortune we can walk into Quebec as you’d walk into an inn on a winter’s night. We’ll unite all of North America against the English—leave them no spot on which they can land men and supplies unless they can first wrench it from us and then hold it.”

My brain was a tumbled scroll of brilliant pictures—of Mary, lovely and slender and golden-haired, lying in my arms; of my father on the deck of the
Black Duck,
telling Arnold how the Abenaki art of war was the art of ambushing and surprising an enemy; of Guerlac, with his pale face and his slit ear, standing helpless, my bayonet at his breast; of our close-packed ranks, blue-clad and soldierly, passing between the palaces of Quebec while laughing men and beautiful women cheered us; and finally there slipped into my mind, unbidden, the cruel cleft in the rocks up which canoes must be dragged in carrying over Skowhegan Falls—that, and Phoebe Dunn in her jack boots and broad brass-studded belt, jeering and jeering with her eyes.

I was brought back to earth by a gusty sigh from Cap Huff. “Quebec,” he said, scratching his nose contemplatively, “will be richer than Portsmouth.” I knew he was thinking of the capacity of his breeches’ pockets.

“What we’ll do,” Colonel Arnold went on, disregarding Cap, “is take three companies of riflemen to lead the way, Morgan’s Virginians for one. They’ll make you New Englanders look like old women in the woods, if you aren’t careful. For the rest we want woodsmen who can handle bateaux and axes; who can stand hardships. We want a lot of Maine men—tough Maine men. I know all Maine men are tough, but we want ’em extra tough. That’s the first thing I want you to do. Go to your friends here in this camp and select a few. Tell ’em what’s wanted. Tell ’em to be cautious about it, but to spread the news. And tell ’em when the time comes, to volunteer. I want the best men in the army, and I’ll see they have the best officers. I guarantee it: the pick of the colonies—Christopher Greene of Rhode Island, Timothy Bigelow of Massachusetts, Henry Dearborn of New Hampshire: fit to be generals, all of them! Daniel Morgan, a leader for Virginia to be proud of—Thayer from Rogers’ Rangers—Roger Enos, who made his mark in the British army: there’s no better men anywhere in the world! Understand?”

We nodded.

“Very good!” Arnold got up and prowled restlessly around the room, swarthy and broad-shouldered and powerful, as light on his feet as a girl who walks down the street with the eyes of twenty men on her. He looked up at the top of the doorway, and I felt it was in his mind to leap up and chin himself on it, but that the dignity of his position restrained him.

“Do this to-day,” he went on, throwing himself down at his desk again. “Then, to-night, start for the Kennebec. The bateaux will be built by Colburn at Agry’s Point, below Fort Western. Go there. Watch them. Get what intelligence you can. Talk with the Indians. Find suitable clothing for me. Get me some means of rapid transportation. Within a week or ten days we’ll follow. Well go by land to Newburyport, then by sloop and schooner to Fort Western, and thence by the river to Quebec.”