Arundel (45 page)

“Very well,” said Oswald, “I’ll advance the opinions if I can find out what maggot is crawling in your head.”

“The maggot is this,” I said. “Daniel Morgan’s a hard driver and a proud man. You saw him refuse to serve under Greene, and God knows that’s a spectacle that won’t be equaled in some time: a captain refusing to serve under a lieutenant colonel. Also, Morgan’s riflemen are hard men, good soldiers; no doubt the best we’ve got. They know it, too. If you ask ’em, they’ll tell you so.”

I stopped; but Oswald stood gawping at me expectantly; so I saw he was still as blind as I had been, and must have his nose rubbed in it. “It’s simple enough,” I said. “Morgan and his Virginians, and the rest of the riflemen for that matter, can hold first place in the line of march against us clumsy New Englanders, whether they go by bateau or by land. Before they’d give up first place to Greene’s men or anybody else, without good reason, they’d work their legs to stumps and tear the flesh from their fingers.”

Oswald nodded.

“Morgan’s men weren’t so busy at road-making,” I said, “that they couldn’t have held first place in the line if they wished; for Greene’s men set off up Dead River less than two hours ahead of them.”

“That’s so,” Oswald said.

“Of course it’s so! Would Daniel Morgan, or his men either, have allowed Greene’s division to precede them by little more than an hour without a fight, unless they had a reason for wanting Greene’s division out of the way? No, they would not! Daniel Morgan would have bawled like an unmilked cow; and his men would have pushed Greene’s men into the bog and trampled on them, rather than let them start first! What’s more, there’s good reason why Morgan’s men didn’t catch up with Greene in no time.”

“Finish it up,” Oswald said.

“So I will! Morgan’s men lagged behind at the Great Carrying Place to give Greene’s men a chance to pass through them. While they were passing, Morgan’s men stole their flour!”

“Hm!” said Oswald.

“Yes,” I said, “and then they let Greene’s men start off down Bog Brook ahead of them so Greene’s men couldn’t see the extra flour packed in Morgan’s bateaux.”

“Well, the dirty rats!”

“No,” I said, “there’s more than one way of looking at that. I remember my father telling how the men from his company, during the siege of Louisbourg, stole thirty lobsters that had been caught by Lieutenant Benjamin Cleaves’s men. Men have stolen food in all wars, even those fought by the Egyptians. These Virginians are no psalm-singing deacons, but rough and reckless citizens who’d break their rifle stocks over the heads of those who displeased them, whether Patriots or Tories. Since they hold themselves more valuable than the rest of us, which I suspect they are, there’s little wonder they think nothing of preserving their health and strength by appropriating whatever food they can find. It seems to me if anyone’s to blame, it’s Morgan’s captains for not keeping a stricter hold on their men, or Greene’s captains for not stationing a guard over the victuals.”

“Could you prove these things?”

“Leave me out of it. I give you the information to use as you wish.”

“Then say nothing concerning your suspicions,” he said, “and I’ll see how to use the information.”

“Indeed,” I said, “I don’t want to see Morgan’s and Greene’s divisions at each other’s throats, so I’ll be silent.” As Oswald started away, I added: “There’s one other thing. I’ve given you information; now give me some in return. Where did the colonel learn about his messenger Eneas and about the guide Treeworgy?”

“He had information concerning them while he was still at Crown Point,” said Oswald.

“As long ago as that! Where did the information come from? Boston?”

Oswald hesitated and muttered something about secret intelligence.

“I swear to my God,” I said, “I’ll keep it as secret as you or Arnold could. I want it only to protect all of us from harm.”

“Well,” Oswald said, “he has correspondents in Quebec. This information came from one of them.”

“Spit it out!” I cried, irritated by the throbbing of my scar and by the withholding of the name I hoped to hear. “Who was the man?”

“His name,” Oswald whispered reluctantly, “is John Woodward.”

“John Woodward! John Woodward!” I flung at him, in a rage of disappointment. “Who in hell is John Woodward! Where does he live and how does he know about Eneas and Treeworgy?”

“I don’t know,” Oswald said. “The colonel lets me copy letters to him in the letter book, but the address he withholds until the letters are given to the messenger. He says Woodward would be killed if it should be known in Quebec he was sending information to us.”

With this, which helped me but little, I was forced to be content.

The wind was in the southwest when we threw off our blankets the next day, and I couldn’t understand the unceasing throbbing of my scar, for in Arundel a southwest wind usually brings only short storms, not enough to set a small scar to burning and pounding as mine was doing.

The colonel dispatched Major Bigelow and twelve bateaux to get provisions from Colonel Enos, so that Greene’s division might have food on which to proceed. Enos was still fuddling around on the Great Carrying Place, meaning that the provisions would be a matter of three or four days in coming up; so the rest of us went to catching trouts to satisfy the hunger of the entire division—an easy task because the river was alive with them, all the same size, seemingly, about half a pound apiece.

Morgan’s division passed us at noon, the men poling and paddling on the far side of the river; content, for once, to hurl none of their jeers at Greene’s men. They were a hardy lot, those riflemen. I called across to a bateau, asking how their flour was holding out, and the bateauman shouted back, seriously, “We’re eating fish, Brother, and saving our flour.” I looked for some of them to fall overboard from laughing, but not one of them so much as smiled.

Morgan alone came ashore here to pass the time of day with Arnold; and Oswald told me afterward that Arnold said only one thing to him—“Captain, I shall expect your division to be always in the lead hereafter; always in the lead!” Oswald said Morgan stared at him as if intending to be haughty or thick of understanding; then changed his mind suddenly, saying, “Sir, that’s our fixed intention!” I’m sure that whatever Morgan had replied, Arnold would have said no more, lest the welfare of the army be further endangered; for if ever a man would have sacrificed pride or health or his life to see our campaign succeed, it was Arnold.

Being, as the colonel said, so near our destination, the men were put to work making cartridges and packing them in barrels. When the Third Division had come up behind Morgan’s and made their cartridges and gone on, the colonel said we could serve no good purpose by longer waiting; so we too pressed on behind Meigs. The men were catching rides on the bateaux, walking across the neck of land at wide bends in the river; then begging rides until they came to another neck. I saw James Dunn lurch from a bateau, with Phoebe, strangely deformed-looking, pushing him. I shouted at them to know how their food was holding out and went closer to see what ailed Phoebe. James walked on without raising his head; but Phoebe lifted the buckskin jerkin over her hip and I saw a raccoon dangling from her brass-studded belt by his hind legs.

“Jacataqua killed it!” she called to me. “I almost had to hit Burr with this to get it away from him!” She waved her leather-bound bullets at me gaily and steered James around a young pine thicket through which he seemed about to walk.

The proceedings of the next few days are grouped in my mind around a Friday—not because I think Fridays bring evil, but because so many of our calamities fell on Fridays, though God knows worse things happened to us on other days, especially on Sundays, which I have never heard called a day that brings disaster.

At any rate, it was on the day before a Friday that this bad business started: on Thursday, that is, the nineteenth day of October. It was raining when we came out of our blankets, a cold and mournful downpour, nor was its cheerlessness relieved by the appearance of the country, which seemed as flat as a salt marsh in the direction we were moving, with barren spots on the soil and the trees smaller, as if they had been starved, and all of them pines and spruce and fir, with no pleasant maples or elms or oaks such as help to make the Arundel countryside so beautiful.

The river grew narrower, with pestiferous little rapids and falls at frequent intervals; and for fear of upsetting and losing more provisions, we carried around each one, slipping on our faces in the slimy ground and dropping everything on which we laid our hands because of its wetness.

The rain came in bursts, as if the clouds were ripping in spots and spilling masses of goose shot in the water. The wind, too, blew harder and harder from the southwest, so that our skins grew numb from the driving of the drops against us. When we camped at our last portage we were more than two hours finding dry wood and starting fires.

When Friday broke the wind was higher, moaning dolefully through the spruces and dead tamaracks, and the rain was heavier. It bounced from the surface of the river and from the meadows, whirled upward by the raging wind, so we were rained on from above and below. Thinking it must let up soon, we lay snug in our lean-to’s, watching Meigs’s division go past, bateaux and bateaumen oozing water like ledges of rock over which a wave has just broken.

When Phoebe trudged by, sandwiched between James Dunn and Noah Cluff like a sandpiper between two curlews, I called to her to come and get dry. Her buckskins were plastered to her body and there were bluish shadows under her eyes and around her mouth, as though some of the color had run out of the handkerchief around her hair. She shook her head grimly and pulled James Dunn to his feet when he stumbled. I saw there was no sole to one of his shoes.

This, with the drenching rain and the mournful sky, led me to think gloomily on the folly of women; how they cleave most faithfully to those of us who are weakest and most worthless. Was this true, I wondered, or does it only seem true because our attentions are drawn to weak and worthless men, and our spleens aroused to see them blessed with wives or mothers as good as those of more deserving folk?

The river seemed to boil with rage, growling irascibly and sweeping away the litter of a century—hoorahs’ nests of twigs and leaves; tree trunks black with age; witches’ mats of roots festooned with foam. Great trouts rose from the bottom of the stream, trouts so dark that they looked purple, and rolled on the surface, snatching at grubs and worms, and slapping with their tails at those they couldn’t eat.

That Friday night the rain fell as I had never known it to fall, in solid sheets, like water pouring out of a hogshead. The wind rampaged terribly among the trees, coming in bursts that increased in force, as the force of a man’s breath increases when he fails to blow out a candle. With each succeeding burst we swore it could blow no harder. There was a smashing among the trees in the forest behind us from time to time; so at dawn on Saturday we made ready to depart lest the storm work some great inconvenience on us.

I have been through storms in my life fit to rank with any storms anywhere—northeasters that drove rain through the outer walls of a house and the wainscoting within; northers that whipped snow into a man’s face with such force as to peel off the skin; squalls out of the southwest that rolled a dory over twice and blew the plug out of the bottom. But never have I seen equaled the violence of this storm on Dead River.

The water had risen three feet, and the falls to which we were constantly coming were white smothers of foam. When we fought our way up through the bateaux of the Third Division, blinded by the rain that smashed at us, we found them shipping more water from the downpour than they had shipped in the buffeting of the Five Mile Ripples. There was a howl to the wind that seemed made by living creatures; noises above our heads like the screaming of innumerable wildcats. There was a creaking and splitting among the taller trees that sent us scuttling past them; and all along the edges of the forests there were newly fallen pines.