Arundel (47 page)

“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.