Arundel (53 page)

“And I can sleep!” Cap sighed.

“Remember this!” Natanis warned him. “The fire must be kept day and night until we have found all who are lost. This may be in two days or four days, and it may not be for twenty days, and the fire must never fail.”

There was some growling from Cap as he unrolled his blanket again, and I knew he was thinking of his vanished bottle of brandy and the cold nights to come.

“Why are you so sure that men will be lost?” I asked.

“You’ll understand later,” Natanis said. “They’ll be fortunate if they don’t lose their lives as well as their paths.”

In the thick and frosty dark we paddled to the head of the lake, groping from submerged tree to tree until we found the mouth of Seven Mile Stream. We fumbled and scrabbled our way around its countless curves, getting into backwaters and false streams, and snagging ourselves on logs and bushes, but finally reaching a point where the swamp ended and the stream flowed between banks of good earth, firm with pine needles. There was no way to tell the time; for the stars were hidden because snow was on the way.

To me, as I huddled in my blanket, it seemed weeks ago that we had passed Morgan’s riflemen coming up from the last of the Chain of Ponds, their bateaux rubbing their shoulders raw; and I thought what young men sometimes foolishly think when things look dark: that in one day’s time I had grown to be an old, tired man.

XXIV

P
AUL HIGGINS
, a bearskin over his left shoulder and leaves stuffed into mooseskin moccasins for warmth, was in an ill humor when we came up with him toward noon. We were hungry and ate what we dared of fat bear meat, which was not much, for we had been a week on half rations and so knew a full belly would sicken us for two days.

“This army of white men,” said Paul contemptuously, for there were times when he considered himself an Abenaki, even though he was as white as I, which was not saying much because of the scabs and pine pitch and dirt on my face, “this army of white men couldn’t let well enough alone last night! When I built a warm fire, a scouting party came crashing and bellowing through the forest to see what was making all the smoke!” He spoke in Abenaki, which was his custom when proud and haughty.

“Have all of them crossed the Height of Land?” I asked.

“A part came into the meadow last night,” he said, “carrying seven bateaux.” He wagged his head. “These are good men, stronger than moose. The others straggled in this morning, near dead.”

He hitched his bearskin around him, and examined my shoes, one of which had lost its sole in crossing the Height of Land, so that my foot was bruised. “Where are your other shoes?”

“Stolen,” I said, “by a rat and a liar named Treeworgy, and a spy into the bargain. I can’t show my face in the army for the things he said of me.”

“I know him,” said Paul, going to his pack. “He’s a spy by nature. He spied on both white men and Abenakis of our country, telling his God about them in the hope of having them punished.”

“I knew it!” I said. “His name was Hook!”

“Hook,” Paul agreed, busy at his pack. “When the white men wouldn’t stop drinking rum and the red men wouldn’t worship his God, and his God wouldn’t punish them to suit his ideas, he was angry and went to spying for the Plymouth Company, tattling on those who wouldn’t pay taxes or do work they were supposed to do. This gave him more pleasure; for the Plymouth Company is quicker to punish than God is.”

He tossed me a pair of mooseskin moccasins. “Stuff these with grass or leaves and put them on,” he said, “or you’ll have no feet left at the end of another day. This Hook was ashamed of leaving God for the Plymouth Company. After he changed, he claimed he was not Hook at all, but a half-brother. He was a liar. His footprints never changed. Hook walked on the inside of his heels, with his toes turning out and taking no grip on the ground, and so does Treeworgy.”

“Waste no more thought on him,” Natanis said. “Steven says he must be killed. He’s as good as dead. What about the army in the meadow? Did they find your fire?”

“They found no fire of mine,” Paul said. “When we heard them blundering through the forest, we buried the fire a foot deep and lay behind a ledge to watch them. They were noisy and warlike, eager to shoot someone. We can’t help them until they are lost and weaker.”

“What’s all this talk,” I asked, “about everyone losing his way? Is there some law that requires a man to be lost in these mountains? And how was it, if this is so, that Colonel Arnold went quickly and safely to the lake?”

Natanis cleared a spot on the ground and sat beside it. The rest of us came around in a circle, Paul Higgins and Hobomok and two of Paul’s Abenakis.

“It’s seven miles,” Natanis said, drawing on the ground with a stick, “from this meadow close beside us to Lake Megantic, on which we were last night. It’s easy enough to go from the meadow to the lake by bateau or canoe down Seven Mile Stream; but it’s a different matter to go on foot. That’s the way the army must go, for no company except Morgan’s brought more than one bateau across the mountains.

“If the army marches down Seven Mile Stream,” he said, “it comes into the flooded land you saw last night. Through that swamp run two false mouths of Seven Mile Stream, both deep ones, making half-circles through the bog. Thus, if the men attempt to continue through the swamp they’ll run into those false mouths and be pocketed among them. If they turn back and try to skirt the false mouths they’ll come to Maple Leaf Pond, whose ragged shores are a nuisance. If they succeed in rounding this they’ll come to more swamps and streams, and eventually to still another pond, larger than Maple Leaf Pond. It has bays and bogs protruding like fingers on a hand, so we call it Finger Lake. Those two ponds and the false mouths lie like a barrier between Lake Megantic and the Height of Land, provided one travels afoot. To reach Lake Megantic you must walk around the swamps and the ponds; but as you shall see, a man may walk forever in attempting to walk around them.”

“That’s true,” Paul said. “Nowhere have I seen the like, nor does it mean anything to tell about it. There are no trails, because there’s no land, only mounds. There are no blazes on the trees; no game except crows and chickadees. The alders are laced in the water like the thongs of a snowshoe. I wouldn’t go into those bogs on foot alone for any man alive.”

“They’re bad,” Natanis admitted. “No Abenaki hunter will go into them. The only reason I know them is because I traveled their watercourses on snowshoes, when there was heavy snow or thick ice.”

“Then how is it you march around Lake Megantic?” I asked.

“Instead of going down Seven Mile Stream,” Natanis said, “you turn your back on the stream, marching to the northeastward along the shoulder of the Height of Land, thus remaining above the bogs and the streams. At the end of ten miles you can come down from it, moving to the northwest, and walk straight to the shore of Lake Megantic. Even to this route there is danger, unless it’s well known to the persons who follow it, for there are streams that flow down from the Height of Land. It’s natural to follow these. If this is done, they also lead into the bogs of Maple Leaf Pond and Finger Lake.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m befuddled by your description, so let’s get out of here and see what can be done. Tell me where you put your men, Paul.”

Paul took a square of birch bark from his belt and showed me. “With me,” he said, “there are three men. One watches now at the edge of the meadow. Two are here.

“We brought five canoes, leaving two on the Height of Land where the army would find them.

“There are four men along the shoulder of the Height of Land, on the trail to Megantic. Each night they’ll light fires, so that if the army is in the swamp it may have the good fortune to see them and come out.

“We built a bark house on the first point in the lake and left Natawammet there to light fires for those who reach the edge of the lake.”

“That we saw,” I said. “Natawammet is still there, and my friend, Cap Huff.”

“That’s nine men,” said Paul. “Then there are four more at the First Falls, fifteen miles down the Chaudière from Lake Megantic; four at the Great Falls, fifty miles farther down; two at Rivière du Loup, four miles from the first inhabitants at Sartigan; and six at Sartigan, spreading word on the lower river that there must be more food in Sartigan than ever before, and building canoes. That’s twenty-five. Then there are four messengers on the Chaudière, two moving up and two moving down, so that those who are on their stations may be told each day what’s happening. That’s twenty-nine, and twenty-nine is our total number if you count Natawammet as one of our men.”

“You’re a good captain, Paul,” I said. “I don’t know how it could be done better.”

“As the army passes,” he added, “I’ll follow in the rear. The other men will come along as soon as there are no stragglers to be pushed back on the path and no sick to be helped. When the army reaches food and shelter we’ll show ourselves to Colonel Arnold, and not before.”

We picked up our packs and moved forward to the edge of the meadow we had crossed the day before.

It was a long, narrow field, with groves of elms at intervals through it. From its upper end rose the peaks of the Height of Land; and at its lower end the matted wild grass sloped into Seven Mile Stream. Along its center was spread the remnant of our little army, five hundred or thereabouts, in knots and clumps and straggling lines, some sitting at fires, some sleeping, some hunting in their clothes for vermin.

At the lower end of the meadow, the end nearest the stream, I recognized Morgan’s company, because of their gray canvas jerkins and the seven clumsy bateaux with the men sleeping among them; but I could tell none of the other companies apart. Nowhere could I see Phoebe, though I strained my eyes to find her.

“Bring in your watcher,” I told Paul, “and let’s see what he can tell us.”

Paul cawed a little, like a crow; and the watcher joined us at once. No one, he said, had started away to the east, along the high land. Ten companies had come into the meadow; and two had gone down the east bank of the stream on foot. He expected them to return momentarily, since they would not be able to pass through the swamps.

“When did this happen?” I asked.

“At noon. All the food was put together in a heap, and divided equally. After that the first company went down the stream on foot. Later the second started, led by a sick man with a black beard and a black dog. He traveled in one of the canoes we left on the Height of Land.”

“That was Dearborn,” I said. “Was there anything about the first company that would help me to know it?”

“It had one bateau for provisions, and a woman in man’s dress.”

“What did the woman look like?”

“I can show you,” he said. “There are four women among the army. Jacataqua, near the bateau.” He pointed, and I saw her with her dog, cooking at a fire. “There are two with the riflemen, the fat one and the one with sharp bones.” He showed me Mrs. Grier and Mrs. Warner. “It was the other one,” he said.

That meant Phoebe had gone into the swamps with James Dunn and Noah Cluff and Nathaniel Lord and the rest of the Arundel men. I knew I must do something about it. I got up and fastened my pack. Another company was forming in the meadow, a company of riflemen; and the captain looked, at that distance, like Matthew Smith.

It was he, Burr had told me, who led the men who murdered the Indians in Conestoga and then massacred those in Lancaster gaol, twelve years before; who even led a mob of a thousand ruffians toward Philadelphia to discipline the Quakers for their peaceful ways. He wasn’t a bad captain; but he was hard as a turtle’s back toward Indians and Indian sympathizers, holding they were of no use to anyone unless dead, and then only as fertilizer.

“I don’t know,” I said, “whether they’ve heard yet that I’m a spy, but someone must warn these people, and it had best be me.”

“It
must
be you,” said Paul grimly, “because I won’t talk to them until I can show how I’ve helped them.”

“Oh, I’ll do it,” I said, “but it appears to me you’re going to find it pretty hard to help them without talking to them.”

Natanis and I skirted the meadow and went rapidly to the bank of Seven Mile Stream. We could hear Smith’s riflemen shouting to each other on the opposite bank, and before long Smith himself came slowly down in his bateau, two bateaumen and two sick men with him.

I stepped to the edge of the stream and called to him as he approached. His bateaumen pushed in toward me.