Arundel (30 page)

I was awakened by what I thought was a slamming door; but on hearing a louder slamming near at hand, I knew it for an explosion. Here was the war at last, I thought; so I hastened to General Washington’s headquarters, preferring to be under a roof with others if there was to be any extensive dropping of cannon balls.

There were sentries in the general’s headquarters, neatly uniformed, like Mr. Burr, and extremely military, rattling and slapping muskets whenever an officer passed. I showed one of them my letter and was directed to the office of General Gates, Adjutant General of the army. He was a fussy-looking man with a sly eye and stringy gray hair: better fitted, it seemed to me, for sewing buttons on General Washington’s shirts than for fighting his battles. None the less, he received me politely, bidding me wait in a corner room.

I waited an hour, dozing in the warmth of the late August afternoon, when there was a prodigious clatter and crash in the hall. Thinking a British shell had burst through the wall of the house, I snatched up my musket and pack and fled into the entryway. There, rising from the floor, was the hugesome bulk of Cap Huff, gorgeously attired in a gold-laced blue coat, doeskin breeches and shiny black boots, a sword at his belt and spurs on his heels the size of cooky-punches. He greeted me with a clanking of spurs and accoutrements, and by tripping over his sword.

“By God! Stevie!” he shouted, clapping his vast paws on my shoulders and giving me a squeeze that almost broke my neck, “I bet they’re going to give us another clout at that fox-faced Frenchy!”

“Look here,” I said, pushing him away with the butt of my musket, “have they made you a general? What are you doing, falling down this way?”

Before he could answer, the door of the front room was jerked open and the face of Colonel Arnold popped out and glared at us from round eyes; then popped back again.

At the same time General Gates came up beside Cap and said coldly: “Colonel, may I know your name and organization?”

“Why, yes,” Cap said carelessly, “Huff.”

“Colonel
Huff?” Gates persisted.

“Yes; Huff!” Cap declared.

Seeing something was not as it should be, and fearing I might be somehow hindered in my interview with Colonel Arnold if Cap grew restive under this questioning, I swung my musket butt against the small of his back. Cap groaned and sank to one knee. Dropping my musket and pack, I caught him and steadied him.

“Sir, I think the heat made this gentleman ill,” I said.

“I think he’s mad!” Gates said.

“It may be,” I admitted. “With your permission I’ll take him out doors.” It was in my mind to guide him to the field where I had taken my nap, and tie him so he’d be there on my return. My planning went for nothing when the door of the front room was again jerked open by Colonel Arnold.

“General,” he said to Gates, “General Washington asks that these two gentlemen, whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, be admitted to his room.”

“Certainly, Colonel!” Gates said, “but I fear, Colonel, the gentleman in the colonel’s uniform is ill.”

I kicked Cap as hard as I could and helped him to his feet. He blinked and felt of his back. “Sir,” I said to Colonel Arnold, who was examining Cap’s uniform with as much interest as Gates had shown, “he’s recovering: he’ll soon be himself.”

Colonel Arnold nodded and led the way to the front room, into which he ushered us, Cap still leaning against me, groaning and pressing his hand to his back. General Washington sat behind a long table and watched us come in. He was an imposing man with broad, square shoulders, powdered hair and a ruddy face a little marked with smallpox—taller than Cap Huff, though smaller seeming from the fineness of his features and the lack of coarseness about his hands or waist. I thought, when I saw the straight line of his lips and the intentness with which he watched Cap, that I wouldn’t like to give him reason for speaking harshly to me.

“General,” Colonel Arnold said, when he had closed the door, “this is Steven Nason of Arundel, who had been far up Dead River when I first met him, as I told you, and has reasons to wish to go safely to Quebec. And this gentleman,” he added, pointing at Cap, who passed his hand clumsily over his face, “is Squire Huff of Portsmouth, who helped seize the powder in Fort William and Mary, as you already know.”

General Washington nodded. “I hadn’t heard,” he said to Cap in a pleasant, deep voice that vibrated as though from overmuch giving of orders in harsh weather, “I hadn’t heard you’d been made a colonel.”

Cap shook his head like a dog with a fly on his ear. “Who hit me?” he asked.

Colonel Arnold tweaked his sleeve. “The general asked you a question.”

Cap fumbled for his sword and leaned on it. “I hadn’t heard it, either,” he said, “and damned good reason! A scurvy rat in Ports mouth bribed the gaoler to lock me up and let no word reach my friends. I’ve heard nothing since Jonah got out of the whale!”

“Then you’re not a colonel?” General Washington said impassively.

“Why, hell, General,” Cap growled, “I’ve been in gaol! If it hadn’t been for Colonel Arnold sending me a letter I wouldn’t have this sword or this uniform, or be out of gaol, even, the dirty weasels!”

“In time of war,” General Washington said, “a person found within the lines in a uniform to which he’s not entitled is liable to be shot for a spy.”

“A spy!” Cap bawled. “I’ll go back and kill that damned son of a goat!” He threw his sword on the floor with a clatter, and wrenched an arm from his coat.

General Washington got up from behind his table and placed a hand restrainingly on his arm. “Let’s have the full tale,” he said. He glanced grimly at Colonel Arnold; but it suddenly came to me there was no grimness about his look; merely a sober intimation that what he was about to hear would be enjoyable.

“Well, sir,” Cap said, “there ain’t much to tell. There was a tailor that dealt with the British officers, and I suspicioned he’d been the ringleader of them as put me in gaol. So when I was let out I went to his house and took him by the collar and held him over his stove, and he promised to make me a uniform. Well, General, he done it, and gave me a sword and a hat to boot. Yes, sir, and to show his affection he let me have a silver tea set and a bag of hard money that your honor might find handy for the army.” Growling ferociously, he finished stripping off his coat and threw it on a chair, placing his sword across it. Under the coat he wore a shirt of India goods. I wondered where he got it. “Anybody that wants that coat can have it,” Cap said.

“We’re all needy,” the general said. “I make no doubt we can find a taker.”

“Is there anything the matter with it?” Cap asked.

“Why, no,” the general said. “It’s fitting enough, in the proper place. It happens to be the field uniform of a colonel in the Royal Marines—the rarest of all military ranks. There are only four marine colonels in the entire British army. I think, sir, you’ll find a leather hunting shirt more suited to your needs.”

He turned to me then; and I repeat now what I have always said: that a man had to be careless and thoughtless not to straighten up under his cold blue eye and do the best he could.

“Sir,” he said, “Colonel Arnold tells me you set off for Quebec as a boy by way of the Kennebec.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You had no fear of making this trip successfully?” he asked.

“Why, no, sir. My father was with me.”

“Would you be as sanguine to-day, without your father?”

“Certainly, sir, if I could pick my companions.”

“So you wouldn’t travel that route to Quebec with anyone?”

I studied for a time. “Sir, I’d prefer to go with somebody who knew the woods or had some special desire for going. Then I’d be sure of getting there.”

“Would you be willing to go with Colonel Arnold?”

“Not only willing, sir, but happy.”

“And with your friend here?” The general meant Cap Huff.

“I’d count myself fortunate.”

General Washington turned to his desk and consulted a small map. “Now,” he said, “when you traveled toward Quebec as a boy did you experience any difficulties?”

“No, sir. Not while our canoe was driven by good paddlers.”

“How did it happen you never got there?”

“We learned the man we pursued had got clean away.”

“But you could have made it?”

“Easily, sir, so far as we knew.”

“In how long a time?”

“From Swan Island, near the mouth of the Kennebec, in eight or nine days, sir, if all went well.”

“What do you mean by ‘If all went well’?”

“If we found no drought, sir, and no floods. If we got food when we wanted it. If we hit no rocks—kept from spilling in rapids. If all our muskets weren’t lost, and none of us broke a leg.”

“And if such things happened?” the general asked. “How long would you be then?”

“God knows, sir.”

“Do you know others who made the trip?”

“Yes, sir: the Abenaki Natanis, my friend, made it several times.”

“Several times?” the general asked quickly. “Then this Natanis has been in Quebec more than once since the British have held it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I saw him shoot a quick look at Colonel Arnold.

“Do you know of others?” he asked.

“Many others. Lieutenant Hutchins of Rogers’ Rangers took a message from Amherst to Wolfe by way of the Kennebec three weeks before my father and I went up. I’ve read the wampum rolls of the Abenakis, and seen the records of how Father Drouillettes went twice from Cushnoc to Quebec and back, and how Father Rale went up from Norridgewock. There was an Englishman named Montresor who traveled that road a year after my father and I. Natanis says Montresor drew a map, though I never saw it. Many Norridgewock Indians traveled to Quebec each year to trade or see relatives. Now all of them have gone to St. Francis, which means they went by way of the Kennebec, squaws and all. Assagunticooks from the Androscoggin make the trip often. It’s no great trick for a woodsman; but no one ever made it without knowing he’d been on a journey that near graveled him.”

“Let me ask you, sir,” General Washington said, “whether there are men in your section capable of making such a trip?”

“Plenty, sir; good woodsmen and hunters, hardy in the woods.”

“Then if we could get an army of such men, they’d all be capable of making it?”

“An army!” I cried.

“An army, sir, capable of taking Quebec.”

“What would it do for food?” I asked, thinking of the tumult an army would make in passing through the forest; thinking of the tumbled mass of rocks at the carrying places: of the bogs, the rapids, the trackless wilderness.

“It would carry its own food,” the general said, “but that’s not the question. The question is whether, if we could get an army of men like Colonel Arnold and you and Huff, it would be capable of traveling to Quebec by way of the Kennebec?”

“Gosh all hemlock, Stevie!” Cap exploded. “Yes! Capable of traveling there and carrying Quebec away in our pants pockets!”

“Sir,” I said, “with favorable conditions, I think an army could do it.”

Colonel Arnold had sat gnawing his nails while the general questioned me. Now he spoke. “General, we’ll make our own favorable conditions!”

“Colonel,” the general said, “I know you’ll try, and I hope you’ll have better fortune at making favorable conditions than has fallen to my lot when I’ve attempted it.”

XIV

G
ENERAL
WASHINGTON
spoke through tight lips, which made him seem angry, though I learned later he compressed his lips to prevent his teeth from slipping or clacking, they being badly fitted to his mouth and therefore insecure. “You’re familiar with this Northern country, gentlemen,” he said, “and I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“General,” Cap roared, obviously attracted to him, “you go right ahead and ask anything!”

The general studied a paper on his desk while I might have counted five. Then he eyed Cap grimly. “I have been told by Colonel Montgomery, in whom I repose great confidence, that every New Englander is a general, and not one of them a soldier. Therefore I’m pleased to find a New Englander who invites questioning, but doesn’t insist on forcing his opinion on us.”

While Cap Huff stared blankly, the general turned to me.

“What, in your opinion, should be used for the transportation of the supplies of such an army: bateaux or canoes?”

“Both,” I said, thinking of the labor of transporting heavy Kennebec bateaux across the Great Carrying Place.

“I’m told,” the general said, “that the roughness of the water and the sharpness of the rocks would endanger supplies carried in canoes.”

“They might,” I admitted. “And they might be dangerous for bateaux, too. Those who make the trip always go by canoe. You don’t know what the carries are like, sir! Miles of ’em! Miles! To carry bateaux would be—would be—”

“You’ll have to admit,” the general said, “that wherever a canoe can be carried, a bateau can be carried too.”

I was silent, unwilling to say either Yes or No.

“A bateau, General, requires less skill than a canoe,” declared Colonel Arnold. “Canoes are more easily broken.”