Читать книгу Rabble in Arms: A Chronicle of Arundel and the Burgoyne Invasion - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 10

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Our route lay through the New Hampshire town of Rumford, now called Concord, though its early name will always be remembered because Benjamin Thompson lived there, but could not stomach our cause, so went to live in England and became Count Rumford, a celebrated man of science. From Rumford we would bear to the north-westward along the forest trails: first up the Merrimac a little way: then over to the Connecticut and up it to the trail that leads to the Winooski River, which flows into Lake Champlain about midway of its eastern shore.

It was just beyond Rumford that Cap Huff caught up with us.

He was riding a dappled gray mare which, in spite of being large, looked almost shrunken because of the way Cap Huff towered over her and bulged out on either side. He had a huge bundle lashed to the pommel of his saddle, and another to the cantle, so that he could not swing himself down when he reached us, but seized the mare by the ears and fell to the ground with a clatter.

“So it’s you, is it?” Nason said. “Where’d you get that horse?”

“Look here, Stevie!” Cap Huff complained. “No matter what I have, you look at it as if I’d got it in some underhand way. That horse was a gift!” Righteousness seemed to ooze from his round red face.

“A gift?” Nason asked. “Who was it given to, and when?”

“To me!” Cap Huff declared virtuously. “You remember that Theodore Lyman—the one that planted the elms and charged Pete Merrill’s father three dollars for——”

“Certainly I remember him!” Nason interrupted. “What’s he got to do with it?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Cap said patiently. “That horse was a gift from Theodore Lyman, and so were there these other odds and ends.” He pointed to the pack on the pommel; then busied himself slapping the dust from his arms and shoulders, though it seemed to me he did it more to avoid Nason’s eye than for cleanliness.

“So Theodore Lyman made you a lot of presents, did he?” Nason said. “That’s something new for Theodore.”

Cap hummed a tune and stared up at the cloudless sky, apparently hunting for signs of weather.

“What kind of presents did he give you?” Nason persisted.

Cap closed his eyes, held up a huge hand and ticked off items on his outspread fingers: “Ten gallons rum, twenty pounds powder, five fry-pans, ten pounds glass beads, one gross awls, three dozen pocket knives, one hundred fish hooks, thirty papers needles, ten gallons rum.”

“You counted the rum once before,” Nason said.

Cap continued to be patient with him. “Yes. He gave it to me twice—the second time because I kind of hinted. That makes twenty altogether.

“Now look here,” Nason protested, “I want you to be careful! We’re liable to get into trouble if you let people give you things this way. What in God’s name did you want to take that horse for!”

“Stevie,” Cap said earnestly, “there’s nothing like a horse for trading purposes. You give me a horse, and I’ll guarantee to swap it for anything in reason. If there ain’t anything to swap it for, I can eat it. Yes, and for every man that’s got into trouble over borrowing a horse, there’s a thousand good men have died for lack of one.”

There were times, during the next two weeks, when it seemed to me there might be something in what Cap said.

It was on the following morning that Nathaniel began to complain of having smallpox symptoms—a headache and a pain under his arm. I went looking for Doc Means and found him at the head of our little column, staggering along weakly at Nason’s elbow—and that was one of the most singular of the many singular things about Doc Means. Old as he was, and half dead with fatigue as he always seemed to be, he somehow contrived to waver along with the leaders rather than with the rear guard—and that, too, in spite of the bundles stored about his person.

Not only could he travel as fast as any one, but seemingly he could travel longer. He was given to staggering off the path to hunt for moose tracks, for which he had almost a passion; and when he came stumbling and lurching back, his stumblings and lurchings carried him past the rest of us and up to the head of the column again.

No matter how early I unrolled myself from my blanket in the morning, Doc Means was puttering about the camp, searching with watery blue eyes for traces of animals that might have been near us during the night, or poking feebly at the fire—though the very feebleness of his poking seemed to set it roaring unaccountably. And at night, too, if I waked and sat up for a smell of the weather, there would be Doc, peering around the fire into the darkness, or fumbling with one of the leaves, roots or berries he was perpetually pocketing during the day’s march.

When I told him about Nathaniel, he came wavering back with me, and looked Nathaniel up and down. “So you got the symptoms, have you?” Doc asked helplessly.

Nathaniel nodded and gulped, nor could I blame him; for smallpox is a cruel disease, threatening its victims not only with death, but with disability, blindness, pain, disfigurement and social ostracism. It was true we had deliberately taken it mildly, to protect ourselves from catching it naturally in all its severity; but for all we knew the mildness might, through some unforeseen accident, become violent.

All the men of our little company gathered around us with serious faces—expecting, no doubt, to see heroic remedies applied to Nathaniel. Doc Means stared from Nathaniel to them and back again in such a futile manner that I had misgivings as to what our fate might be in the hands of such a doctor.

“I’m glad you got it,” Doc Means said faintly. “You couldn’t have picked out a better day to be took sick—not unless you picked out to-morrow. According to the Almanac, the next few days are the best days out of the whole year to get anything in.” He moved closer to Nathaniel and scrutinised his eyes. “Where’s that pain under your arm, and how much of a pain is it?”

Nathaniel felt of his right side. “It’s sharp,” he said. “Sharp.”

Doc Means shook his head sadly. “Well,” he said, “you ain’t got it! You was scratched on the left arm; and if you had a pain, there’s where it would be: under your left arm: not under your right. That’s the way with most of these inoculated cases: they ain’t sick at all, only because of being scairt, or because a doctor makes ’em sick.”

Cap Huff stopped him when he started to waver away. “If he ain’t got the symptoms,” he protested, “he ain’t far from having ’em. If I was you, Doc, I’d give him a few pukes.”

Doc Means shook his head. “I don’t take any stock in ’em,” he said mildly. “Anybody that wants to take a puke can take one; but there ain’t no reason for doing so: not as I know of.”

There was some murmuring among the men; for it was common knowledge that those who inoculated themselves with smallpox were supposed to physic themselves heavily, both up and down. As for Cap, he became noisy at once. “No reason?” he shouted. “No reason? Nobody never heard of a doctor that set up a smallpox hospital without puking his classes when inoculated! Ain’t there a reason for it? Answer me that!”

“That’s so the classes won’t forget they’re sick,” Doc Means said. “How’s a doctor going to make a living if his patients ain’t aware of being sick? If you ain’t aware of being sick, you ain’t going to bother with a doctor, are you?” He sighed. “The trouble with a puke,” he added feebly, “is that it makes you feel sicker than what you are. What I say is, if you don’t feel sick, you ain’t sick.” He turned suddenly to Nathaniel. “How’s your side? How’s your headache?”

“Headache?” Nathaniel asked. He seemed surprised. “Headache? Why, it’s not so bad as it was.” He kneaded his side sheepishly. “Neither’s the pain. I guess maybe they’re gone.”

“That’s right,” Doc Means said. “Well, you’d still have ’em if you’d took a few good pukes.” He went wavering off again, leaving the rest of us to follow; and in spite of Cap’s grumbling, we found ourselves heartened by Doc’s stubborn refusal to doctor us.

In another day, however, Nathaniel’s symptoms came on in earnest, and those of some of the other men as well. Doc Means professed himself delighted at the symptoms and at once halted and fumbled in his smock until he found what he called his dowsing rod. It was a Y-shaped branch, and he grasped it by its two arms, gripping it tightly, with its stem pointed straight upward. He faced this way and that. The rod turned downward suddenly, at which Doc grunted and seemed to lose his balance. He pitched forward as if abruptly pushed, and staggered a few feet from the path. With a violent movement of his arms he threw his rod from him.

Grumbling to himself, he picked it up and tucked it back in his smock: then led us confidently from the path and through the thickets. I doubted the worth of Doc’s manœuvres; but despite my doubts we came out on a hillside sloping to the south, and at its foot saw a spring of ice-cold water: the headwaters of a winding brook; so that there was more in Doc’s dowsing rod than met the eye.

Nason sent Cap pelting back toward Rumford on his gray mare to buy or borrow a fresh cow; and the rest of us pitched our camp and went to work. In an hour’s time we had chopped trees for a three-sided cabin, long enough to hold bed-places for all of us, and open on the front. It had a bark roof that overhung the open side by a matter of four feet, so that we could be protected from the weather and yet have the warmth of the fires ranged the whole length of the rude structure.

“There!” Doc Means said benevolently when the work was finished. “Anybody’d be altogether too dirty for my gizzard that didn’t think this was a terrible nice place to have the smallpox in.” To me he added, soothingly, “You and your brother got your inoculation the same day as those in Wells, so the whole company ought to be bustin out pustulin before to-morrow night.”

When Cap Huff returned, early the next morning, dragging a protesting black and white cow at the end of a long halter, the symptoms had set in on all of us, and we were a silent and thoughtful crew. As for me, my head felt as though a bushel of dirty potatoes had been stuffed into my skull; and my muscles could have been no lamer if Cap’s cow had trampled me.

Cap staked the cow near the spring at the foot of the hill: then climbed the slope to stand in front of our cabin and stare at us, his thumbs hooked in his belt and his huge hands slapping comfortably against his barrel of a stomach. Doc Means stumbled out from behind the camp and stood beside Cap, regarding us with moist blue eyes in which I thought I saw pride in our melancholy condition.

“You want to go to work on that cow,” Cap told Doc. “She’s fresh, and she ain’t afraid to let go of her milk. I had mebbe a quart this morning, with some rum in it, but it’s kind of wore off.” He smacked his lips. “You better feed these boys right away, because I’d ought to have a little more before I start off to the westward. Half milk and half rum makes a nice drink.”

Nason got up from where he had been sitting in the sun, whittling deadfall triggers, and came to look at Cap. “You’re going to the westward?” he asked. “What’s the matter with staying right here?”

Cap’s fingers tapped rapidly against the front of his tow-cloth smock. “Stevie, I got a lot of trading to do, off to the westward.” He glanced over his shoulder and added, in a lower tone, “I picked up a few things in Rumford.”

“I told you to get a cow,” Nason said. “I don’t recall asking you to pick up anything else.”

“Stevie,” Cap said patiently, “we’re fighting a war. When you’re fighting a war, you’re entitled to be helped. If folks ain’t eager to help, or don’t know how, then they ought to be kind of helped to help.” He stared at Nason defiantly and added, “We’ve got to find some way of getting from Allen’s Landing to St. John’s, ain’t we—nearly the whole length of Lake Champlain?”

“Certainly,” Nason said.

“All right!” Cap retorted triumphantly. “Allen’s Landing ain’t nothing but a little woodchuck-hole of a place, and if we was forced to borrow boats there, or anything else, we might get into trouble, on account of having no other place to go until our borrowing was completed. Rumford’s a big town, though, Stevie—a rich place, with twenty roads running out of it. I wouldn’t want to see a nicer town to borrow things in, on account of nobody knowing which way you went. What’s more, we don’t ever have to go back to Rumford again.”

Seeing that Nason continued to eye him with disapproval, Cap affected a bluff and hearty manner, slapping Doc Means on the back and jovially ordering him to milk the cow so that all of his patients might be nourished.

Doc Means blinked at him and shook his head. “No,” he said, “they ain’t got no appetite.”

“No appetite!” Cap bawled. “Well, why don’t you do something about it? They’ll starve if they don’t eat!”

Again Doc Means shook his head. “I ain’t found it so. They don’t need nothing, only a cup of warm milk now and then, with maybe a pinch of Digby’s Sympathetic Powder in it.”

“Warm milk!” Cap whispered, aghast. “Warm milk! Why, they’d die of weakness!”

“Why would they?” Doc Means asked plaintively. “Don’t a bear lie in a tree for four months, not eating nothing? You show me a bear that ever starved to death in the winter, and I’ll eat the whole of him, hair and claws included.”

Cap stared at Doc as if he considered him demented. “You got to do something for ’em,” he protested. “You got to bleed ’em, anyway. Every last one of these men, they ought to have three pints of blood drawed out of ’em.”

“Who said so?” Doc asked helplessly.

Cap was indignant. “Who said so? Why, all the doctors say so.”

Doc sighed. “Yes, they do. That’s right. That’s why I ain’t going to do it.”

Cap stared at him. “That’s a hell of a reason, that is!”

“It’s the best reason in the world,” Doc said. “The doctor you want to foller is the one that thinks different from the rest of ’em. Look at these doctors all around everywhere. Look at these surgeons we got in the army. Do you know how they got to be doctors?”

“Certainly,” Cap said. “Certainly. They got to be doctors by doctorin.”

“Nothing of the sort!” Doc cried. “They got to be doctors by holding a doctor’s horse and sweeping out his office! Most of ’em never even saw a childbirth and wouldn’t want to. They couldn’t even help a weasel be delivered! Doctors! Look at the best doctors we got in the army—Levi Wheaton and John Morgan and William Shippen—there ain’t no better army doctors than those fellers. They’re regular doctors, and everybody says they’re fine ones. Do you know how they treat sick folks?”

“Listen,” Cap said, “I ast you a civil question, and I expect a civil reply.”

“By Grapes!” Doc said. “You talk like a doctor! You don’t know, so I’ll tell you! According to them, all diseases are inflammatory, and to get rid of the disease you got to get rid of the inflammation. So when they find a sick man, they bleed him first and then feed him tartrate of antimony, epsom salts and calomel. They don’t leave nothing inside the feller—no blood, no food, no courage, no nothing! They ain’t as sensible as what a dog is!”

Cap made an effort to speak, but Doc stumbled close against him, silencing him by his very closeness. “If I bled you right now, and then gave you a dose of tartrate of antimony and calomel, d’you know what you’d feel like? You’d be sick abed for three days! You’d be sicker than these here smallpox patients.”

“I s’pose,” Cap said contemptuously, “I s’pose you consider yourself qualified——”

Doc interrupted him. “Now when a dog’s sick, he crawls under the barn and stays there, don’t he? He don’t bleed himself and fill himself up with all kinds of gurry guaranteed to rip his inside to pieces. He lays there and sleeps, and don’t eat nothing; and when he comes out, he’s cured. If you was sick, that’s the kind of medicine I’d give you, too—let you sleep, and not give you nothing to eat. There’s some sense to treatment like that.”

“I s’pose,” Cap sneered, “I s’pose there ain’t no doctor that knows so much as you! I s’pose you know better’n all of ’em.”

“No,” Doc said temperately. “I read about a feller down in Virginia—Doctor Siccary. He says the best food there is for any one is tomatoes. He says if you can eat enough tomatoes, you won’t never die. That feller Siccary, he sounds all right. Then there’s Thomas Tryon, over in——”

“Tomatoes!” Cap bawled. “Tomatoes? Love apples? Why, they’re rank poison! Any doctor’ll tell you that!”

I saw fit to put in a word. “It’s true that most doctors say they’re poison,” I told Cap, “but those of us who’ve sailed to Spain know it’s not so. The Spaniards use tomatoes on everything they cook, nearly, and every Arundel mariner that’s sailed there has tomatoes planted in his garden, and has ’em made into ketchup for winter use.”

“They’re poison!” Cap insisted angrily. “Any damned fool knows love apples is pure poison!” Then he eyed Doc craftily. “If doctors ain’t no good, and all their ideas is so wrong, what you want to carry a medical liberry around with you for?”

“So to find out what the best doctors recommend, and then do different,” Doc said promptly.

Enraged at Doc’s stubborness, Cap would, I think, have taken our treatment into his own hands if Nason had not interfered and ordered him away to the westward, reminding him that the citizens of Rumford might be on his trail. So Cap, grumbling to himself, loaded his supplies on the back of his gray mare, frequently pausing to drink from the snout of a kettle in which he had mixed two quarts of rum and a quart of warm milk; and we all felt more at peace when he hoisted himself clumsily into the saddle and went lurching off towards Lake Champlain, bawling a French song in a thick, hoarse voice.

Due, perhaps, to the thimbleful of Digby’s Sympathetic Powder that Doc had put in our milk, we were able to be on our feet and move around on the following day. Some of us, even, were hungry; but both Doc and Nason seemed deaf to our hints that we were able to eat.

Nason had us set rabbit snares in the lowland at the foot of the hill, so that we might have fresh meat when our illness was over; and twice a day he drilled us—in the morning in the English fashion; and in the afternoon in the Indian fashion. In the first we formed straight ranks and held in our stomachs, very military, shouldering oak saplings in place of muskets. In the second we learned how to break from single file into double and shelter ourselves behind trees, facing outward, so that no enemy could take us in the rear.

For the most part we lay and listened to Doc Means, who gave us repeated assurances of how healthy he proposed to keep the lot of us after we should reach Canada, provided we kept away from regular doctors and went without food occasionally—a piece of advice to which even he, in after days, sometimes referred sardonically.

He took pleasure in quoting to us from his medical library and calling attention to some of the drawbacks connected with the remedies that had come to his notice.

He had learned by heart, out of his books, a cure for everything on earth that anybody could name, from warts to fright; and the only one with which he seemed to find no fault was the fright-cure. This led me to say to myself that even though there should be small chance of being benefited by this fright-cure, I would get Doc to mix me some of it if ever we were threatened with a battle. What was more, I could tell from the look in the eyes of many of the others that the same thought was passing through their minds.

Unlike many of the panaceas of the day, Doc’s fright remedy was easily compounded. There was, he told us, an infallible means to prevent being struck by lightning, and also a cure for those who have been struck; but since for the preventive he lacked the skin of a seal, we would have to take our chances during thunderstorms. There were many wart cures, he said, but the one recommended by the most enlightened doctors was to hunt for a shooting star, and then, as soon as possible after seeing one, to pour vinegar on the hinge of a door. And thus he pointed out that it was difficult to cure warts in the woods.

The fear remedy, however, was not so difficult. Its chief ingredients, according to Doc, were gunpowder and pepper, mixed with rum, and flavoured with the smallest trace of Digby’s Sympathetic Powder. We had the gunpowder and the rum, while Doc had the Digby’s Sympathetic Powder. We could, he said, get along without the pepper, and even without the gunpowder too; for it was the Digby’s Sympathetic Powder and the rum that were the two necessary ingredients. The gunpowder and the pepper, he assured us, only made the remedy more lasting in its effects.

“It stands to reason,” Doc said, “that the farther you can keep away from doctors, the healthier you’ll be. Look at what these doctors call for in their most expensive medicines—snake skins, slow worms, red coral, ambergris, gold leaf, Venice treacle, vipers, oil of stones, rape of storax, camel’s hay, the bellies of skinks——”

“You mean skunks, don’t you?” Nason asked.

“No,” Doc said mildly, “I mean skinks.”

Nason’s voice was sceptical. “What’s a skink?”

“How would I know?” Doc asked helplessly. “How would any one know? There ain’t none in New England, and there ain’t no camel’s hay, neither. What I say is, these doctors that tell you to use skinks’ bellies and camel’s hay in medicines, they don’t know what they’re talking about, and a feller that don’t know what he’s talking about ain’t worth listening to. He ain’t no good, and he wa’n’t never no good, and he won’t never be no good.”

Unconventional as were Doc’s medical beliefs, he really was an expert with a saw and knife, and able to take off a leg or an arm before, almost, the patient could scream. But to my mind the most singular of his powers was the ability to rub a sprain or a rheumatic joint in such a way that the pain, in no time at all, was relieved; and this ability or gift, he declared, was due to the fact that he was a Seventh Son, so that his touch was a guarantee of good fortune.

Since his childhood, he said, persons contemplating matrimony or a sea voyage or a hunting trip would come for miles to touch him, knowing well that they would be fortunate because of the touch. It was this gift, he said, that had made him willing to go to war; for so many had gone to fight, and so many were afraid of being hanged if they guessed wrongly which side they should take in the Rebellion, and so many were in danger of losing all their small savings through the increasing worthlessness of the currency, that his house was over-run, day and night, with people who wished to touch him for good luck.

They would walk from York, even, and Kittery and Scarborough, he said, arriving at his house at two and three o’clock in the morning, or at dawn or supper-time or any time at all, and pound on the door and shout until he got out of bed and allowed himself to be touched. Then, as like as not, he would be obliged to provide them with food or a drink of rum, or with enough money to buy food; and all this touching and waking up at night and feeding people had come to be so tiring and annoying to him that he thought going to war would give him a quieter life, and he would get more sleep.

Whatever it was that gave him his singular power, it did us more of a service than all his talk of fright remedies and wart cures; for it cured Joseph Marie Verrieul and made him our friend, which turned out to be a matter of importance to me.

... As Doc had predicted, our symptoms, except for a few insignificant pustules, vanished in two days, and for the next week we lived comfortably on fish chowders made of trout and milk and hard bread that Zelph baked, and on messes of greens that he was indefatigable in gathering. On the seventh day we were hard put to it, even, to find a pustule, which proved to be fortunate; for it was toward sundown of that chilly gray day that we heard a bellowing from the north-westerly end of the meadow—the bellowing of a raucous voice singing a French song about rolling a ball.

“Behind our house there is a pond,” the song ran, “Roll on, my ball, roll on: Three beautiful ducks are bathing themselves in it: roll, roll, my rolling ball: Roll on, my ball, roll on.”

“There’s Cap!” Nason said.

It was indeed Cap and his dappled gray mare; but he was not riding the mare: he was leading her; and on her back, slung across the saddle like a sack of meal, was the body of a man.

“Come get him!” Cap bawled at us.

“Has he had the smallpox?” Nason called.

Cap stopped the horse and went to the man’s head. “Hey!” he shouted in a voice to make a corpse jump, “have you had the smallpox?”

The man just hung there.

Cap shouted again and shook him; finally crouched beside him and examined his face; first on one side: then on the other.

“He’s got a pit under his ear and two on his forehead,” he finally roared.

“Go ahead and get him,” Nason told us.

We took him off the horse, laid him beside the fire and perceived him to be a young man, about Nathaniel’s age, but painfully thin. His eyes were sunken, and his cheeks had fallen in, so there was something about his head that put me in mind of a bird’s skull. Yet his face, under the grime and tear-streaks on it, was a fine, smooth brown, and his eyebrows were thin and arched, so that even in his pitiful condition there was something of distinction to him.

Cap, breathing heavily, stared at him as if puzzled. “Picked him up in the woods,” he told us. “There he was, all alone, a thousand miles from anywhere, just lying beside the path like he was dead.” He shook his head, adding: “No food; no blanket; not even any money.”

“How do you know he didn’t have any money?” Nason asked.

Cap, seeming not to hear him, caught Doc Means by the shoulder. “What’s the matter with him?”

Doc blinked. “I’d say he was starved,” he said. “Starved and tuckered.” Almost hopefully he added, “Maybe I’ll find something else the matter with him when there ain’t so many folks around, and I get a chance to look at him.”

Tom Bickford pointed to the young man’s knees. The breeches over them were sadly torn; and under the holes the skin was raw. We saw, then, that his palms were raw as well.

“Well, now!” Doc said, “that boy must have been anxious to get somewhere! He’s been crawling!”

He knelt stiffly to fumble at the boy’s legs. “Ankle,” he said. “Sprained.” He pawed at him again: then sank back on his heels to look up at us. “Both ankles!” he said. “Both ankles sprained.”

We poured a little rum and milk down his throat, and peeled off his Indian leggings and moccasins, while Doc Means began to feel, knead, and poke the two sprained ankles. In a minute or two the young man groaned, and we trickled more rum and milk into his mouth. Doc Means worked on, pulling at the stranger’s heels and twisting his toes; and in half an hour the boy was sitting up, taking all the rabbit stew we would give him: clamouring for more, too, and filling out under our very eyes.

His name, he said, was Verrieul—Joseph Marie Verrieul, and he had been in the army on Dorchester Heights. When the British left Boston, his regiment and nine others had marched for New York. By the time he reached New London, he was, as he put it, very much beat out. Consequently he signed aboard a privateer brig that sailed from New London on the night of his arrival.

“A privateer!” Cap Huff shouted. “What about your regiment?”

Verrieul smiled up at Cap so artlessly that Cap’s bellow fell off into what, by comparison, was a murmur. That was Verrieul’s way—to smile happily and confidingly at every one, whether friend or enemy; nor was his smile something put on for the moment, to attain his ends. He was perpetually happy within: eager and full of enthusiasm: ready for anything, like an amiable dog; and it seemed impossible to be with him, or to look at him, even, without feeling towards him as one would feel towards a friendly puppy.

“But I tell you I was beat out—very much beat out,” he told Cap. “I was doing nothing in the army: nothing! Merely sitting and freezing, and of no use to any one. On a privateer, I thought, I would be active, alert! Better that, I think, than to go away in the woods, like many in my regiment, and lie hid. What do you think?”

Cap growled noncommittally and gave him a spoonful of rum and milk.

He had been so unfortunate, Verrieul continued, as to encounter bad weather, and water poured through the deck-seams of the brig, both day and night. For nearly two weeks he had been unable to dry his clothes or to eat warm food, so that he had been troubled with gurry sores. They had sighted no prizes, and to make things worse, the mate had knocked him down and kicked him. When, consequently, the brig had put into Boston two weeks ago, he had been overcome by a depression that filled him with a desire to visit his friend Dr. Wheelock for consolation and advice.

“And did you visit him?” Nason asked.

“Visit him?” Verrieul asked. “No! How could I arrive at Hanover, considering what happened to me?” He pointed to his ankles, at which Doc Means still fumbled. “I was proceeding alone along the path to Hanover, happy at my approaching reunion with the Revrint Doctor, when I stepped on an insecure stone and suffered a wrench in one ankle. The path was rough; so when I went on, I fell often, and at length I wrenched the other also.” He drew a deep breath. “Then I was indeed unhappy, not only for myself, but for thinking of the pain it would cause the Revrint Doctor if he should learn I had died like this: crawling in the forest; of no use in the world. He would have been sad to think that after he had laboured so industriously to give me learning and usefulness, all his efforts had come to nothing through one small misstep of mine.”

Cap breathed heavily through his nose. “If I was you,” he said, “I wouldn’t lose no sleep worrying about how this Doctor, or anybody else for that matter, might take sick on account of worrying about me. People down my way, they got troubles of their own, and they spend all their time worrying about themselves. What leads you to think this Doctor might lie awake nights, wringing his hands over your whereabouts? Did you owe him some money, maybe?”

Cap, I saw, was being facetious after his own manner, partly in relief at Verrieul’s recovery, and partly to keep the boy’s tongue wagging.

Verrieul stared from Cap to the rest of us, as if a little hurt at Cap’s words; then turned to Cap again. “You must understand,” he said, “that my case was unusual. From the manner in which you shower kindnesses on me, I can see you find me pleasing; and that was even more the case with the Revrint Doctor. For three years there was no pupil regarded with as much warmth by the Revrint Doctor as was unworthy Joseph Verrieul.”

“You don’t say!” Cap remarked. “Well, well! Maybe that’s a compliment for the Doctor, and maybe it ain’t! Who is this Revrint Doctor, if we might make so bold as to ask?”

“The Revrint Doctor Wheelock?” Verrieul exclaimed. “You don’t know him? Truly, I thought he knew everybody in the world! He writes letters to all neighbourhoods—to General Washington and great sachems everywhere.”

“His letters to me must have got lost,” Cap said. “Where’s he live and what’s he do?”

“He is president of the seminary in Hanover! You have heard of it: the Indian school? We call it Dartmouth College.”

“Indian school?” Cap asked quickly. “You’re an Indian?”

“No, no!” Verrieul said. “I am an American, descended from French people. My father was lieutenant-colonel, living in Sillery. Now he is dead. I was at school in France for two years: then I am discovered by the Revrint Doctor Wheelock! A fine man! A man with a large, warm heart, wholly confident of my future. He paid the cost of my studies in the seminary, out of his own pocket; because, you see, I have nothing myself.”

He smiled at us again, a confiding, engaging smile; and Cap, staring at him, opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again without speaking.

“You met Indians at this Indian school?” Nason asked.

Verrieul laughed. “Met them! They’re my brothers! Lewis Vincent from Caughnawaga, and Joe Gill, the son of the sachem of St. Francis: they are brothers to me. It was I who went with Kendal to Caughnawaga as an interpreter when he founded the school. Kendal and James Deane and I, we are very much loved in Caughnawaga.”

Nason spoke to him rapidly in a language that had a peculiar click and catch beneath and between the words.

“Well, of course!” Verrieul exclaimed. “It was the first I learned—Abenaki. Now I speak many, including Chippeway. All the western nations speak Chippeway. I learned it when I travelled with James Deane to the westward.”

He said this simply, but there was pride in his manner of saying it that made it sound like a boast. Yet the name James Deane meant nothing to any of us; and our ignorance must have shown in our faces; for Verrieul quickly enlightened us. “He studied at Dartmouth also. He lived among the Oneidas from boyhood, placed there by his father, a minister, for the purpose of becoming a missionary. His family is a great family. He has an uncle, Silas Deane: a great man. James Deane speaks Iroquois better than the Iroquois themselves. There is nothing at all—nothing—that the Oneidas would not do for James Deane. I have travelled with him. It was he who taught me to speak the Iroquois language better than most.

“Then I am good at Huron—very good. Of course, there is little difference. They are about alike, Huron and Iroquois speech. Lewis Vincent is a Huron. Maybe you have heard of Payne’s Tavern in Hanover?”

We stared at him, fascinated by the activity of his mind and his talent of speaking highly of himself without giving offence.

“It was Payne’s Tavern,” he told us, “that caused the battle last year between the Revrint Doctor Wheelock and the townspeople, and the battle had its beginning because Lewis Vincent and unworthy Joseph Verrieul were unfortunately affected by liquor obtained there.”

“You mean you got drunk with this Huron?” Cap asked.

Verrieul made a slight movement with one hand, a gesture expressive of a faint distaste. “Observers said that Lewis and I temporarily lacked our usual good judgment,” he admitted. “If the Revrint Doctor had not loved me greatly, I think it would have gone hard with Lewis, because he danced naked in the halls of the college, very noisy. It was I who went to the Revrint Doctor and explained such lack of discernment; and because of my explanation, he placed the blame on Payne and his Tavern.” There was an angelic look on Verrieul’s thin brown face. “So that will show you,” he continued gently, “how I am situated with Lewis Vincent. Lewis Vincent has made me his brother. I have learned from him to speak very nicely in Huron. I have made orations in the tongue. Last year I made an oration to Lewis Vincent on the wickedness of drinking—an oration so powerful that Lewis wept and for over three days refused to think, even, of liquor.”

Doc Means, who had been gently kneading Verrieul’s ankles, sat back on his heels. “Move your feet,” he told the boy. “See how they feel.”

“Why!” Verrieul said, “there’s no pain in them: only some stiffness!”

Doc Means puttered about him, making him comfortable; so the rest of us took our bowls and spoons and sat before the long fire in the dusk to eat our rabbit stew.

For the first time, then, Cap Huff mentioned his trip to the westward. “Stevie,” he said uneasily, “how long is it going to be before we can move? Something’s happened up north. The lake-shore’s thick with deserters, hiding in the brush and saying nothing to nobody.”

Nason stared at him, frowning. “Deserters? Deserters from where?”

“There’s no telling. You can’t catch ’em. They act as if all hell was after ’em.”

Nason’s reply was both short and sudden. “We’ll move to-morrow. We’ll burn the clothes and the cabin after breakfast, and then we’ll wash up and go.” He looked doubtfully at Verrieul, who was lying back, his eyes closed, a thin seraph in the firelight. “You’ll have to put this young man on your horse and carry him to the first settlement, so he can have help until he’s able to start for Hanover.”

“There’s nothing to hinder him making his own way,” Doc Means said. “I’ll have him walking by morning.”

At the weary weakness of Doc Means’s voice, Verrieul opened his eyes to stare solicitously at him. Then he smiled fondly at everybody. “I’m in no hurry to return to Hanover,” he said. “I’ve taken a notion to go along with you for a time. It might be I could be useful to you.”

It was apparent to all of us that he could indeed be useful; but how useful he was to be, we could not dream. Nor had we even a slight suspicion that our meeting with Joseph Marie Verrieul was the last piece of good fortune that was to come our way for many a long day.