Arundel

by Kenneth Roberts

  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

  PAUL 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.

  “This is the wrong way for the men,” I said. “They’ll be tangled in ponds and swamps if they follow the stream. They ought to go back on the high land.”

  Smith blinked. “Who says so?”

  “Those that know the country. The Indians say so.”

  He seemed to ponder my statement. “Does Arnold know it?”

  “Yes, He wants you to go by way of the high land.”

  “Did you come from him?”

  “Yes. I was with him last night.”

  “Didn’t he give you any written orders for us?”

  “No. He was in too much of a hurry.”

  “Took you kind of a long time to get here, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I got lost.”

  “Oh, you got lost! How’d you get here?”

  “In a canoe.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Down the stream a piece.”

  “Didn’t come alone, did you?”

  “No. I came with an Indian.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Why,” I said, wishing I was a better liar and had never answered any of his questions, “he went back into the woods to get food.”

  “It don’t sound reasonable. This ain’t the time to go hunting! How’d he happen to get lost if all the Indians know this country so well?” “I don’t know. Those things happen.”

  “If they happen to me,” he said, “somebody finds a dead Indian. Did you see Dearborn?”

  “Yes. That is, I know he went down, but I didn’t have a chance to speak to him.”

  “Too busy, I suppose. You didn’t happen to see Goodrich, did you?”

  “No.”

  “He went down a little ahead of us. I suppose that was while you were lost.”

  “Look here,” I said, “your men’ll walk into bogs and have a hell of a time! Take my word for it, will you, and get them around by the high land, and get Goodrich and Dearborn back as well?”

  Smith took a paper from his coat and unfolded it. “You say there’s ponds between here and Lake Megantic.”

  “Yes, and rivers.”

  “I suppose you know this army is going by Montresor’s map?”

  “Yes, I know it.”

  “Well, there’s no ponds or bogs or rivers on Montresor’s map. I’ve got a copy here. This river we’re on runs into Lake Megantic, clear and clean, according to my map.”

  “The map’s wrong.”

  “It’s been right so far. If Arnold got through this way, I can get through. If you want to know what I think—”

  He hesitated, watching me, then pushed his map back into his pocket and buttoned his coat. “Get on!” he shouted to his bateaumen. “We can’t hang around here all day!”

  I hurried to Natanis and we went downstream at a trot. “We’ve got to go on,” I said. “We’ve got to look for Goodrich’s company. They’re my people. They’ll listen to me. I wouldn’t like to see them come to any harm if we can prevent it.”

  “We’ll find them, Steven.”

  “We’d better get to that canoe before Smith’s bateau gets there, too,” I told him. “He saw there was something queer about my story. He might take a notion to have his men pop at us. They don’t miss often.”

  “There’s no danger,” Natanis said. “He must follow the curves of the stream. We can go straight.”

  There was neither sight nor sound of Smith or his men when we came to the cedar thicket where we had laid up the canoe. We launched it and drove rapidly toward the lake. The sky was overcast and there was a strong smell of snow, so we knew dusk would come early.

  “They followed the river,” Natanis said. “I know where to find them, but I’m not eager to be with them. This night will be cold.”

  We came to a sluggish stream that ran out of our course at right angles. “Now you see how it is,” said Natanis. “Straight ahead is Megantic, maybe a mile away. This stream that runs out at right angles is a false mouth. Your friends crossed it, I think. We’ll look for their tracks to make sure. Everywhere through here are swamps and bogs. If they crossed the false mouth and waded through the swamps to the lake, they’d turn to the right to go along the shore, and then come to another false mouth, very deep. Thus they’d be in a pocket, unable to go forward, or to the right or to the left: able only to wander in the swamp.”

  He drove the canoe into the slow water of the false mouth, skirting the shore. I saw broken branches, mud-swirls in the bog beyond the bank, a wisp of cloth caught on a jagged alder. We went ahead a mile, on a wide cur
ve, then came to another fork, with another sluggish stream turning off to the left nearly at right angles.

  “This,” said Natanis, swinging the canoe into it, “is the easterly wall of the pocket. Your friends are trapped here.”

  We drifted slowly down this dark and dismal stream. The air was bitter cold. We felt snow-spit on our faces, flecks of chill wetness.

  “Can we take them out?” I asked.

  “If you think you must; but you know what happens when men climb into a canoe from a bog.”

  It was true. Our canoe would split, eventually, and all of us be worse off than before.

  “Find them first, then,” I said. “I’ll build a fire on a mound, so they can come to it. You can lie at the edge of the stream in the canoe, sleeping in it so we run no risk of losing it.”

  Natanis stopped the canoe and we listened. The swamp seemed lifeless. There was no sound of any bird; no trickle of moving water, only the drip from my paddle, laid across the bow. At last, far away in the bog, a man shouted. Closer at hand a word was spoken: then I heard a slushing, sucking noise that I took to be men walking.

  Natanis sought to force the canoe between the trees; but the thickness of the brush obliged him to stop. “There’s a mound ahead,” he said. “I can’t reach it. You must get out.”

  I put my flint and steel and tinder in my cap, loosened my hatchet in my belt, and swung my pack onto my left shoulder, wriggling my toes regretfully in my dry, warm moccasins.

  The water was up to my calves. There was a crispness to the moss that showed it to be needled with ice flakes. I could see the mound dimly, a small one with a few dwarf birches and pines, such as partridges love. When I stepped toward it, the bottom fell out of the marsh and I went in to my armpits. It was cold water: so cold I got my breath with difficulty.