“Brother,” Cap said, “he’s a pig-nut! Look around at the officers in this army and you’ll see the greatest lot of pig-nuts there ever was! Some are good ones; but most of ’em ain’t nothing but pig-nuts!”

“Pig-nuts?” I asked.

“Pig-nuts,” Cap repeated. “It takes a sledge-hammer to crack a pig-nut, and when you get inside it, there ain’t nothing you care to use. Besides being like pig-nuts, most of the officers are like women in not being able to stand getting told they done something kind of wrong. You ever tried criticizing a woman much? Arnold, he knows how to do things; and when he sees a pig-nut doing things wrong, he tells him. Tells him loud, so everybody hears it. The trouble is, you can tell a man with brains he’s wrong and he’ll try to fix things up; but you take and tell a pig-nut he’s wrong, and he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to have something heavy fall on you when you ain’t looking.”

“You mean Arnold’s spoken to Hazen?” I asked.

“Spoken to him!” Cap cried. “He damned hell out of him for not being willing to attack the English and Indians when they was on the run after the Cedars; and he damned two hells out of him for pushing Jerry Duggan out of the army. Duggan was the only American officer the Canadians would follow, but he was a barber. Canadians never shave nor fix up their hair. They never see no barbers, so they think they’re nice, and they took to Duggan. Hazen, he said he wouldn’t be in the same army with a barber. Made so much trouble for Duggan, he did, that Duggan had to resign. Duggan’s worth ten Hazens! Hazen’s the king pig-nut, and he hates Arnold because Arnold tells him to his face what he is, and because Arnold’s the only good general that’s been seen around here since Wolfe stopped a bullet.”

Absent-mindedly Cap lifted a board from one of the boxes and took out a dusty bottle. It had been opened before; for he drew the cork with his teeth and helped himself freely to the contents. After that he passed the bottle to us.

While I was drinking, Nathaniel said to Cap: “If he feels that way about barbers, maybe he doesn’t like gymnasts, either.”

The cart was empty, except for the Canadian driver; and with no gentle hand I helped Nathaniel up into it.

Cap eyed him dubiously. “What was that? What is it he maybe doesn’t like either?”

“Gymnasts,” I said dryly. “He means acrobats. Nathaniel heard that Arnold used to be a gymnast, but of course there’s nothing in it.”