Then he told us. Whitcomb and Steven Nason, sent by Arnold to bring back a prisoner, had traveled all the way to St. John’s, circled the British camps and hidden themselves on the road between St. John’s and Montreal. Whitcomb stayed in one spot for a day and a half, and at the end of that time a general came riding down the road on horseback. Since Whitcomb was afoot, he had no chance to overtake him: yet he ardently longed to take back a general to Arnold. Consequently, as Cap said, he plugged him through the shoulder so not to stave him up too much. He did not, however, plug him hard enough, and the general got away. As for Whitcomb, Cap said, the British learned his whereabouts and set guards across all the roads, in spite of which he came safely through them and back to Ticonderoga, as did Steven Nason.

“The British were awful mad,” Cap said, “but eight days later they were madder, because they had to bury the general. Here was this feller Whitcomb making the war so dangerous that not even a British general could be safe! Yes sir: they’d come three or four thousand miles to fight this war, and hired Hessians and Indians and everything, so to make it a good one, and they certainly didn’t propose to have the whole business ruined by this feller Whitcomb! They got so nervous over Whitcomb, they offered a hundred pounds to anybody who’d get him, dead or alive.”

“How’d you learn all this?” I asked.

“That misbegotten Hazen used to live in St. John’s,” Cap said. “One of his acquaintances wrote him a letter and told him about it, and the first thing we knew, all of Hazen’s friends were hollering about what a terrible thing Whitcomb had done.”

“His friends? Do you mean Easton and Brown?”

“Yes, damn ’em!” Cap growled. “Easton and Brown and Wilkinson. You remember that little antimire Wilkinson, that little pissmire as was Arnold’s aide in Montreal?”

We said we did.

“Well,” Cap said, “in the first place, he drinks. Yes sir! If you let that damned little tit-pot smell the cork of a rum bottle, he’d get drunk and blab everything he knew and a lot he didn’t know; so Arnold wouldn’t have him around any longer. He’s Gates’s aide now. He don’t like Arnold, naturally—hates him worse than poison, the way you hate anybody that says you drink.”