He made a specialty of helping Langlade to bring western Indians all the way to the east. In his younger days he and Langlade had brought them to fight for the French against the English. Now the two of them brought Indians to fight for the English against the Americans; for when in need of Indians, the English paid well for them. He, like Langlade, must have been both brave and able, for Indians never follow an incompetent or a poltroon. He was, however, like all other Indian leaders, unable to control the tribesmen when they were drunk or in a passion—or to speak more properly, he knew enough not to try. He and Langlade, men said, had been in command of the Indians who massacred Braddock’s troops on the Monongahela: he, too, had helped to command the western red men who had slaughtered the women, the children and the unarmed soldiers at Fort William Henry.

“This Gautier,” Doc said, “he’s been around to look at me. I don’t like him and he thinks the same of me.”

“Why?”

Doc eyed me innocently. “Well, I told him us three was really English sympathizers—Tories; but we’d got pressed into the American service: kind of dragged along with Arnold against our will, because if we hadn’t, our American neighbors was fixing to take us out and hang us, so we had to. I told him first chance we had after we got ashore after fighting on the lake, we sneaked off by ourselves, meaning to join the British troops in that neighborhood, or get to Canada; so when Sponge-belly and them six others come out of the woods, we went with ’em peaceful and glad. What’s more, I said, he could ask Sponge-belly or any of the others if we ever made any resistance—we come right along with ’em and joined the tribe.”

“What did he say?”

“Didn’t say much. Kind of glared at me out of the corner of his eye like a bad colt: said he’d inquire of Sponge-belly and the others, and if they corberated what I’d been telling him, he might up and take and believe it,—maybe.”

“What else?”

“Well, I said I was a Tory, but also a practicin’ doctor, so I’d like to get with the British troops so’s to see how they treat a feller that gets hit with a cannon ball.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He said a French word. I don’t understand no French, but I got the drift of it. It meant he didn’t reckon on making it easy for me to go.”

“Then that’s the end of us,” I said.