Joseph Phipps knew some of these Indians; and Sponge-belly laid our canoe alongside one of the scout canoes to find out why this army was traveling west whereas we traveled east. What Joseph learned was that the force before us—seven hundred British and eight hundred Indians, led by General St. Leger—was bound for Lake Ontario and Oneida Lake: then for the Mohawk Valley, by which route it proposed to smash into the colonies by the back door and join Burgoyne’s army at Albany. From Albany the two armies would march triumphantly down the Hudson to New York, destroying any armed rabble that dared oppose them.

The Indians, Joseph said, were riffraff from St. Francis and Caughnawaga, outcasts from the deep woods north of the St. Lawrence, and Iroquois driven from the Mohawk Valley into Canada by Americans. With them was Sir John Johnson and his regiment of Royal Green—Tories ousted from their Mohawk Valley homes earlier in the war. These were the green-uniformed troops we had seen. All these men, Indians, British and Tories alike, considered the war as good as over.

They had seen Burgoyne start for Lake Champlain two weeks ago; and his army, they predicted, would pierce the Americans as a knife cuts liver. They gave us a fraternal salute of whoops and paddle-thumps; and as we turned from them to resume our journey, they shouted that they’d see us soon in Albany.

“They’d see us soon in Albany!” That meant Burgoyne would join Howe, and the two of them together, back to back, would scatter our half-clad, half-paid, half-armed, half-fed regiments: roll them up: crush them: drive them like hunted foxes into swamps and thickets.

It meant Tories would come out of hiding by the thousand and the hundred thousand, to retaliate on the rebels who had bullied them, stolen their property and made them into harried, helpless fugitives for two long years.

My own thoughts were apprehensive; but Doc Means, strangely, was in the best of spirits. He flourished his bow-man’s paddle, and cocked his horned shaman’s bonnet rakishly on the side of his head; and when we were out of hearing of the last of the British troops he sang a quavering song—a reminder of his remarkable memory, which had fastened on a casual word let fall by Verrieul more than a year ago, and now turned it to our advantage. It was just the sort of song that Indians were always singing to boast of their exploits, and it also told Verrieul and the rest of us how we could escape from Langlade and Gautier, and get back to our own people again. “Listen, listen, listen,” Doc sang—