The sutler laughed. “Well, if Sacs and Foxes know about things like that, I guess we got to be careful what we say! I ain’t so well informed as you seem to be. All I know is, the lady you speak of, she comes back here to see another lady that’s crazy. Understand?” He made a circular motion with his finger against his forehead.

“Where’s her tent?” Joseph asked.

“How the hell would I know where her tent is?” the sutler demanded. “You ask too damned many questions! If you want to talk to any of the women in the camp, wait till after the attack. We’ll join the army after Ticonderoga’s been took. Then you can get an officer to go along with you, all regular.”

He leaned over his counter to shout at someone beyond us. “Sir! Sir!”

I turned and saw my brother.

… Nathaniel had been running toward the boats on the southern end of the beach. At the sutler’s words he stopped and looked at us impatiently. “What is it? I’m in a hurry.”

The sutler jerked a thumb toward Joseph Phipps. “This Injun here claims to be related to a friend of yours. It don’t sound right to me.”

Nathaniel looked thinner than I had remembered him, even after our summer of endless labor and our three foodless days on the Congress galley. He looked neat, though, in a loose green coat, belted at the waist with a black sword-sash, and plain black breeches and boots—the garb a young gentleman of property might wear if he were following an army out of curiosity.

He came a step toward us, staring incredulously. “To a friend of mine? Related to a friend of mine?”

I had a queer wonder that he didn’t recognize me. In spite of my paint-daubed face, my naked, blackened upper body, and my peculiar head ornament, I still felt like Peter Merrill; and that feeling alone should, I thought, reveal me to Nathaniel.

Rather uncertainly Nathaniel said, “Joseph Phipps?”

Joseph grunted. “Yes. Joseph Phipps. That’s me.” He tilted his head toward the sutler. “This trader, he pretty thick, head like punkin—nothing inside, only big hole.”

Nathaniel clapped a hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “Where’ve you been? We sent over to St. Francis to find out, and couldn’t learn anything! We thought maybe you’d been killed.”

Joseph grunted. “Where’s Ellen?”

“Ellen?” Nathaniel asked. “She—she—you knew she’d been sick, Joseph?”

“What kind of sick?”

“Why,” Nathaniel said, “she’s not quite responsible. She says things—dangerous things. If she wasn’t watched, she’d come out with things to cause trouble for anyone she ever heard of—for you, or me, or General Burgoyne, even. For her own aunt, for that matter. It’s terrible!”

“I go see her,” Joseph said.