“Yes, I know you did.”

“Yes,” Nason repeated, “I used to know her.”

“She’s a bad woman,” I said.

“I guess she is. Yes, I guess she is.” He spoke, I thought, without much conviction and his questions began to seem irrelevant.

“How long have you been here?”

“We got here the 7th of July. Then we went back to Fort Ann to chop trees.”

“What have the men been saying about St. Clair and Schuyler?”

“Why, the usual things. Some talked about how St. Clair must have been pretty scared of the British if he went so far around ’em that nobody, including himself, knew what had become of him; and you hear a good many say we’ll never get any food up here till Schuyler hangs a couple of commissaries.”

“Listen,” Nason whispered. “Haven’t you heard about the silver bullets?”

“Silver bullets? What silver bullets?”

Nason moodily contemplated his stockings, caught together in a dozen places with shoemaker’s thread. “You ought to keep your ears open,” he said heavily. Then he went off on another tangent. “Probably you heard a few things about Arnold last year.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “I did.”

“Yes,” Nason said. “We all heard ’em—how he was a horse-jockey and a cheap gymnast: how he stole the communion cups from Montreal—–”

“And the baby’s rattles,” Cap Huff interrupted, “and all the handles off the front doors!”

“That’s not far wrong,” Nason said. “You heard those stories, didn’t you?”

Heard them? Indeed I had, and from Nathaniel! I nodded, almost afraid to speak.

“It’s a funny thing,” Nason said thoughtfully, “that those stories weren’t told about everyone. You never heard ’em about Gates, any more than you did about Wooster or Wayne or the other officers in charge up here. You only heard ’em about the one officer who could have taken Canada from the English if he’d had a free hand: about the one officer who had the brains and the ability to keep Burgoyne from breaking through last year and putting an end to our rebellion. I’ll say this about those stories, too. They kept Arnold in hot water for over a year, and they’ve put him where the British don’t need to worry about him any more. Yes sir! Those stories reached Congress, and Congress wouldn’t promote him. There’s so many officers ahead of him, now, that he’ll probably never have a chance to plan another campaign against the British!”

Cap Huff slapped his trout and spoke obscenely of Congress.

Nason lowered his voice. “Now listen to this. Arnold’s out of the way, or so the British think. They don’t need to worry about Arnold any more. But they’ve got somebody else to worry about. They’ve got Schuyler to worry about. Yes, and St. Clair.”

“Tit-head!” Cap ejaculated.

“Keep your mouth shut!” Nason said. “Let me hear another word like that out of you and I’ll cram that fish down your gullet, bones and all!”