Doc stared at me out of watery, helpless eyes. “I hope so,” he said faintly. “I feel kind of mean and dirty, trying to help people that don’t want to be helped.” Suddenly he became irascible and shook his fist at me. “You and your wars! I’d be a real doctor, if so be I could cut the throat of every man that wanted to fight a war, and if I could feed a dose of poison to every officer higher than a captain!”

I agreed with Doc. An army was a terrible thing, destructive of a man’s confidence as well as his independence. Officers, too, with men’s lives in their hands, were no different from lawyers, from carpenters, from business men, from Congressmen, from sea captains, from doctors, from historians. Out of any thousand sea captains or carpenters, or Congressmen or historians or doctors, only a dozen would be worth their salt; and if one out of the thousand had genuine ability, it was a miracle.

Doc caught my arm. “Look yonder! What’s that?”

A farmer on a mud-caked plow-horse came up the shore on the dead run. When he was opposite the docks, he shouted; and on the heels of his shout a despairing moan rose from the vessels’ crews. The farmer turned his horse and galloped up the hill to the stockade gate. Within the stockade the newly landed troops came running from all sides, and we ran, too.

An angry outcry burst from those who milled around the red-faced horseman. We distinguished the word “British!”

Colonel Long, white-faced, stared up at the newcomer and made sounds of protest.

“God damn it,” the farmer roared. “I see ’em! I tell you they’re three miles from here! They put damned near a thousand men ashore—fellers in red coats. Don’t you think I can tell a red coat when I see one?”

The colonel mouthed words which refused, seemingly, to get themselves said. The farmer shook both fists at him, then swung an arm toward the high hill that divided the lake from Wood Creek. Wood Creek, and the narrow road beside it, was the only route by which we could reach Fort Ann and the Hudson.

“They started over that mountain,” he insisted, his voice shrill and cracked, “they started over that mountain to cut you off! I tell you they’s a thousand of ’em! A thousand! The rest of ’em’s pulling the ships around the corner. They’re twice as big as yours, and there’s twice as many of ’em! They’ll have you boxed up here inside of an hour if you don’t get out! You got to get out! You got to get out quick!”

This Colonel Long, for all his slowness when there was no enemy close at hand, was a brave man and a willing leader, as he showed now.