The men began to drift away.

“Wait,” I said, “let me ask you something. What led you to enlist in the militia in the first place?”

“For God’s sake,” one of them cried, “push him out of the road and come ahead!”

Doc Means ceased his labors on my shoulder. “I don’t believe that feller knows what’s going on, Cap’n Peter,” he said mildly. “I don’t believe he ever heard how Jennie McCrae got killed.”

The militiamen stopped in their tracks.

“I can tell you about that,” I said. “I can tell you how she was killed, because I was up a tree above her when it happened. I’d climbed it to help protect Vanderheiden people from having their skulls split open. I saw her killed. The man that killed her was red, the color of a red fox. He was smaller than any of you. He and his friends got into an argument over her, so he shot her in the breast. He put the muzzle against her and blew the breast right out of her. Another shot her in the back. He shot her in the back when she was lying on the ground. She hadn’t done anything to any of ’em. One of the men put his foot on her and pulled off her hair. Tore it off her! Tore it off like a squirrel skin!”

My hands were trembling. My throat was so choked that I could scarcely get my breath. I had never thought of myself as a speaker, yet now words came to me without conscious effort—words that faintly eased my indignation—words that I spoke with all my heart, even though I hardly knew what I said.

“Listen to me,” I said. “You owe me that much. I went in the army over a year ago to keep the British away from my people and yours. So far, by God, we’ve done it! We starved and sweated and sickened: almost drowned and damned near died a hundred times, in Canada; we built the fleet and fought it till the guns split our ears and jarred our eyes loose; we held back the lousy British at Fort Ann; we chopped trees to hold ’em back, till our hands cracked open! For over a year we’ve fought ’em! You’re safe and your homes are standing. This morning your mothers put bread in the oven; your sisters tie ribbons in their hair and sleep sound at night because of what we did: because of what we endured! We went into this war to stop the British! What did you go into it for?”

Doc seemed to be waiting for the question. “They went in for twenty dollars.”