With that, abruptly, he seemed to become impatient and irascible. Complaining bitterly of the letters he must write, he rose and almost pushed us from his cabin, as though he had never wanted to see us in the beginning and hoped never to see us again.

LXIII

GOD knows how our horses had escaped from the commissaries who supplied us with horse-meat in place of beef; for certainly they were on the verge of death from old age. Nonetheless, they carried us, which was something, even though our legs were sore from kicking them with spurless heels.

We coaxed those reluctant steeds south to Albany and through the neat towns along the Hudson: then crossed the river to the road that carried us across the lower corner of Massachusetts and over the rolling hills of Connecticut. After two days in Hartford, talking and haranguing continually, as we did everywhere, we rode to the eastward into northern Connecticut and Rhode Island, then swung up into Massachusetts and curved to the northward through Attleboro, Framingham, Fitchburg and Northfield.

I found it difficult, at first, to bring myself to speak earnestly to little groups of people. I felt like a pretentious, play-acting fool, mouthing the story of Jennie McCrae a dozen times a day. I grew hoarse, begging silent farmers to come to their country’s aid. Every phrase that fell from my lips seemed stale and flat: as unconvincing as an advertisement of a sale of calicoes.

Doc shook his head. “You better get mad. You’re thinking about yourself and how you look in that nice blue uniform of yours, and you ain’t making no effort to get your dander up! They won’t get mad if you ain’t mad yourself. Get aggravated at something!”

It occurred to me, then, to fix my attention on the most doltish of those who listened: to lash myself into a fury over his ignorance and unconcern: to have him in mind when I threatened the lot of them with mutilation and death unless they came out against Burgoyne. The first time I did it, a man was waiting for us when we unhitched our horses. It was the dolt, and he had a musket over his shoulder.

When we set off, he followed us. Doc frowned at him. “Where you going?”

“Agin Burgine,” the man said.

“We’re going east,” Doc said. “Burgoyne’s over there.” He pointed to the westward. The dolt hung his mouth open so a cat-bird might have nested in it. We rode away, and when we looked back, he was plodding off in the opposite direction.