“Get your packs on,” Nason said. His voice had a flat sound, as if he spoke from the depths of a heavy fog. I saw him press Phoebe’s shoulder, and heard him clear his throat. “We’ll go alone from here,” he added. “No stragglers—neither women nor boys. We’ve got to go fast—and alone.”

My father helped me with my blanket-cord, and I saw my mother go around behind Nathaniel and fumble with the straps of his knapsack, but to no good purpose, since tears filled her eyes and splattered on her dress. The militia company lined up raggedly and presented arms.

“Come along,” Nason said.

My feet weighed a ton; I could do nothing but stare at my mother: see nothing but the slender streaks of moisture her tears had left on her gray dress. Doc Means wavered past me, looking as though half the town of Wells were fastened to his aged back. I saw my father pat my mother’s arm and heard his comforting words, loud in the hush that had fallen on that crossroads gathering: “—no worse than a voyage to Cadiz, and not near as long.”

A moment later, without knowing what had happened, or how, I had my hand on Nathaniel’s shoulder and we were going rapidly around the first bend in the narrow mountain road, headed north.

VIII

OUR route lay through the New Hampshire town of Rumford, now called Concord, though its early name will always be remembered because Benjamin Thompson lived there, but could not stomach our cause, so went to live in England and became Count Rumford, a celebrated man of science. From Rumford we would bear to the northwestward along the forest trails: first up the Merrimac a little way: then over to the Connecticut and up it to the trail that leads to the Winooski River, which flows into Lake Champlain about midway of its eastern shore.

It was just beyond Rumford that Cap Huff caught up with us.

He was riding a dappled gray mare which, in spite of being large, looked almost shrunken because of the way Cap towered over her and bulged out on either side. He had a huge bundle lashed to the pommel of his saddle, and another to the cantle, so that he could not swing himself down when he reached us, but seized the mare by the ears and fell to the ground with a clatter.

“So it’s you, is it?” Nason said. “Where’d you get that horse?”

“Look here, Stevie!” Cap complained. “No matter what I have, you look at it as if I’d got it in some underhand way. That horse was a gift!” His round red face exuded righteousness.

“A gift? Who was it given to, and when?”

“To me!” Cap said firmly. “You remember that Theodore Lyman—the one that planted the elms and charged Pete Merrill’s father three dollars for—–”