Cap Huff’s rage at Gates’s treatment of Arnold was no greater than Nason’s or Tom Bickford’s or mine; but it was noisier—possibly because Konrad had been taken from him by Wilkinson’s orders and placed with the rest of the prisoners in the rear.

“Listen,” he said, his voice venomous. “Arnold transferred us to Morgan, and I’ll take orders from Morgan, just the way I’d take ’em from Stevie, but I won’t take ’em from no general that’s put in Arnold’s place. If that gray louse Gates comes out and tries to lead us, instead of Arnold—–”

“He won’t!” Nason said.

“By God,” Cap insisted, “if he does, he better hang a couple stove lids inside his breeches, because from what I hear, there’ll be five hundred fellers take a shot at him from behind, and that’s a shot they won’t miss!”

In the midst of all this excitement and uncertainty we saw nothing of Arnold, as we had been obliged to erect a new lean-to close to Morgan’s headquarters, which were in front of the center of the main fortifications on Bemis’s Heights.

The militia came in and came in. The camp behind us was full of militia, and the country behind the camp was dotted with the shelters they built for themselves. How large our army had grown by the first week in October, God only knows. None of our officers knew definitely, not even Gates and Wilkinson. On one thing everyone insisted. Our Continental troops alone were nearly equal in number to that of Burgoyne’s army. And over and above the Continental troops were the militia, swarming like locusts, and, like locusts, stripping the country of food. There were thousands of them: all day long we could hear their drums as they drilled—a faint, distant rattling, like the dry whirring of the wings of monstrous insects.

And day after day we grew more impatient and more irritable, knowing that Burgoyne, sooner or later, must try once more to break through: wondering why he didn’t: wondering, above all, what would happen to us without Arnold.

… We had the answer on October 7th.