“You know how I’m situated,” I had told Nason, the night of the battle, after we had taken Arnold to the hospital in the camp and made ourselves a fire in front of a deserted lean-to, so to snatch a little sleep before daylight came. “If you’re going back to join Morgan, I want you to give me separate orders of my own.”

“Orders to do what?” Nason asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Orders to watch the roads to the north. Orders to make a scout to Ticonderoga. Any kind of orders that’ll give me a free hand to hunt for Nathaniel. Let me take Doc and Joseph Phipps. I’ll guarantee we’ll be as useful, off by ourselves, as we’d be if we went back to Morgan with you.”

Nason scratched his chin and stared at me. On this, Cap Huff put in his oar. “Stevie, that aide of Arnold’s won’t make no bones about giving us scouting orders if you ask for ’em. There’s some things we know that Morgan nor nobody else don’t know; and the most important of those things is that there’s a lady somewheres inside those British lines whose case ought to be attended to. Maybe you’re forgetting about her; but I ain’t, and Peter Merrill ain’t. She raised a good deal of hell with you, once, and with me, too; and she raised all the hell she was able to with Schuyler and Arnold, and with God knows how many other people, including Peter Merrill’s brother, didn’t she?”

“Yes, she did,” Nason admitted.

“Yes,” Cap said, “and come to think of it, we persuaded that boy to enlist as a scout, and we took him up into Canada where that hellcat could get her fingers on him”—he coughed affectedly and hastily added, “though that’s something we ain’t got to take into consideration.”

“Not in the least,” I said.

“Don’t try to confuse the issue!” Nason told Huff severely.

“Why, Stevie!” Cap exclaimed. “I wouldn’t do no such thing, whatever you mean by it. And here’s somep’n else, Stevie: If we go back to Morgan, we’ll just sit on our tails for as much as two whole days, on account there ain’t been any food issued for two days, and it’ll take another two days to issue it and get it cooked. We might as well be off killing a few more Britishers on our own account and picking up our own food while we go.”