Seeing that Nason still regarded him coldly, Cap coughed virtuously and added, “I dunno as I told you, but while I was hunting those blankets for Arnold, I got into a little argument with some kind of a officer over a bottle of rum that somebody’d left in one of the tents, and I had to hit him over the head with the flat of my hatchet.”

“An argument with one of Morgan’s officers?” Nason asked quickly.

“I dunno,” Cap said. “All I know is he was an American, because he said, ‘Here, gimme that bottle!’ I ain’t anxious to go right back there, not till things quiet down a little.”

“Where’s the bottle?” Nason asked.

“Right here,” Cap said wistfully. “It’s mostly only bottle.” He produced it from the rear of his garments, and all of us had a drink of the remnant.

“All this that you’re telling me,” Nason said to Cap, “merely means that you want to go with Peter Merrill if he goes looking for his brother.”

Cap’s reply was melancholy. “There you go, twisting a man’s words every which way! Anything to make him out selfish! Listen, ain’t I got your best interests at heart, Stevie, same as always?”

Nason snorted.

“Captain Nason,” Tom Bickford said, “I’d like to go with Cap’n Peter. I’d like to do what I can to help Nathaniel.”

Nason stared into the fire for a moment: then, without another word, left us. In half an hour he came back with a written order signed by Varick, authorizing Steven Nason and his command to scout wherever necessary in behalf of General Arnold, on the lookout for certain individuals of interest to the Continental Army.

This order would, I knew, take us wherever we wanted to go, for in view of Arnold’s part in the battle we had just fought, no officer but Gates or Wilkinson would presume to question his orders, even though he had been deprived of his division. More than that, it was an order that even relieved us of the necessity of answering questions, since every officer worth his salt knew that Arnold was forever sending out scouts for the obtaining of information that no other general seemed able to get.

In the morning, as daylight broke, we crossed the Hudson to the eastern bank, and moved up to high land from which we could look over to the artillery park, the hospital tents, the piles of supplies, and the British troops moving slowly northward.

Wherever we moved, on that eastern bank, we found American militia—more militia than we ever dreamed existed; and surrounded by these noisy, turbulent, undisciplined farmer-soldiers we stalked the British during the earlier days of that week as a setter stalks a wounded bird.