“Stevie,” Cap said patiently, “we’re fighting a war. When you’re fighting a war, you’re entitled to be helped. If folks ain’t eager to help, or don’t know how, then they ought to be kind of helped to help.” He stared at Nason defiantly and added, “We’ve got to find some way of getting from Allen’s Landing to St. John’s, ain’t we—nearly the whole length of Lake Champlain?”

“Certainly,” Nason said.

“All right!” Cap retorted triumphantly. “Allen’s Landing ain’t nothing but a little woodchuck-hole of a place, and if we was forced to borrow boats there, or anything else, we might get into trouble, on account of having no other place to go until our borrowing was completed. Rumford’s a big town, though, Stevie—a rich place, with twenty roads running out of it. I wouldn’t want to see a nicer town to borrow things in, on account of nobody knowing which way you went. What’s more, we don’t ever have to go back to Rumford again.”

Seeing that Nason continued to eye him with disapproval, Cap affected a bluff and hearty manner, slapping Doc’s back and jovially ordering him to milk the cow for the nourishment of his patients.

Doc Means blinked at him and shook his head. “No,” he said, “they ain’t got no appetite.”

“No appetite!” Cap bellowed. “Well, why don’t you do something about it? They’ll starve if they don’t eat!”

Again Doc shook his head. “I ain’t found it so. They don’t need nothing, only a cup of warm milk now and then, with maybe a pinch of Digby’s Sympathetic Powder in it.”

Cap was aghast. “Warm milk! That’s no drink for ’em! Why, they’d die of weakness!”

“Why would they?” Doc asked. “Don’t a bear lie in a tree for four months, not eating nothing? You show me a bear that ever starved to death in the winter, and I’ll eat the whole of him, hair and claws included.”

Cap looked incredulous. “You got to do something for ’em! You got to bleed ’em, anyway. Every last one of these men, they ought to have about three pints of blood drawed out of ’em.”

“Who said so?” Doc asked.

Cap was indignant. “Who said so? Why, all the doctors say so!”

Doc sighed. “Yes, they do. That’s right. That’s why I ain’t going to do it.”

Cap stared at him. “That’s a hell of a reason, that is!”

“It’s the best reason in the world,” Doc said. “The doctor you want to foller is the one that thinks different from the rest of ’em. Look at these doctors all around everywhere. Look at these surgeons we got in the army. Do you know how they got to be doctors?”

“Certainly,” Cap said. “Certainly. They got to be doctors by doctorin’.”