Someone on the fort ramparts gave a sharp whistle. Someone else near the gate began energetically blowing a tin horn. Men and women began appearing—some rising from blankets laid out near slumbering livestock—and watched as the soldiers marched in a column of two toward the fort.
“Wheelock’s not going to have the pomp he was expecting for his arrival,” Conawago observed, his words filled with foreboding. The soldiers had not waited for the reverend, for they had a mission and were not interested in ceremony. They had to be part of the dragoon company Beck had been riding with. Duncan nodded grimly, then pulled on his pack, lifted his rifle, and set out for Lake Champlain.
The rough track they followed could be considered a road only with the same hyperbole that the military used in calli
