The Custom of the Army Read Online Free PDF Page A

encountered: gamy, certainly—he wondered, with a small thrill, whether the grease the man wore might be bear fat—but with the tang of herbs and a sweat like fresh-sheared copper.
    Straightening up from the gunwale, the Indian caught Grey’s eye and smiled.
    “You be careful, Englishman,” he said, in a voice with a noticeable French accent, and, reaching out, ran his fingers quite casually through Grey’s loose hair. “Your scalp would look good on a Huron’s belt.”
    This made the soldiers from the boat all laugh, and the Indian, still smiling, turned to them.
    “They are not so particular, the Abenaki who work for the French. A scalp is a scalp—and the French pay well for one, no matter what color.” He nodded genially to the grenadiers, who had stopped laughing. “You come with me.”

    There was a small camp on the island already, a detachment of infantry under a Captain Woodford—whose name gave Grey a slight wariness but who turned out to be no relation, thank God, to Lord Enderby’s family.
    “We’re fairly safe on this side of the island,” he told Grey, offering him a flask of brandy outside his own tent after supper. “But the Indians raid the other side regularly—I lost four men last week, three killed and one carried off.”
    “You have your own scouts, though?” Grey asked, slapping at the mosquitoes that had begun to swarm in the dusk. He had not seen the Indian who had brought them to the camp again, but there were several more in camp. Most clustered together around their own fire, but one or two squatted, bright-eyed and watchful, among the Louisbourg grenadiers who had crossed with Grey on the
Harwood
.
    “Yes, and trustworthy for the most part,” Woodford said, answering Grey’s unasked question. He laughed, though not with any humor. “At least we hope so.”
    Woodford gave him supper, and they had a hand of cards, Grey exchanging news of home for gossip of the current campaign.
    General Wolfe had spent no little time at Montmorency, below the town of Quebec, but had nothing but disappointment from his attempts there, and so had abandoned that post, regathering the main body of his troops some miles upstream from the Citadel of Quebec. The so-far impregnable fortress, perched on sheer cliffs above the river, commanded both the river and the plains to the west with her cannon, obliging English warships to steal past under cover of night—and not always successfully.
    “Wolfe’ll be champing at the bit, now his grenadiers are come,” Woodford predicted. “He puts great store by those fellows; fought with ’em at Louisbourg. Here, Colonel, you’re being eaten alive—try a bit of this on your hands and face.” He dug about in his campaign chest and came up with a tin of strong-smelling grease, which he pushed across the table.
    “Bear grease and mint,” he explained. “The Indians use it—that, or cover themselves with mud.”
    Grey helped himself liberally; the scent wasn’t quite the same as what he had smelled earlier on the scout, but it was very similar, and he felt an odd sense of disturbance in its application. Though it did discourage the biting insects.
    He had made no secret of the reason for his presence and now asked openly about Carruthers.
    “Where is he held, do you know?”
    Woodford frowned and poured more brandy.
    “He’s not. He’s paroled; has a billet in the town at Gareon, where Wolfe’s headquarters are.”
    “Ah?” Grey was mildly surprised—but, then, Carruthers was not charged with mutiny but rather with failure to suppress one—a rare charge. “Do you know the particulars of the case?”
    Woodford opened his mouth, as though to speak, but then drew a deep breath, shook his head, and drank brandy. From which Grey deduced that probably everyone knew the particulars but that there was something fishy about the affair. Well, time enough. He’d hear about the matter directly from Carruthers.
    Conversation became general, and after a