“Of course you are to take your musket?”
“I should be a pretty poor kind of a soldier if I didn’t, lad—the same one I used under Abercrombie,” and he pointed with his thumb toward the interior of the dwelling where, as Isaac knew, a well-worn weapon 21 hung on hooks just over the fireplace. “It’s one of the king’s arms, an’ I reckon will do as good service against him as it did for him, which is saying considerable, lad, as Major Putnam can vouch for. Now set about making ready, for we two above all others must not be behind-hand when the column moves.”
A fine thing it was to be a soldier, so Isaac thought as he went leisurely from Corporal ’Lige’s log hut to his home; he was forced to pass through the entire length of the village, stopping here and there to acquaint a friend with what he believed to be a most important fact.
Among all the lads in Pittsfield of about his own age he was the only one who proposed to enlist, and from all he heard and saw there could be no question but that he was envied by his companions.
From the youngest boy to the oldest man, the citizens were in such a ferment of excitement as gave recruits the idea that to enlist was simply providing amusement for themselves during a certain number of days, and, with the exception of those experienced in such matters, no person believed for a moment that the brave ones who were rallying at their country’s call would suffer hardships or privations.
In fact, this going forth to capture the fort at Ticonderoga was to be a pleasure excursion rather than anything else, and Isaac Rice believed he was the most fortunate lad in the province of Massachusetts.
His outfit did not require that his mother should spend very much time upon it.
The clothes he wore comprised the only suit he owned, and when two shirts and three pairs of stockings had been made into a parcel 23 of the smallest possible size, and he had borrowed his father’s gun, powder horn and shot pouch, the equipment was complete.
Then came the most important of the preparations, to Isaac’s mind, for he knew the corporal would criticize it closely—the store of provisions.
Had he been allowed his own bent the remainder of the Rice family might have been put on short allowance, for, with a view to pleasing the corporal, he urged that this article of food, and then that, should be put into the bag which served him as a haversack, until the larder must have been completely emptied but for his mother’s emphatic refusal to follow such suggestions.