“I do not know. I saw white men’s tracks on the Charlotte, not two hours old. They pointed toward the Delaware. The Minisink lies there,”

I nodded. “Now let the Red Wings fold his feathers and go to rest,” I said, “until I have read my letters and considered them.”

The Oneida immediately threw himself on the ground and drew his pouch under his head. Before I could open my first letter, he was asleep and breathing quietly as a child. And, on his naked shoulder, I saw a smear of balsam plastered over with a hazel leaf, where a bullet had left its furrow. He had not even mentioned that he had been hit.

The first letter was from my General Clinton:

“Have a care,” he wrote,