en 1812 was gone Rolf had done little but carry despatches up and down
Lake Champlain. Next season found the Americans still under command of
Generals Wilkinson and Hampton, whose utter incompetence was becoming
daily more evident.

The year 1813 saw Rolf, eighteen years old and six feet one in his
socks, a trained scout and despatch bearer.

By a flying trip on snowshoes in January he took letters, from General
Hampton at Ticonderoga to Sackett's Harbour and back in eight days,
nearly three hundred miles. It made him famous as a runner, but the
tidings that he brought were sad. Through him they learned in detail of
the total defeat and capture of the American army at Frenchtown. After a
brief rest he was sent across country on snowshoes to bear a reassuring
message to Ogdensburg. The weather was much colder now, and the single
blanket bed was dangerously slight; so "Flying Kittering," as they named
him, took a toboggan and secured Quonab as his running mate. Skookum
was given into safe keeping. Blankets, pots, cups, food, guns, and
despatches were strapped on the toboggan, and they sped away at dawn
from Ticonderoga on the 18th of February 1813, headed northwestward,
guided by little but the compass. Thirty miles that day they made in
spite of piercing blasts and driving snow. But with the night there
began a terrible storm with winds of zero chill. The air was filled
with stinging, cutting snow. When they rose at daylight they were nearly
buried in drifts, although their camp was in a dense, sheltered thicket.
Guided wholly by the compass they travelled again, but blinded by the
whirling white they stumbled and blundered into endless difficulties
and made but poor headway. After dragging the toboggan for three hours,
taking turns at breaking the way, they were changing places when Rolf
noticed a large gray patch on Quonab's cheek and nose.

"Quonab, your face is frozen," he said.

"So is yours," was the reply.

Now they turned aside, followed a hollow until they reached a spruce
grove, where they camped and took an observation, to learn that the
compass and they held widely different views about the direction of
travel. It was obviously useless to face the storm. They rubbed out
their frozen features with dry snow and rested by the fire.

No good scout seeks for hardship; he avoids the unnecessary trial of
strength and saves himself for the unavoidable. With zero weather about
them and twenty-four hours to wait