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Title: The Road to Bunker Hill
Author: Shirley Barker
Release Date: October 27, 2021 [eBook #66623]
Language: English
Produced by: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL ***
THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL
_Books by_ SHIRLEY BARKER
_For Younger Readers_
THE TROJAN HORSE
THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL
_Poetry_
THE DARK HILLS UNDER
A LAND AND A PEOPLE
_Novels_
PEACE, MY DAUGHTERS
RIVERS PARTING
FIRE AND THE HAMMER
TOMORROW THE NEW MOON
LIZA BOWE
SWEAR BY APOLLO
THE LAST GENTLEMAN
CORNER OF THE MOON
SHIRLEY BARKER
The Road
to
Bunker Hill
DUELL, SLOAN AND PEARCE
New York
Copyright © 1962 by Shirley Barker
All rights reserved. No part of this book in excess of five hundred
words may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher.
_First edition_
[Illustration]
_Affiliate of_
MEREDITH PRESS
_Des Moines & New York_
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 62-12175
Manufactured in the United States of America for Meredith Press
Van Rees Press · New York
_For_
ESTHER DOANE OSMAN
_Contents_
1. A Night to Be Young 3
2. In Readiness to March 13
3. Two to Begin 23
4. The Courage to Go and the Feet to Get Him There 33
5. The Great Ipswich Fright 42
6. Fun While It Lasted 53
7. Off to the Wars in Boston 63
8. Saved by a Pipe-smoking Man 75
9. No Clouds on Bunker Hill 87
10. A Tryst with the Enemy 101
11. A Great Secret 113
12. Thunder in the Air 125
13. The World Turned Upside Down 136
14. The Young May Die 147
15. A Terrible Black Day 160
16. Hanging and Wiving 170
THE ROAD TO BUNKER HILL
_Chapter One_
A NIGHT TO BE YOUNG
“Nothing ever happens in this town,” said Eben Poore, dangling his long
legs over the edge of the wharf, and looking down river to the open
sea. The sky was pale, almost white above the long sand bar of Plum
Island, he noticed, but the streets were growing dark behind him, and
twilight had begun to gather round the warehouses and tall-masted ships
by the waterside.
“No,” agreed Dick Moody, “nothing ever happens in Newburyport. Wish
we could have a ‘tea party’ like they had in Boston a spell back. I’d
sure enough be glad to rig up like an Indian and heave a chest of bohea
overside.”
“I guess all the merchants know better than to bring it in,” said
Johnny Pettengall. “Nobody’d drink the stuff. We got no name o’ being a
Tory town.”
Johnny was older than the other boys, seventeen past. He had his own
gun and drilled with the militia on muster days.
“But something has happened in Newburyport,” he went on, “though I
don’t suppose it would mean very much to either o’ you.”
“What did happen?” asked Dick lazily. “Somebody’s cat kitten, or
Indian Joe take too much rum and do a war dance in Queen Street again?”
Johnny shook his head and smiled. “Sally Rose Townsend’s back,” he said.
The other boys sat up, and their faces brightened.
“I don’t care much for girls,” said Eben, picking a piece of long brown
seaweed from the dock’s end and shredding it in his fingers. “But Sally
Rose is different. Maybe it’s her hair.”
“Having gold-colored hair never hurt a girl none,” declared Johnny,
with the air of a man who knew about such things, a man grown. “But
with Sally Rose--well, it’s the way she smiles, I think.”
“I like Kitty better,” said Dick stoutly. “Sally Rose is always
grinning--at everybody. When Kitty smiles, there’s some sense to
it--when she’s pleased, or you tell her a joke.”
“What’s Sally Rose doing in Newburyport this time o’ year?” asked Eben.
“She comes in the summer to visit Granny Greenleaf and her cousin
Kitty, but it’s still early spring--April nineteenth, for I took me a
look at the almanac this morning. See, there’s the first log raft from
New Hampshire just tied up today.”
The other boys looked where he pointed. Through the gathering darkness
they saw that a drift of shaggy logs covered the whole surface of a
little cove nearby. Lanterns flashed here and there, and a dim shouting
echoed among the narrow lanes and small brick houses beside the river.
The lumbermen who had brought the raft down from the great forests
farther up the Merrimack, were moving about it now, making everything
fast for the night.
“It’s been a warm spring,” said Johnny, smiling quietly to himself.
Dick shivered and turned up the collar of his homespun jacket. “Maybe
it has,” he said, “but it’s cold enough tonight to freeze your
gizzard. Hope there won’t be a frost, with the apple trees already
budded and most o’ the fields plowed. But what’s that got to do with
Sally Rose? Her father keeps a tavern in Charlestown, shops and houses
all round, and the seasons don’t matter. Spring don’t mean nothing
there.”
“There’s a lot stirring round Charlestown this spring, Sally Rose
says,” continued Johnny. “Looks like the British soldiers in Boston
might be ’most ready to come out and fight. We been expecting it, and
we got plenty o’ powder laid by, at Concord and a few places more.
Might need to use it any time now. Sally Rose’s father thought she’d be
safer here.”
“Did she tell you that?” asked Eben quickly. “You’ve talked with her
then?”
“Yes, I talked with her,” said Johnny. He turned his dark head a little
and looked up the hill at the lighted town behind them, starlight over
the dormer windows set high in the rooftops, the church steeple white
against the night sky. He seemed to be watching for something. He did
not say any more.
A group of sailors swaggered by, jesting and laughing, on their way to
the Wolfe Tavern after grog. The spring wind brought a salt smell up
from the river, a fish smell, and the clean scent of pine logs from the
raft in the cove. One lone candle burned in the window of a counting
house nearby and showed them a figure hunched over a tall desk and open
ledger. Dick pointed suddenly toward it.
“Shiver my jib and start my planks if I’d want to be a counting-house
clerk!” he exclaimed. Dick was apprenticed to his uncle in the
ship-building trade, but what he wanted was to go to sea. Eben, an
orphan, did chores at a boardinghouse in Chandler’s Lane, and Johnny
helped his father on their farm below the town, a farm known for its
poor soil and salt hay.
Before anyone could answer him, a girl’s laugh rang out, somewhere in
the shadowy streets above.
“That’s Sally Rose!” cried Eben. “I’d know her laugh in Jamaicy--if
I was to hear it there! She--she--you knew she was coming down here,
Johnny! You knew!”
“Yes, I knew,” said Johnny. There was a light in his eye, a reflection
from the counting-house candle, perhaps. “She said she and Kit might
take a walk this way, if Granny Greenleaf would let them out.”
“Well, Granny did,” cried Dick, “for she’s coming, and Kitty with her.
Look there!”
Two girls came tripping gaily toward them, their full skirts sweeping
the rutted lane, little white shawls drawn about their shoulders, their
hair brushed back from their faces and falling in curls behind. One
girl’s hair was soft brown, and the other’s yellow like Indian corn.
The boys stood up. Johnny went forward. “I been waiting for you, Sally
Rose,” he said.
Sally Rose walked slowly toward him, her head lifted, her eyes shining.
She put out both her hands. “My, you’re handsome, Johnny,” she said.
“I’d forgotten how handsome you were. We don’t have lads like you in
Charlestown, you know.”
Johnny gripped both her hands against the front of his jacket and took
a deep breath. The other boys looked embarrassed. Eben stared down at
his feet. He suddenly realized that they were bare, bare and not very
clean. He owned a pair of shoes, of course, but he only wore them on
Sundays and in the wintertime.
“Glad you came back, Sally Rose,” he said, not looking at her.
“Oh, thank you, Eben,” she answered sweetly. “I’m so glad that you’re
glad.”
Johnny opened his eyes wide and gave Eben an unfriendly stare.
“Hey, Kit,” said Dick, “I haven’t seen you since--”
The brown-haired girl smiled. “You’d have seen me if you’d looked,” she
said. “I passed you by the ropewalk last Friday afternoon. I was going
to Polly Little’s to bring home some tulip bulbs for Granny. I waved to
you, but you wouldn’t see me. You were too busy cleaning a tar barrel.”
Dick looked down at the worn planks of Somerby’s Wharf. It was dark
beside the river now, and the only light came from the windowpanes of
the small houses along the street.
“I’m sorry, Kitty,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter, Dick,” she answered. Her blue eyes smiled at him.
Her voice sounded soothing and kind.
The five of them stood there, silent in the spring night and the sharp
sea wind. Johnny shifted his feet uneasily. Even Sally Rose did not
know what to do or say.
Finally Eben spoke. His voice quavered a little, harsh, and
self-conscious, and high. “If I had a shilling,” he said, “I’d ask you
all to come up to the Wolfe Tavern and have a glass of beer.”
Dick snorted. “Lot of good a shilling would do you there!” he said.
“Ma’am Davenport’s real strict. She won’t sell drink to lads of
thirteen.”
Eben wilted for a moment. Then Sally Rose smiled at him, and he squared
his shoulders and stood up taller than before.
“I don’t care for the taste of beer,” she said. “Perhaps I see too much
of it in Father’s tavern as it passes over the board. But thank you,
Eben. It was a kind thought.”
She turned to Johnny, and her voice grew low and soft. “Will there be a
moon?” she asked.
He answered her gruffly. “Not till later. Much later, after the bells
have rung curfew; after you girls are home abed.”
“Oh--?” answered Sally Rose provocatively.
“Well, here we are, Sally Rose,” said Kitty in a brisk tone, “You said
you wanted to come down to the river.”
She looked out at the dark flowing stream with the river barges and
fishing smacks and deep-sea-going ships moored on its quiet surface,
lanterns in their rigging, their tall masts reared against the sky, and
their sails furled tight. Ships home from Virginia and the Barbados,
from all over the world, maybe; their holds full of sugar and rice and
wine, silks and laces and oil, India muslins, and French knickknacks,
and gunpowder out of Holland--even if they carried no tea. Try as they
would, the King’s laws hadn’t been able to interfere too much with
trade.
“Now that you’re here,” she went on, “what do you want to do?”
“We could go for a walk through the marshes, Plum Island way,” said
Sally Rose, looking at Johnny.
“All of us?” he asked her. Kitty and Eben and Dick ought to know that
he meant for them to go away and leave him alone with Sally Rose. But
they didn’t go.
“We could all go back to our house and have plum cake and buttermilk,”
suggested Kitty. “Granny cut a new plum cake yesterday.”
Eben’s voice rose high and shrill again. “We could play hide-and-seek,”
he announced boldly.
Sally Rose giggled. Then she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“That’s only for young ’uns,” muttered Dick. “I be too big for that
now.”
But suddenly Kitty defended the idea.
“You’re right, of course, Dick,” she said wistfully. “But then, don’t
you sometimes hate to feel you’re getting too big for the things that
used to be fun? Eben’s the youngest of us, and he finished school more
than a year ago. Soon we’ll be grown and married, with houses and
children, and we won’t be able to run out after dark like this, and
walk by the river, and watch for the moon. We’ll have to stay in, and
rock babies, and split firewood, and see that the doors are locked
and the table set for breakfast. It’ll come on us all so soon now.”
She looked at Johnny appealingly. “Let’s have one last play night--one
night to be young--before we grow too old.”
Johnny’s eyes widened suddenly, and his mouth curved in a smile. Sally
Rose had a cluster of apple buds pinned on her bodice, and their
sweetness hovered all about. It made him feel sad, and happy, and
unsettled as a girl, ready to agree to anything, even Kitty’s daft
notion.
“Right enough, Kit,” he said. “For one more night, we’ll be young.
We’ll play hide-and-seek, if we never do again. I’ll count first, and
the rest of you hide. This’ll be goal, this empty rum keg here.”
He sat down on the rum keg and buried his face in his hands.
“Ten--fifteen--twenty--” he began slowly.
With a little squeal, Sally Rose picked up her skirts and ran to hide
behind a pile of lobster crates in a far corner. The others hesitated a
moment.
“Forty-five--fifty--” went on Johnny, still very slow.
They scattered then. Eben crawled under a ship’s boat, broken and lying
sideways on the wharf. Dick ran into a doorway across the lane. Kitty
waited until she had barely time to crouch down behind a pile of wooden
boxes marked with a black “W. I.”--West India goods.
“Ninety-five--one hundred--here I come!” Johnny shouted. He stood up
and peered around him, but only for a moment. In almost no time at
all he found Sally Rose, but it was a little longer before he pulled
her out from behind the lobster crates. Perhaps he had peeked through
his fingers, Kitty thought, so that he knew where to look. Perhaps he
kissed Sally Rose before they were in plain sight again.
Anyway, it was now Sally Rose’s turn to count, and she found Dick with
little trouble.
But after that they really did seem to be young again, and entered
into the spirit of the game. Gradually the counting got slower, and the
hiding places farther and farther away. Then Sally Rose and Kitty hid
together behind a heap of mackerel nets, and Eben found them both at
the same time.
“Tie find! Now which of you’s to count and go seek?” asked Dick,
putting up his head in the sharp wind. “Just about once more, and
’twill be curfew time, and we’ll have to go home.”
“I’ll count,” offered Kitty.
“No, let me,” said Sally Rose.
“How about me having a turn?”
It was a strange voice that spoke, a boy’s voice, quiet and cool, but
with a mocking note of laughter in it.
They turned around suddenly and stared. There on the wharf behind them
stood a tall fellow not much older than Johnny, with a lean face, sharp
gray eyes, and sun-bleached hair. He wore cowhide boots and a loose
hunting shirt over moosehide breeches. He carried a long pole with an
iron barb on the end, such as the lumbermen used to break up log jams
and herd the great rafts down the river.
“I’m know I’m a stranger here,” he went on, “but I ain’t poison. I been
watching you awhile. I’d like a hand in the game.”
“You came down river with the logs?” asked Dick slowly.
The stranger nodded. “Aye, clear from the falls at Derryfield. A fellow
can be lonely--away from his own town at night--first time away.” The
sharpness went out of his eyes, and he looked younger, almost like a
little boy.
“Of course you can play,” cried Kitty, sympathy in her voice. “I’ve
been lonely, too, sometimes, when I went to visit Sally Rose in
Charlestown, and I know what it’s like. He can count this time, can’t
he, Sally Rose?”
“Of course he can,” said Sally Rose, smiling at the strange lad,
flicking her lashes.
Dick and Eben looked crestfallen. Johnny kicked the side of the rum
keg. “Didn’t know backwoodsmen could count,” he sneered. “Tell us what
your name is, if you want to play.”
The stranger narrowed his eyes, then he opened them wide and smiled
innocently. “My name’s Tom Trask,” he said, “and I can count.” He
put his head down in the crook of his arm, but they did not hear the
familiar “Ten--fifteen--twenty--”
After a moment, thinking he might be counting to himself, they started
to straggle away. Kitty did not watch where the others went to. Seconds
mattered at a time like this. She slipped behind a row of tar barrels
at the corner of the counting house and stood there, listening to the
water as it sucked at the piles underneath, to the sound of singing and
fiddle music where the sailors were making merry on the deck of a ship
moored a hundred yards off shore.
Suddenly the voice of the young logger from up the Merrimack whipped
out like the command of the captain to the volunteers who drilled on
Frog Pond green come muster day.
“Ten--ten--double ten--forty-five--fifteen!”
He reached his hundred all at once, leaped from the keg, and ran
straight toward her, toward her, Kitty Greenleaf, of the High Street
in Newburyport, who had never seen him before tonight. He ran to her,
around the tar barrels, around the corner of the counting house. In
a moment he had put his arms about her and kissed her on the mouth,
kissed her hard.
Not used to such sudden attack, not used to kissing any lad at all,
except in kissing games where everybody looked on and laughed, or
when Dick bade her a shy good night sometimes by the garden wall, she
struggled, and sputtered, and pulled away.
She wiped her mouth and looked up. “What--what did you do that for?”
she gasped.
The gray eyes were smiling down at her, there in the chilly spring
dark, the thin mouth crooked upward in a smile.
“Like I said, a lad’s lonely in a strange town at night.”
Before she could answer, she heard a soft little laugh beside them. She
turned about. There stood Sally Rose. Sally Rose flickered her long
lashes and opened her hazel eyes very wide.
“There’s no need for you to be lonely,” she trilled. “My, but you’re a
handsome lad! We’ve none such handsome lads in Charlestown.”
Tom Trask eyed her coldly. His mouth was still smiling, but his eyes
looked sharp and unfriendly in the candlelight that shone through the
dusty panes of the counting-house window behind his head.
“Charlestown can’t be much of a place,” he retorted, “though I wouldn’t
know, for my business never took me there, and ’tisn’t likely to.
But--” He paused a moment, and his head lifted a little. “Up the
Merrimack we got prettier girls than you. Maybe a score.”
Sally Rose’s eyes flashed, and she tossed her curls. “I don’t care
what’s up the Merrimack. I look pretty enough in Charlestown! Pretty
enough to please Captain Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third!”
The logger did not answer her. He turned around and walked slowly down
the wharf. Kitty could hear the ring of the iron nails in the soles of
his country boots as he strode away.
_Chapter Two_
IN READINESS TO MARCH
“Insolent plowboy!” exclaimed Sally Rose haughtily. She stood in front
of the mirror wreathed with gilt cupids, her palms flat on the mahogany
dressing table, and stared at her own reflection, curls loosened and
falling over the shoulders of her white cambric night robe, her eyes
narrowed and glinting coldly in the candlelight. Then the coldness
dissolved away, and she giggled.
Kitty, lying sprawled on the patchwork counterpane that covered the
great four-poster bed, giggled too, uncertainly. Sally Rose had moods
that changed so fast she was never able to keep up with them. So, as
usual, she didn’t try, but spoke her mind in her turn.
“He wasn’t a plowboy, he was a logger,” she said. “Maybe the owner of a
whole forest as big as this parish. Some of them are, you know, those
up-country lads. And he was too smart for you, Sally Rose. He knew you
were making fun of him.”
Sally Rose sat down on the counterpane and hugged her knees. She looked
thoughtful. “Yes, he knew,” she said. “But when I said the same thing
to Johnny Pettengall, Johnny thought I meant it. Inside, I almost
laughed myself to death. I wonder why I couldn’t fool that backwoods
boy, when I could fool Johnny.”
“Maybe because he’s older,” suggested Kitty. “He looked older, anyway.”
She got up, went to the chest, and blew the candle out.
“Yes,” reflected Sally Rose, “older, but not really a man--not so much
as twenty.”
“Is that how old he is?” Kitty demanded. “Come on now, Sally Rose. Tell
me all about him.”
“About who?” asked Sally Rose. “The logger? Tom Trask was his name, he
said. I don’t know anything about Tom Trask, except that I caught him
kissing you. I wonder why you didn’t stop him. If Granny finds out--”
“I didn’t have time to stop him,” retorted Kitty severely. “And don’t
try to change the subject. The ‘him’ I want to know about is that
British officer. Captain Malory of the Twenty-third.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Sally Rose uneasily. She, too, left the bed, and went
to stand between the patchwork curtains at the window. It was nearly
midnight. Late moonrise silvered the sky over Plum Island, and the
young leaves stirred restlessly in the sea wind, hiding the quiet
darkness of Granny’s crocus and daffodil beds in the garden below.
“You know you really want to tell me about him,” continued Kitty. “You
always want to tell me about the lads you’ve taken a fancy to.”
Sally Rose did not turn, and when she answered, her voice was very
quiet, with none of the usual merry undertones that made it so
charming. “Oh, but this is different, Kitty. You guessed right--he is
twenty. And Father says he’s an enemy.” She laughed ruefully. “In fact,
Father says he’s a damned lobsterback, and I mustn’t see him again. But
I sent him a note to tell him where I was going, and maybe.... But how
did you know he was British? You only heard me say his name.”
Kitty could feel her face burn in the darkness. She still felt ashamed,
though it hadn’t been her fault, really.
“I read it in a letter,” she said with some stiffness, “the letter your
father wrote to Granny, telling her why he was sending you here. I went
down to meet the postrider, and when he handed me a letter addressed to
C. Greenleaf, I never thought that it was for Granny instead of me, and
so I read it. Of course she’s Catherine, too.”
“What did Father say?” asked Sally Rose. Her voice had a worried sound.
“It began, ‘My dear,’ instead of ‘Dear Mother’--that’s why I didn’t
know it was for Gran, and I kept on reading. He said ‘I’m worried about
our little girl.’”
Kitty paused, and Sally Rose did not question her any further just
then. Both girls looked through the window, over the roofs of the town,
at the wide dark waters of the Merrimack flowing seaward.
Fifteen years ago, about this time of the year, Caleb Greenleaf had
taken his wife, Becky, and his married sister, Anne Townsend, for a
little jaunt on the river in the April sunshine. The young mothers had
left their baby girls with Granny Greenleaf, and gone happily aboard
his small fishing boat, and no one had foreseen the sudden mad wind,
the squall of snow that would engulf them. Afterwards, Granny had
brought up orphan Kitty, but Job Townsend had taken his motherless
daughter back to Charlestown to his own people. The tragedy had brought
him close to his mother-in-law, however, so that he still addressed her
as ‘My dear,’ and spoke of ‘our little girl,’ and there had been much
going back and forth between them.
For a long moment now, the girls stared at the dark river. Kitty was
the first to take her eyes away. She did not refer to the old, sad
loss, of which she knew they were both thinking.
“Your father wrote that he was sending you to stay with us for a
while,” she said quietly, “to get you away from that British officer
you’ve been stealing out with. He said this--this enemy--puts on a
homespun shirt and leather breeches, pretends to be one of our lads,
and goes wherever he likes, on all the roads round Boston.”
Sally Rose gave a soft little laugh. “Yes,” she said, “Gerry does that
sometimes. But I like him better when he wears his scarlet coat and his
sword. He’s sure handsome enough to make any girl forget about Johnny
Pettengall.”
There was a prideful note in Sally Rose’s voice as she shook back her
yellow hair.
“But he’s British, Sally Rose! He’s one of the King’s men who’ve
captured Boston, and closed the port, and made so much trouble for the
people who live there. Dick says they’ll march out and start shooting
at us any day now. You’d be better off with a New England lad--even
that logger.”
Sally Rose sighed. “I know,” she said. “Wars are hard on a girl, Kit. I
know I’m supposed to hate the British, but how can I, when they are so
handsome--when they have such gallant manners! I’ll bet wars don’t mean
a thing to those cupids round the mirror. Love doesn’t know Whig from
Tory. But why does he have to be--”
Three sharp taps sounded on the other side of the bedroom wall.
“Granny’s cane!” cried Kit softly, lowering her voice to a whisper.
“That means we’re keeping her awake. But there’s so much I want to
hear. How you met this Gerry, and--”
“Hush!” breathed Sally Rose, remembering Granny’s outbursts of
short-lived peppery wrath. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
They slipped into bed and lay quiet, side by side, arms relaxed on the
counterpane, watching the moonlight along the wall. First Kitty turned
over and sighed. A few minutes later Sally Rose did the same. Finally
Kitty sat up and punched her pillow. “I can’t sleep,” she said.
“Neither can I,” said Sally Rose. “I feel as if something were going to
happen.”
Below them in the town the church bells began to ring.
They rang and rang, and kept on ringing. Kitty could see them in her
mind, tossing wildly in their belfry, high over Market Square. She
sat up higher in bed. Sally Rose sat up, too, and reached out for her
cousin’s hand.
“It must be a house afire,” said Kitty. “Can’t be a ship in trouble.
The wind isn’t that strong.”
She jumped out of bed and ran to the window, but no hot glare lit
the sky, only the cold pale light of the April moon. Now a noise of
shouting broke out in Fish Street, growing louder every minute. Lights
flickered behind the windowpanes of the small wooden houses all about,
and went on burning, steady and strong. Shadows moved across them.
People were getting up.
Kitty turned from the window. “Let’s get dressed!” she cried. “Maybe
Granny will let us go and see what it’s all about.” But Sally Rose was
already fastening her petticoat.
Pulling large winter shawls about them to hide half-buttoned bodices
and yawning plackets, they tiptoed into the hall, but Granny had got
there ahead of them. She stood at the top of the stairs, small, and
neat, and wizened, looking as if she were ready to go to church on a
Sunday morning, her costume complete, even to gold eardrops and a chip
bonnet with ostrich plumes. She had a lighted candle in one hand, and
her cane, which she carried but seldom used, in the other. She opened
her mouth to speak to them, but was interrupted by a heavy knocking on
the front door and a man’s voice shouting for Timothy.
Timothy Coffin, Granny’s hired man who tended the garden and split the
firewood, came tumbling down from his tiny attic chamber. Gnarled and
weathered, not much younger than his employer, his arms were half in,
half out of his woolen jacket, and he carried an old flintlock, like
himself, a veteran of the siege of Louisburg thirty years ago.
“Git out o’ my way, women,” he shouted, as he tore past them. “I’ll bet
it’s them varmints. I knowed they was about to strike!”
Granny peered after him in bewilderment, as he fumbled with the lock of
the heavy front door.
“Does he mean the Indians?” she asked. “When I was a girl I used to
hear stories--but it seems they’re too scarce hereabout to cause any
trouble now.”
Timothy finally got the door open and stood there, listening to a
hoarse excited voice that spoke in the dark outside. Suddenly he turned
around.
“I’m off, Ma’am Greenleaf!” he called to Granny. “Them British dogs has
struck at last. I signed the pledge for a Minuteman. I swore to hold
myself in readiness to march whenever I be ordered. An’ I be ordered
now.”
“If you’re going far, you’d better take some food with you,” said
Granny smartly. “Take all the bread in the cupboard, and the cold
chicken--”
“And the plum cake,” interrupted Kitty. “We cut a plum cake yesterday.”
“Where are you going, Timothy? Where did the ‘British dogs’ strike?”
asked Sally Rose, her eyes looking large in her white face.
Timothy did not answer her. Instead he ducked into the kitchen. The
front door yawned open, and through it they could hear the terrible
clamor of the bells, the lift of excited voices as the townspeople
hastened by.
“Come, girls,” said Granny. “I aim to learn what this commotion is all
about.”
They followed her out of the house and along High Street, past the Frog
Pond and the new training green laid out where the windmill used to be.
A crowd had gathered in front of the Wolfe Tavern, and they paused at
the outskirts of it. Torches flared all about, lighting up the portrait
of General Wolfe that hung on a pole near the tavern door, flickering
on the windowpanes along Fish Street and on the startled faces of the
Newburyport folk. Fashionable flounced ladies stood side by side with
barefooted fishwives from Flatiron Point, while toddlers clung to their
skirts, and urchins raced here and there, shouting with shrill voices,
as if they played some sort of exciting game. Most of the men were
gathered round the tavern’s high front steps, and new arrivals kept
elbowing their way forward every minute. The throng bristled everywhere
with gun barrels; a flintlock, a fowling piece, an old queen’s arm.
“There’s Johnny,” said Sally Rose suddenly, and sure enough, Kitty
craned her neck and saw him standing with the other men, his hands
gripping a heavy musket. He was watching the tavern door intently. He
did not look their way.
“What’s going on here?” demanded Granny in a querulous tone. Everybody
seemed to be talking at once, but nobody answered her.
A man wearing a blue coat and carrying a sword came out of the tavern
and stood still at the top of the steps, looking round him. He held
up his hand. The urchins stopped shouting. The bells down the street
pealed a time or two and then were silent. The voices of the crowd died
away. A sudden burst of spring wind lifted a heap of dead leaves from
the gutter and swirled it high in the face of the round white moon.
The man on the steps began to speak. “Men o’ the Port,” he called out,
in a voice that was low and deep, a voice that without lifting or
straining itself could be heard in all the streets and lanes nearby,
“New England blood’s been spilt, as some o’ you know. But for them that
don’t, I’ll read the word the postrider brought.” He waved a paper
aloft, then held it square in front of him.
“‘To all friends of American Liberty, let it be known! This morning
before break of day, a brigade consisting of some twelve hundred
redcoats ... marched to Lexington ... and on to Concord Bridge. Many
were slain both sides, and the roads are bloody. Another brigade is now
upon the march from Boston!’”
He put the paper down. “Men o’ the Port, such as signed the pledge,
‘We do enlist ourselves as Minutemen and do engage that we will hold
ourselves in readiness to march!’ All such men to the training green!
Fall in by companies! Come, lads! Up the hill!”
With a cheer the men surged up Fish Street, shoulders hunched and heads
thrust forward, their guns gripped in their hands. With cries of dismay
and alarm the women began to trail after them. Granny stood still,
leaning on her cane.
“There’s Dick and Eben,” cried Kitty. “Dick!” She lifted her voice.
“Dick, come here and tell me where they are going. Dick, are you going
too?”
But Dick and Eben were hurrying after the Minutemen. They looked at the
girls and waved, and then ran on.
“Ah, here’s Mr. Cary,” Granny exclaimed. “Now we’ll see what all this
uproar is likely to lead to.” She trotted over to the minister who was
moving swiftly up the street, his wig not quite straight, and the linen
bands at his throat somewhat disordered. “Mr. Cary, tell me now, what
does all this mean?”
The minister paused, adjusted his wig, and mopped his brow with a lawn
handkerchief. “I’m afraid it means war, Madame Greenleaf. It was bound
to come. They’ve oppressed us too far. But about this latest outrage--I
myself talked with the postrider, and he was there and saw it all. A
frightful slaughter!” He looked at the girls and lowered his voice, but
they heard him all the same.
“He says that when he left, the whole rout was fleeing back towards
Boston, but he heard Captain Parker say that if they mean to have a
war, let it begin here. ’Twould seem they so mean, and that it has
begun.”
“Who were the redcoats?” asked Sally Rose in a small tremulous voice.
“Did he say if it was the Twenty-third?”
Mr. Cary looked at her sharply. “Who knows one redcoat from another,
and what does it matter?” he demanded. “But I believe he did mention
the Twenty-third. It seems they were not in the thickest of the
engagement, but posted out to help their fellow scoundrels home to
Boston.”
Sally Rose let her breath escape in a little sigh of relief. Granny
tapped her cane on a granite horse block nearby to get Mr. Carey’s
attention again.
“Well, what do our lads think to do about it? Why get folks out of bed
in the middle of the night? Must we fortify the Port and barricade
ourselves in our houses because there’s been a fuss in Lexington? Are
the British headed for Frog Pond Green?”
Mr. Cary started to smile and then bit his lip. “Hardly that, but our
companies will assemble and march from there. The word’s been passed
for such men as are able to bear arms to make their way to Cambridge
with all speed.”
“Huh!” said Granny. “Cambridge is a good ways off. I hope Timothy took
the plum cake. Come, girls! Now that I’ve satisfied my mind, I’m going
home.”
“Oh no, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose, composed and sure of herself again,
now that she felt reasonably certain her British Gerry had come to no
harm. “I want to go up to the green and see them off. It’ll hearten
them to have us there, to have us wave them good luck as they march
away.”
“Nonsense!” snapped Granny. “The lads will have other things on their
minds. They got no time now for yellow hair.”
The squeal of a fife and the solemn throb of a beating drum broke
through the shouts of the crowd on the training green.
“But I don’t want to go back to bed,” pouted Sally Rose.
“And why did you think you were going back to bed, miss?” Granny
demanded. “Parson Cary says there’s a war begun. That means we’ll into
the attic and try to find those bullet molds I put away when I hoped
we wouldn’t need them any more. They haven’t been used since your
grandfather’s time, but I think likely they’re still there.”
_Chapter Three_
TWO TO BEGIN
“I told you they’d fight,” said the young man grimly, biting the end
of a cartridge and letting a thin stream of black powder dribble into
the pan of his flintlock. He knelt at the tail gate of the farm wagon
that rattled and swayed from side to side as Sergeant Higgs of the
Twenty-third drove it pell-mell down the Charlestown Road.
His hat was gone and his red coat in tatters. His white breeches were
stained with gunpowder and the blood of the wounded men who lay on
the floor of the wagon; stained, too, with the gray earth of this
unfamiliar country, so unlike the ruddy loam of his native Devonshire.
“I told you they’d fight,” he repeated. “I been amongst ’em, and I
know.”
Nobody answered him, but he heard the roar of musket fire back in the
hills, the roar of flames from a burning house in a grove of crooked
trees a few yards away. He thought impatiently that it had never taken
him so long to load before.
“Shut your pan. Charge with your cartridge. Draw your hammer,” he
muttered, as his fingers moved swiftly along the reeking barrel. No
old hand at this business of soldiering, he felt reassured to find the
phrases of the British Arms Manual fall so readily from his tongue.
The cart rocked and rumbled down a narrow track at the edge of the salt
marshes. Moors, clay pits, and scrubby oak trees stretched to the foot
of the hillside on his left. To his right, in the middle of the river,
he could see the lights on board the man-o’-war _Somerset_, and beyond
them, the low roofs and steeples of Boston. Would he ever present arms
on Boston Common again, or offer his own arms in another sort of way to
the pretty girls who went walking there? He began to doubt it now.
“Run down your cartridge. Withdraw your rammer.” He was ready at last.
He lifted the gun and pointed it horizontally, pointed it, pulled the
ten-pound trigger, and at the same instant stiffened his body against
the powerful recoil.
Then he heard a triumphant roar as the gun went off, sending its charge
of powder and ball in the direction of the pursuing Yankees. Hooray!
Sometimes it merely sparked and fizzled in the pan. God send he had hit
somebody!
“The Yankees don’t fire like that, lad,” he heard a voice mutter.
Turning his head in surprise, he looked down at a battered veteran who
crouched a few feet away, dabbing at a shoulder wound.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. There wasn’t enough of the man’s
uniform left to tell whether he was an officer or not. Best be safe and
address him so. His voice had a ring of authority, for all it came so
weakly from his throat.
“I know.” The older man smiled through bluish lips. “You fire as you
were taught, and so do I. Did you ever engage with the Rebels before?”
“Not exactly, sir,” said Gerry Malory of the Twenty-third. “I’ve gone
amongst them somewhat--‘incognito,’ one might say.”
“Ah! Detailed for spy duty, perhaps?”
Gerry felt his face flush. I talk too much, he thought.
The dusk was drawing in thickly now, with a little fog winding up from
the river. Flashes of light burst out on the road behind him, like
fireflies in a hawthorn thicket, all the way back towards Cambridge
where the relief regiments under Lord Percy were trying to cover
the rout of the troops that had charged so proudly that morning on
Lexington Green.
He heard a whoosh in the dull air behind them. “Duck, lads,” he cried,
and flung himself down on the floor of the cart. The whoosh turned to
a shrill whistle and then to a scream as it passed overhead. Then came
a thud and a splash as the heavy ball fell harmlessly on the sludgy
ground.
Gerry lifted his head. “Drive like the devil, Sergeant,” he shouted.
“Once we get over Charlestown Neck, we’re as safe as the Tower of
London. They’ll never follow us under the guns of our own ships.”
“Causeway’s just ahead!” shouted back Sergeant Higgs, whipping the
horses.
Gerry stood up and looked around him. They were well down on the narrow
neck of wasteland now, between the wide, sea-flowing mouths of the
Charles and the Mystic. He could smell the salt air and feel the cool
wind on his hot face. Groups of weary red-coated men straggled into the
marsh grass to let them drive through. How many had preceded him into
safety, how many were left in the running fight behind, he couldn’t
tell. But he saw campfires on the smooth green hills above Charlestown
village, and he thought longingly of the farms and orchards there, a
little more longingly of the Bay and Beagle Tavern and a girl called
Sally Rose.
“Not detailed for spy duty?” asked the veteran persistently.
Gerry looked down at him, and he was enough of a soldier to realize
that the wounded man wanted to engage in conversation in order to
forget his pain. He seated himself on the floor of the wagon and
answered evasively.
“No, but I go about sometimes. I like to know what kind of men the
Rebels are, and what their country is like. Maybe walk out with a girl
and play a prank or two. I be West Country-bred, and not too fond
o’ towns and barracks life.” Then he thought of a way to shift the
attention to another matter. “But what were you saying about the way I
shoot?”
The man grinned. A bit of color had come back into his face now, and
the dark stain was no longer spreading on the shoulder of his coat.
“Why, you load and prime your piece and blast away, hoping the shot
will tell. The Yankees sight and aim. I saw the man who hit me. Stood
up behind a stone wall, looked me over, head to toe, and marked me
down. We fire line to line, and they fire man to man. We shoot in the
direction of the enemy. They pick a target. That’s why they’ve got us
running away.”
You mean they shoot like poachers, thought Gerry. Like poachers after
pheasants in the squire’s bit o’ woodland. But he did not say it out
loud. Every man’s past was his own, but to keep it so, he had to be
wary.
They had crossed the Neck by this time, and the road veered away to the
right, circling the foot of Bunker Hill and heading for Charlestown
village.
“Don’t hear them firing after us any more,” said Gerry, peering back
the way they had come. Some of the sunset red was still left in the
sky, and enough daylight for him to see that the road behind them was
choked with carts and stragglers, but the whole pace of the retreat
seemed to have slowed.
“No, and you won’t hear them again tonight. They won’t dare follow us
into Charlestown. Could you hold me up, lad? I do not breathe as easily
as I am wont to do.”
Gerry knelt down, got his hands under the limp elbows of the fallen
officer, and hoisted him into a sitting position against the side of
the cart. The man drew a few painful breaths and then spoke again.
“Thank you for your trouble. I am Captain Blakeslee of the King’s Own.”
“’Twas no trouble, sir,” muttered Gerry uneasily. “I be Private Malory
of the Twenty-third.”
The captain’s face relaxed in a smile. “A fine regiment--the Welsh
Fusileers. I was a guest when they made merry on last St. David’s day.
Ah--it comes to me now. I knew I had seen your face before. Were you
not the lad who led forth the goat with the gilded horns? He ran wild,
I remember, leaped on the table, and up-ended our wine glasses just as
we were going to drink to the Prince of Wales! A ludicrous scene!”
Gerry’s cheeks grew hot in the darkness, and he clenched his fists to
keep his shame and resentment down. Yes, he had led the damn goat that
according to army tradition preceded the Welsh Fusileers whenever they
passed in review. Led, and cleaned it, and curried it, and bedded it
down every night in a stable near Long Wharf, and twisted garlands
about its horns on parade days. He still remembered the hideous
embarrassment of the moment when the beast had escaped him.
Signed up for a soldier, he had, reluctantly, but expecting his share
of excitement and glory. Until today he had done nothing save tend
that black-tempered goat. No wonder he had fallen into the habit of
“borrowing” a captain’s uniform or an American’s homespun breeches
and tow shirt, and gone swaggering out amongst the girls in the Yankee
villages now and then! A man had to have his pride and sweetness and a
bit of sport in life. He had learned to imitate the officers’ pompous
speech and attitudes, or to talk with a New England twang. Maybe he’d
go for a strolling player when he got home again. Maybe he’d be good at
it, he thought. But of course, it was in his blood, and no wonder if he
should turn out that way.
The farm cart ground to a stop just as Gerry was about to mutter that
it was indeed he who led the goat. Sergeant Higgs leaned over to confer
with an officer in fresh white trousers and trim jacket, a man who had
obviously taken no part in the fighting that day. Then the officer
stood aside, the sergeant pulled sharply on the reins, and Gerry felt
the wagon leave the road and go lurching across a field at the foot of
Bunker Hill. One of the wounded men sat up. The others began to moan
and swear.
“You’re off course, Higgs!” shouted Gerry, forgetting that his
barracks-mate outranked him and was entitled to a more respectful
salute.
Higgs turned around, his broad face a white blur in the darkness. “I be
following orders, Private Malory. We’re to wait by yon hill till the
troops clears a way through the town so the boats can take us off. By
midnight we’ll all be back in Boston.”
“Thank God,” murmured Captain Blakeslee, and then as Higgs drew up the
cart in a little grove of locust trees, he turned to the younger man.
“Will you help me down on the grass for a bit, lad? I’ve taken a notion
to feel the earth under me. Better under than over.” He gave a weak
smile.
“Give us a hand, Higgs,” called Gerry, trying to lift the captain,
almost a dead weight this time.
Jack Higgs was six years older than Gerry. This was not his first
battle, nor the first wounded man he had seen. The moment he joined
them in the bed of the wagon, he thrust his hand inside the tattered
coat. Then he pulled it out again and muttered under his breath. For a
long moment he stared at Gerry.
“Is--is it bad?” faltered the young private, feeling suddenly afraid,
as he had not felt all that afternoon when the Yankees were shooting at
him as he retreated down the Charlestown Road.
Captain Blakeslee gave a hoarse cough.
“Bad enough,” said Higgs. “Tell you what, Gerry. Go down into
Charlestown and see if you can find a surgeon. Tell him we got need of
him here.”
“Put--me--on the ground,” whispered Captain Blakeslee. He lay slumped
against the side of the wagon and tried to lift his head, but he was
not strong enough.
Together Gerry and Sergeant Higgs got him out of the cart and stretched
the limp body on the young grass under a locust tree.
“I’ll go quickly,” Gerry promised. “I’ll come back with the surgeon. I
hope ’twill be in time.”
“Good luck to you, lad,” said the sergeant. He was still bending over
the wounded man when Gerry hastened off.
The journey proved not to be a long one, but over all too soon. Ten
minutes hard running across the fields, a brief encounter, and he came
pounding back. Jack Higgs stood leaning against the wagon. He had
lighted a little fire of dead boughs, and in its light his usually
pleasant face looked somber, his eyes a little sick. He was in his
shirt sleeves now.
“They told me I was a fool,” panted Gerry. “Told me no surgeon would
come out this far to save one man, or three, or four, when so many lies
bleeding there in the town. How is the Captain? Jack--where is your
coat?”
Sergeant Higgs motioned toward a dark heap under the locust tree. For a
moment he stood silent, then he spoke.
“Surgeons couldn’t ha’ saved him, Gerry--not a whole regiment of ’em
marched out here two and two. When I put my hand to him, his flesh was
already cold. He was about gone. I knew they wouldn’t come. I only
sent you to get you away. You never been in battle, never seen men die
before.”
“Your coat--?” faltered Gerry. Not that the coat mattered, but he felt
he could not talk of anything that did.
“I laid it across his face,” said Higgs, clearing his throat.
“Afterwards. It seemed more decent-like, somehow.”
Gerry sat down on the grass beside the little fire, there being nothing
else to do. The moon had risen and was shining wanly down on the hills
and pastures, on the roofs of Charlestown village. It made a path of
silver across the black bay, a path to the lighted shores of Boston.
Lanterns flashed in the midst of it, lanterns on the prows of the boats
that were carrying the badly defeated British back to the town they had
left so proudly the night before.
Gerry thought how he himself and the rest of the Twenty-third had
marched out that morning, fifers playing “Yankee Doodle,” and colors
lifting on the spring wind. They had marched inland by way of the Neck,
through Roxbury to Cambridge, and so far, it was all a game. But the
sport ceased near Lexington where they met their fleeing comrades who
had gone to Concord to raid the Yankees’ powder magazine. Powerful
grenadiers dropped exhausted and lay like dogs after a hunt, panting,
their tongues hanging out. The Marines and Light Infantry scattered
helter-skelter across the countryside, while the farmers fired at them
from behind every wall and tree.
“Cover the retreat,” his regiment had been ordered, and they had done
so, in a running battle all the way back to Cambridge. It was there
that an officer had detailed him and his sergeant to help get the
wounded away.
And now one of those wounded was dead, Captain Blakeslee. Why should it
matter to him, when he had known the captain such a little time? But
it did matter. A lump swelled and stiffened inside his throat. Then
he looked down towards Charlestown and thought of Sally Rose. But she
wouldn’t be there, of course. She had gone to visit her kin in a town
called Newburyport, a town in the country somewhere. Her father had
sent her away because he thought she was too good for a captain of the
Welsh Fusileers. And if he felt that way about a captain, how would he
feel about the private who tended a goat in stable and led it out on
muster day? How would Sally Rose feel if she knew the truth about him?
And then somehow Sally Rose began to dwindle in his mind, and for the
moment she did not matter any more. He remembered that he had fought
his first battle and come out alive, but Captain Blakeslee was dead,
and maybe tomorrow there would be another battle, and he would be the
one to lie under the locust tree, under some comrade’s tattered coat.
“Open your haversack, lad,” said Sergeant Higgs, his voice cheery
again. “I found a spring on the hillside a bit of a ways off, and I’ve
been fetching water to the men in the wagon there. They be all somewhat
easier now, and the boats will have us in Boston before long.” He threw
another armful of dry branches on the fire. “You’ve salt pork and
bread, like the rest of us, so eat up your supper. ’Twill taste little
worse for the fact that good men be dead, and we lost the day.”
“I know we were driven back,” murmured Gerry, obeying the sergeant and
taking out his small parcel of food. “But didn’t the troops get the
Rebel stores they went for? Didn’t they get to Concord before...?”
Higgs nodded. He had run the point of his bayonet through a lump of
thick, greasy-looking meat and held it over the fire. “Oh, they got
there, all right,” he said. “But they’d been better off if they’d
stayed in barracks, according to the way I heard. They broke up a
couple of cannon, rolled some powder kegs into a millpond, and burnt a
house or two. Then they was routed. But ’twould be a different story if
the Yankees would come out in the open and fight like men.”
“They seemed to be in an almighty rage about something,” said Gerry,
beginning to toast his own meat, keeping his eyes away from the shadow
under the locust tree. “And they had no sort of uniformed army. Men
in shirts and leather breeches, just as they’d come from the plow or
workshop. Well, all spring we’ve been sure there was fighting ahead of
us. Now it’s begun.”
“Yes,” said Jack Higgs, looking out at the dark shapes of the rescue
boats that crossed and recrossed the moonlit water. “It’s begun, and
it took two to begin it--we and they. But at the end--there’ll be left
only one.”
“And it better be we!” Gerry felt his own features soften in a smile.
He put up his head in the sharp night air and heard the bugles sounding
on the peaceful green crest of Bunker Hill. They were British bugles,
and they reassured him. For the last hour or so, he had been sure he
would never have the heart to go forth disguised and playing pranks
about the countryside again. But now it seemed to him that perhaps he
might.
_Chapter Four_
THE COURAGE TO GO AND THE FEET TO GET HIM THERE
“Not that way, child!” cried Granny warningly. “Lord o’ mercy, Sally
Rose, take care!”
Sally Rose stood by the huge brick fireplace in the raftered kitchen
and stared desperately about her. In her hands she held a hot iron
kettle full of molten silver-gray lead. It was too heavy for her to
hold any longer, and she saw no place to set it safely down. Kitty
would have figured out ahead of time what she meant to do with it, but
not Sally Rose.
“Let me help you,” cried Kitty, jumping up from her place at the heavy
oak table where she had been preparing the bullet molds while Sally
Rose heated the lead. She reached her cousin’s side a second too late.
The kettle tilted dangerously and fell from Sally Rose’s loosened
fingers, just missing the yellow flames beneath. It lay on its side at
the edge of the wide hearth, its contents spilling out harmlessly in
a gray film over the rosy old bricks, sinking into the cracks between
them.
“I’m sorry, Gran,” said Sally Rose contritely.
Granny sniffed. “Sorrow butters no parsnips,” she retorted. “Well, it’s
no use crying over spilt lead, I suppose. That’s one batch of bullets
will do no harm to the British. But it’s a mercy you didn’t burn
yourself or set the house afire.” She straightened her muslin cap and
smoothed her plaid apron with thin, blue-veined hands.
Kitty let her glance rove out of the window, at the gooseberry bushes
in the kitchen garden and the moist brown seedbeds where Timothy had
been spading yesterday. His old hickory-handled spade still leaned
against the garden wall. No telling when he would use it again. Timothy
had taken his gun and gone to Cambridge, and it seemed like half the
town had gone with him. Even boys not much older than herself, boys
like Johnny Pettengall. She still didn’t know about Dick, but then,
Dick didn’t have a gun, so he’d probably be down at the shipyard, just
as he always was. She’d make some excuse to go by there, later in the
day. She wondered about the strange lad from up the Merrimack. Maybe,
since the war was in Massachusetts Colony, the New Hampshire men would
think they had no call to go. Still, with his keen eyes and sharp jaw,
he looked like he’d be wherever there was a fight going on. She heard
Granny’s brisk voice calling her attention back to the kitchen.
“I suppose you’d better run down to the gunsmith’s, Kitty, and fetch me
some more pig lead--all he can spare. Sally Rose, you and me’ll get the
bake ovens going. Uncle Moses Chase came by here awhile back, and he
says they’re gathering supplies to send by oxcart--enough to feed the
lads for a few days: hams, flour, meal, salt fish and cooked victuals;
lint and medicines, too, in case--who told you to take your apron off,
Sally Rose?”
“Don’t you think I’d better go with Kitty?” asked Sally Rose eagerly.
“Lead’s apt to be heavy, you know, and--”
“What she can’t carry, the shop will send after her, I don’t doubt,”
replied Granny. “Sally Rose, you start yourself for the flour barrels.
Take half rye and half cornmeal....”
Sally Rose pouted. Kitty knew she was pouting, although she did not
look at her. She tied on her new chip hat with the velvet roses, and
hastened through the garden, into the street.
“Kitty, take off that hat and put on your old serge hood!” Granny
called after her. “It looks like there’ll be a shower any minute.”
Kitty pretended not to hear her.
She walked down the hill into the town, past Mr. Dalton’s mansion house
and the Wolfe Tavern. People still loitered about in little groups, but
last night’s excitement seemed to have given place to a quieter mood,
uneasiness, anxiety, perhaps fear. The shoemaker stood in front of his
gabled shop, a wooden last in one hand and a strip of purple kid in the
other, talking to a grizzled old man who peddled clams in Water Street.
“No, we’ve heard no more,” he was saying. “No more o’ the Concord
Fight, or our lads that marched away. Whole colony’s up, though. Half
Essex County’s gone, the stage driver says, and the men way out west
beyond Boston are moving in from their side. Hope to squeeze the
British in between.”
“Aye,” said the peddler. “The Hampshire lads has started across the
river, too. Some by ferry, and some with smacks and dories, and they
say there’ll be more. The word’s gone inland, way beyond Rockingham.”
“You mean they’re going to make cause with us and fight the King’s
men?” asked the shoemaker, twisting the strip of purple kid in his hand.
The peddler nodded. “They’ve long been sworn to. And everywheres now,
them as was undecided whether to go Whig or Tory has got to make up
their minds. You’ll find things’ll be different, now blood’s been
spilt.”
Kitty walked on, and the words echoed disturbingly in her head.
The street sloped sharply down to the water, with shops along both
sides--the milliner’s, the baker’s, the butcher’s--shutters down and
doors wide open, just as on other days, but nobody seemed to be buying
anything. Most of the shopkeepers, like the shoemaker, had joined the
uneasy groups in the street outside.
The gunsmith’s shop was in a narrow lane behind the church, and when
she reached it, she found its door tightly barred and a crude sign
dangling from the latch. _Gorn to Cambridj till further notiz_, the
sign said.
She stood there uncertainly for a moment, and looked about her. The
soft gray sky seemed to match her own mood, uncertain whether to
pour down rain or let the sun shine through. Between the houses she
could see the waters of the river, a darker gray. Not all the men had
followed the gunsmith’s example, for busy crews were working about
the wharves and slips, hammers rang from the shipyards, and the tall
chimneys of the distillery lifted their plumes of smoke, just as if it
were an ordinary morning. Somehow the sight reassured her. She’d go and
look for Dick, she thought, and make sure that he hadn’t run off with
the Minutemen. Then she’d go home and tell Gran about the gunsmith,
take off her hat, and get ready to help with the baking.
As she passed the sailors’ boardinghouse in Chandler’s Lane, she
noticed Eben in the backyard chopping wood, and she called to him. He
straightened up, looked at her for a minute, then put his ax down and
came over to the board fence.
“What are you after, Kitty? ’Tisn’t no use looking for Dick,” he said.
“I don’t know that I was looking for Dick,” said Kitty tartly,
chagrined because Eben had read her mind so plain. “But now that you
speak of him, I don’t suppose he’s off for Cambridge, too?”
Eben nodded solemnly. “Ye-a, Dick’s gone.”
Kitty felt shocked in spite of herself. “But how could he? He doesn’t
have a gun.”
“He’s got a tomahawk,” said Eben. “Tomahawk they took out o’ his
great-grandmother’s head when the Indian tried to scalp her up in
Haverhill in ’96.”
“Why, I know that old thing,” cried Kitty. “It’s duller’n a hoe. We
played with it when we were children. Might as well try to fight with a
warming pan!”
Eben shrugged. “Colonel told him to come along,” he said. “Told him
there’d be men there was poorer armed, he didn’t doubt. Said the
courage to go and the feet to get him there was all he’d really need.”
Suddenly he fell silent. He looked down at his own bare feet and
stubbed one great toe in the moist earth.
Kitty felt a little shaken. So Dick had gone off to fight the British.
Dick, that she’d played with when they were toddlers and he lived in
an adjoining house on High Street. How excited they had been, that day
when they first found out they were big enough to scramble back and
forth over the low fence. And now he had taken his old tomahawk and
marched away, a man with other men! And she was left here to do Gran’s
bidding, just as if she were still a little girl. But she did not feel
like a little girl. She felt sad and tremulous and excited, as if she
had the weight of the world on her shoulders, and still, a little happy
in spite of it all. Maybe this was the feel of growing up. Maybe last
night when they played hide-and-seek had really been their last night
to be young, though they hadn’t known it then. Mostly, she thought, we
never know when we do anything the last time.
She suddenly realized that a soft rain had begun to fall, cooling her
checks and gathering mistily in her hair.
“Eb--en!” shouted a buxom woman from the back steps of the
boardinghouse. “Take in my washing off the line! Step lively there!”
Eben muttered, and his face burned crimson as he walked away.
Kitty looked after him for a moment, and her heart stirred with quick
sympathy. It must be hard for Eben to be left behind to do such humble
chores while his friend had gone off to war and been accepted as a man.
The soft drizzle turned into a downpour. She thought, belatedly and
with some alarm, of the roses on her hat. She turned and hurried back
to Market Square and up the hill, walking with her head bent because of
the rain, trying to shield her finery with one lifted hand. So it was
that she did not see him until they almost collided under the tavern
sign that hung on a long pole high over the sloping street. Then she
caught her breath and stepped back, and looked up into the eyes of Tom
Trask, the logger from Derryfield.
He stood there, bareheaded in the rain, and he wore the same hunting
shirt and moosehide breeches, but he was not smiling now, though his
gray eyes lighted with recognition.
“Playing games on the dock tonight, Miss Kitty?” he asked her, and in
spite of his sober face, his voice had a teasing note in it.
She smiled and shook the rain from her lashes. “How did you know my
name was Kitty?” she asked him.
“Heard ’em call you that times enough--last night, I mean, whilst I was
looking on.” His eyes smiled now, but his mouth remained a thin line.
He seemed to be waiting for her answer.
“No,” she said. “We’re not often so silly, and besides, I doubt if the
rain will stop. And even if it did--there are hardly enough of us left
to play.”
He nodded. “I seen two o’ your friends marching off last night,” he
said. “All our crew was asleep on the raft when the bells begun to go,
but when we got into town and heard the news, ’twas no surprise. I
was over to Johnny Stark’s sawmill just before I started down river,
and he said he figured Boston had stood about all they could o’ the
British, and the British had stood about all they could o’ Boston. Said
he expected to be taking his gun down any day. Well, if he’s got the
word, he’s likely there, him and the rest o’ the boys, and I aim to
join them, only--”
Kitty could feel her hair turning dank and the raindrops thickening on
her lashes. She thought of her sodden hat, and sighed inwardly, but she
made no move to excuse herself and leave the stranger.
“--only I left my musket at home in Derryfield, and the gunsmiths here
ain’t doing business today. Has any o’ your menfolk got a spare gun,
Miss Kitty?”
She hesitated. He held out his lean hard hands with freckles on the
backs of them. “I suppose I could use these on the varmints,” he
muttered. “But powder and ball’s the quicker way.”
“There is a gun in the barn loft that belonged to my father,” she said
slowly.
“You speak like your daddy’s dead,” he answered, not looking at her.
“Yes. He drowned in the river just below here, not long after I was
born.”
“I don’t remember much o’ mine, either. Killed when we took Quebec in
’59. Shooting shoulder to shoulder with the British then we was, and
now we’re shooting at ’em.” He shrugged his lean shoulders. “Well, I’d
sure like to borrow your daddy’s gun, if your mother don’t object none
to the idea.”
“My mother’s dead, too, and Granny would likely make a fuss, but I
don’t think we’ll ask Granny.”
Kitty had finally made up her mind. “Come on,” she said, flicking her
fingers lightly against his sleeve.
His fingers were not light when they gripped her arm. They were sure
and steady. Together they walked up Fish Street and turned right to
pass the Frog Pond and the new training green. He strode proudly along
with his head up, but he did not talk to her. Instead he whistled a
plaintive air she had never heard before.
When they got to Gran’s neat clapboarded house, she guided him through
the front gate and along the garden path, half screened by lilac bushes
growing thick and tall.
A small whitewashed barn stood at the rear of the property, but Granny
kept no livestock any more, and the inside of it smelled clean and
musty like an attic, with no scent of dung or hay. The loft had two
tiny windows set high under the eaves, but no other light, and it took
Kitty a few minutes before she could make out the old gun hanging on
the wall between a moth-eaten lap robe and a long wooden fork for
pitching hay.
“There it is,” she murmured, pointing, breathless and a little proud.
He strode forward and pulled down the short, thick-barreled gun. When
he spoke she caught a note of dismay in his voice.
“An old blunderbuss,” he murmured. “An old blunderbuss! Looks like the
one Adam must ha’ carried when they driv’ him out o’ Eden.” He peered
into the flaring muzzle. “Might shoot, at that. Don’t believe I’ll try
it in here.”
Groping around on a shelf, Kitty found an empty powder horn, which he
took a little more gratefully.
“There’ll be powder enough where I’m going,” he told her, “and I better
be getting there.”
The rain tapped steadily on the shingles overhead, but the tiny window
that faced westward showed a streak of blue sky. Carrying the old
blunderbuss carefully, he moved toward the ladder that led below.
Uncertain what to do or say, Kitty stood and stared at him. He paused
and turned toward her.
“I’ll take good care o’ this,” he said, “and I’ll see you get it back
when I don’t need it any more.” He took a step in her direction.
Suddenly her throat began to hurt, and she felt as if she were going to
cry. He took another step. “I’ll make sure of it,” he said. “When I get
to camp and can set down for a spell, I’ll cut your name and the town
where you live--right here on the butt.” He tapped the end of the thick
gun. “And then, maybe somebody else will send it home if I don’t--come
back this way.”
He took her by the shoulders and kissed her quickly on the mouth.
She gulped and felt the tears slip down her cheeks. Under his hands her
shoulders were shaking.
“But I aim to come back,” he said. He scrambled down the ladder and
away. Like Dick, he had the courage to go and the feet to get him
there, and she was left without so much as a window to wave him good-by
from, and how could he put her name on the gun when he did not know her
name?
It came to her suddenly that she had to run after him and tell him her
name was Catherine Greenleaf. If he didn’t know it, he’d never be able
to send her father’s gun back to her, and she wouldn’t want a stranger
to keep her father’s gun. Dashing the tears away, she stumbled down the
ladder and ran through the lilacs where she met him slowly coming back.
He looked down at her and smiled.
“Come to my mind that a thing you do for luck, you must do three
times,” he said. He bent and kissed her again. Then he turned and ran
through the front gateway.
“Stop, thief!” yelled Granny, tapping furiously on the parlor
windowpane. “That’s my son’s blunderbuss! Call the watch! Call the
constable! Call the sheriff! Stop, thief, stop! Come back, come back!”
_Chapter Five_
THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT
“I can’t think whatever put you up to such devilment, Catherine,”
sputtered Granny. “’Twas bad enough for you to spile your new hat,
without giving your father’s gun away.”
“I’ve told you over and over again that I didn’t give him the gun,”
sighed Kitty. “I only loaned it to him. He promised to bring it back.
He looked like a lad who’d keep his word.”
Granny clucked to the raw-boned sorrel horse and tugged expertly at the
reins as the animal plodded round a curve in the sandy road.
“Tom, Tom, the piper’s son/He ran away with Father’s gun!” sang Sally
Rose under her breath.
“Hummp!” snorted Gran.
Kitty looked across the plowed fields to where the Merrimack flowed
behind a hedge of willows. They dipped their long green boughs in the
flooding stream, and here and there the water gave back a flash of
bright sun. How peaceful everything looked in the soft April afternoon.
How hard it was to believe that the lads she knew might be facing the
redcoats’ bayonets only a few miles off. But everyone did believe it.
Everyone was frightened and apprehensive. Folk turned out everywhere to
shade their eyes and watch the roads that led southward, Boston way.
It was more than twenty-four hours since Tom Trask had made off with
the old blunderbuss, but Granny was still scolding about it. She would
have scolded more, probably, if there hadn’t been so many chores for
all of them, getting supplies ready to send after the Minutemen. All
day yesterday they had baked, and this morning she and Sally Rose had
gone from door to door collecting old linen for bandages. Then Uncle
Moses Chase brought the borrowed wagon and suggested that the three
of them might help by driving into the country to see what they could
procure from the cellars and smoke houses of the farmers round.
“If you’d let it go to one o’ the Port lads--say Dick Moody, now--I
could have understood,” Granny rambled on. “Why, I don’t know how many
years that gun has been in our family! My grandmother told me it was
brought from England in the days of the coming over. Her father got it
in trade for an old horse down in Plymouth County.”
Kitty gave a sudden giggle. “Tom said it looked old enough to belong to
Adam,” she said. She pulled her bonnet off and felt the warm sunlight
on her brown hair, felt a warmth inside her when she said his name.
“Hoity-toity, so we call him ‘Tom’!” cried Granny.
Sally Rose reached out and caught her grandmother’s ruffled taffeta
sleeve. “Granny,” she said, “there’s a farmhouse down that cart track
under the shagbark trees. Uncle Moses said to call at every place and
not miss a single one.”
Kitty gave her cousin a grateful glance as Granny turned the sorrel off
the highway and into a rutted lane. Stone walls bordered the fields on
each side of them, and little brooks of water flowed in the gutters,
draining the wet black land. In one field a plow stood abandoned in
mid-furrow, and half a dozen cows waited patiently at the bars, but
nobody came to drive them off to pasture.
“Can’t be anyone at home,” said Granny, “’Bijah Davis lives here, and
he’d never treat his animals so.”
As they drove into the yard of the weathered farmhouse, a young woman
came to the door, a pale young woman with a baby in her arms and two
toddlers pulling at the skirts of her blue calico dress. A half-grown
yellow cat ran between her feet, almost upsetting her.
“Land’s sakes, Nance,” cried Granny. “You’re looking poorly this
spring. Is ’Bijah round somewhere?”
The young woman shook her head. “’Bijah took his gun and put for
Cambridge,” she answered. “I wrapped him up a clean shirt and a hunk o’
corn’ beef. I don’t know when he’ll be home.”
Granny tut-tutted. “Many gone from around here?” she wanted to know.
“Pretty nigh all the men,” said the young wife sadly. “Like you say,
Ma’am Greenleaf, I been poorly this spring, but I got both bake ovens
going just like other folks, I can tell you. We’re cooking up victuals
to send after the lads. Two oxcarts has gone already, and by tomorrow
we can fill two more.”
Granny nodded in agreement. “We’re doing the same at the Port,” she
said. “Don’t suppose you got any foodstuffs you could spare us,
something you don’t need for your own?” She pulled out a beaded purse
and fingered it significantly.
Nancy Davis put up a hand to smooth back the stray wisps of hair from
her forehead. “Could be some eggs in the haymow where the hens steal
nests sometimes,” she murmured. “Could be. I ain’t had the gumption to
go look.”
“We’ll go,” cried Sally Rose eagerly. “Come on, Kitty.”
“You’d better take this basket,” said Gran, reaching under the wagon
seat. “And don’t be gone long. It’s nigh on to sunset time. When we
finish here, we’ll start home.” She turned again to the farm wife. “I
suppose folks is pretty well stirred up around here.”
The young woman nodded. “That we be. Nervous and on edge till we’d run
a mile if we was to hear a pin drop. Fear’s about us on all sides,
just the way I’ve heard my grandmother tell it was down to Salem in
the witchcraft time. It’s because we don’t know what’s happening, I
think--nothing since the first word. Sure, the British was driv’ back
to Boston once, but maybe they’ve marched out again. Maybe our lads
couldn’t stop ’em, and they’re headed this way. And how can I tell
whether ’Bijah be still in the land o’ the living or no!” She began to
cry.
“Folks is all upset at the Port, too,” said Gran soothingly, getting
out of the cart to go to Nancy.
The girls scurried into the mossy-roofed rambling barn, climbed to the
loft, and began searching through the hay.
“Which are you the most worried about, Kit,” asked Sally Rose. “Dick,
or--?” She sneezed violently and wiped her eyes and nose with a lace
handkerchief. “My, this hay dust makes me think of the time when I was
little and got to playing with Father’s snuffbox. Which one? Tell me,
Kitty.”
“I’m worried about all of them,” said Kitty slowly. “Even your wretched
Gerry. I wish men would keep their guns for deer and wild ducks. I
don’t see why they have to kill each other.”
Sally Rose shrugged. “I know,” she said. “I don’t understand it either.
But you have to realize, Kitty, some things about men we’ll never
understand.” She pulled a large brown egg out of the hay and placed it
carefully in the basket. “I wonder,” she said thoughtfully, “if the men
on both sides were all shut up in gaol, just how the women would go to
work to settle the matter.”
“I don’t know,” said Kitty, adding two more eggs to their collection,
“but I’m sure there’d be cups of tea for everybody.”
“Tea doesn’t have much to do with this war, Father says,” went on Sally
Rose quickly. “And Gerry says the same. They both say it’s to decide
who will rule America--King and Parliament, or the men who live in this
country.”
“I should think King and Parliament would have enough to do at home,”
answered Kitty. “What’s that? I thought I heard someone shouting.”
Both girls sat up in the shadowy mow to listen.
“Turn out! Turn out! For God’s sake!” thundered a hoarse voice from the
highway.
“Maybe he’s brought news of the lads,” cried Sally Rose, upsetting the
basket in her haste to scramble down the ladder. Forgetting the eggs,
Kitty followed her. They ran out of the barn and across the yard under
the hickory trees. Granny and Nance, with the children straggling after
them, had already started up the lane.
A black-coated rider came spurring toward them from the direction of
the Port, waving his cocked hat with one hand and whipping his horse
with the other.
“Turn out!” he shouted. “Turn out, or you will all be killed! The
British have landed at Ipswich and have marched to Old Town Bridge!
They are cutting and slashing all before them!”
He paid no attention to the huddled group of women, but galloped past.
“Turn out! Turn out!” he panted. “The British have landed at Ipswich!”
His voice grew fainter as he rounded the end of a low hill and swept
out of sight.
They stood looking at one another. “If you ask me, his wits are
addled,” said Gran stoutly. “He had a mad look in his eyes. I’d want
some further word--”
Then a chaise hurtled down the road, swaying from side to side, driven
by a lean woman with gray hair streaming about her shoulders and a
swansdown hat hanging on one ear. “The British!” she choked as the
chaise went rocking by.
After her came a young couple on horseback, and then three farm wagons
loaded with family groups and household goods. A wooden churn fell off
and rolled into the brimming gutter, but they did not stop to retrieve
it; they drove furiously on.
Nance stood there, as silent and rooted to earth as one of her own
hickory trees. Kitty and Sally Rose held hands tightly and looked at
each other, uncertain whether to laugh or be afraid, waiting to see
what would happen next.
Then it seemed as if half the Port went streaming by. Gran stood at the
side of the road and waved her beaded purse at the mad rout of chaises
and wagons, but nobody would stop for her. Finally a farmer hastened
by on foot, leading a plow horse that had gone lame. She stepped up
smartly and caught him by the front of his tow-colored smock. “Young
man, what is the meaning of this?” she demanded.
“God Almighty, are ye deaf, Mother?” he growled, spitting tobacco juice
into the dust of the road, just missing her dainty kid slipper. “The
British ha’ come ashore. Come ashore at Ipswich, and hacked their way
past Old Town Bridge. I rode over twenty dead bodies as I come from
there. They’ll be at the Port now, heading this way.”
For the first time Kitty began to feel that this was not some
ridiculous mistake. Her throat grew tight, and her nerves began to
tingle with fear.
“Where is everyone going?” she cried.
The farmer turned to answer her. “They’re all trying to get across
the river into Hampshire,” he said. “Some’s for the woods and swamps
nearby. Better get along yourselves. You’ll be the safer, the further
you can go.”
He urged his old horse forward again.
Gran turned back from the highroad as another half dozen wagons rattled
past. “He looked like an honest lad, and he saw it with his own eyes,
Nancy,” she admitted reluctantly. “You bundle up the children and
whatever food you’ve got on hand, and come along in our wagon. I’m
going to drive as hard as I can for Haverhill Ferry. I trust we’ll get
across.”
Nance, bewildered and numb with terror, tried to follow out Granny’s
instructions. Back in the kitchen she fumbled through the bin, brought
out a sack of potatoes, and stood there helplessly, holding it. Gran
reached past her. “Take the apples, instead,” she advised. “They’ll
taste better if we have to eat them raw.”
Finally the young wife got herself, the two children, and the
shawl-wrapped infant into the wagon. She sat on the seat with Granny,
and Kitty and Sally Rose crouched on a sack of turnips a farmer had
given them early in the afternoon. How long ago that seemed! In the
gathering twilight they drove swiftly along the winding river road.
The lower Merrimack Valley above the Port was not sparsely settled
country in those spring days of 1775. There were farmhouses and parish
churches and crossroads villages scattered all about it, and few
dwellers there who could not see their neighbor’s chimney smoke or
the lights of his kitchen when they looked out at night. But now the
peaceful district was overrun with strangers and refugees streaming
through.
Kitty and Sally Rose huddled together on the turnip sack for warmth,
looking back down the road every now and then, to see if the British
were in sight, if the glare of burning towns lighted the sky. But all
they could see were the frightened folk of Essex County hurrying for
the swamps and the forests, for the low hills of New Hampshire Colony
across the wide dark stream.
Women, and a few old or feeble men, were toiling across the farmyards
here and there, carrying favorite gowns, or chests of silver, or
pewter teapots to conceal them in wells and hollow trees. And from
almost every doorstep strong arms laboriously hoisted old folk and
invalids into carts to haul them away.
“What do you think’ll come of it, Kit?” asked Sally Rose in a low
worried voice. “Do you think Gran will take us over the river to
Haverhill? I don’t want to go to Haverhill. It’s a sleepy country town,
and it’ll be worse than the Port, with all the lads away. I’d almost
rather get caught by the British, I think.”
“But they’re cutting and slashing all before them,” Kitty reminded her
grimly. “That farmer said he rode over twenty dead bodies on the way.”
“Well, I do not think they would cut and slash me,” said Sally Rose,
smiling confidently in the dark. “Oh, Kit, look there!”
They were passing a tiny cottage half hidden by leafy apple trees. An
armchair had been placed firmly on a scrap of lawn, and in the chair
sat a man with a lantern beside him and a musket across his knees. He
was enormous, and almost perfectly round. “Let the British come!” he
shouted, and waved his musket. “I be too fat to budge for ’em! I’ll
stay here and shoot the bloody devils down!”
A little way farther on they came across a group of women bending over
another woman who lay on the ground in the curve of a stone wall.
Granny hesitated, and then drew rein. “Is the poor critter sick?” she
called to them. “Can I help? Perhaps we could make a place for her.”
A tall woman in a gray shawl straightened up. “No, thank’ee, Ma’am,”
she called crisply. “It’s only Aunt Hannah. She wheezes so with the
asmaticks, her noise would give us away to the British. We’re going to
cover her over with leaves and let her rest, all snug and out of sight,
here by the wall.”
At that Nancy Davis began to laugh. She laughed and laughed, and then
she began to cry. Gran slapped her face hard and drove on. “None o’
that foolishness, Nance,” she said severely. “Mind your children.
’Bijah would expect you to. Kitty and Sally Rose”--she lifted her
voice--“is all well with you back there?”
“Let’s not go any farther, Gran,” pleaded Sally Rose. “There are lights
at the inn we just passed by. If the folks haven’t run away, maybe
they’ll have beds for us. Maybe if we hide in bed, the British will
ride on and never know we’re there. I don’t want to go to Haverhill,
Gran.”
“When I say you’ll go to Haverhill, to Haverhill you’ll go,” said Gran,
and drove on into the night. “I hope I can make the ferry in time.”
Kitty sensed the note of anxiety in Gran’s voice, and that frightened
her more than anything that had gone before it. Not when the smallpox
struck and folk lay dying in every house in town, not when a great
tree crashed through the roof in the midst of an autumn storm, had she
known Gran to feel afraid. She looked over her shoulder again, and then
around her at the dark fields, the thickets here and there along the
road. Frightened women had come this way in other times, she knew, when
Indians with tomahawks lurked behind every tree. She had heard, too, of
the dreadful times at Salem that Nancy spoke about, when the devil had
walked abroad in Essex County, or folk thought that he had, though they
never saw the devil. The most terrible fear, she thought, is the fear
of an unseen thing. A British Army marching toward them with drums and
banners and bayonets would not be so terrible as the shadows that might
hold any nameless menace, the shadows drawing closer in....
She turned to Sally Rose, but Sally Rose was humming a little tune.
There was boredom rather than terror in her hazel eyes. Sally Rose had
found one redcoat to be a gallant and handsome lover, so she believed
they would all be that. But Kitty had heard tales of their cruelty to
Boston folk. She remembered that blood had been shed at Concord Fight
and on Lexington Green. She crouched on the turnip sack and shivered
with cold fear.
Somehow the road seemed to be less crowded now. No one had passed them
for half an hour. Then they met a little group of horsemen slowly
riding back. Granny hailed them.
“Are you headed for Newburyport? Is the battle over? Where are the
British?” she wanted to know.
The leader took off his cocked hat, and Kitty noticed that he had a
bald head and very black eyes. “We begin to think the British are in
Boston and have been there all along, that they never stirred from
there. We have found no trace of them, and we scoured the countryside.
The whole commotion is either a sorry jest or a coward’s error, it
seems. At least, we have recovered sufficient courage to ride back
toward Ipswich and see.”
“I suspected as much,” said Gran, tightening her mouth.
“Ho hum!” said Sally Rose.
The men rode off, and Gran pulled the wagon to one side of the road.
They were facing a small common with a white steepled church at the
edge of it. Houses clustered round about, darkened and deserted, their
doors hanging open, their inhabitants fled away. Overhead the elm
boughs tossed eerily in the light of the cold moon.
“Get out, girls, and stretch your legs,” Gran ordered. “Then I’m going
to turn around and drive back to my own house at the Port. You can come
with me, Nance, if you’re afraid to bide at home.”
“I’m not afraid any more,” said Nance wanly. “Not if the British
are still in Boston. Do you think they are still in Boston, Ma’am
Greenleaf?”
“I feel sure of it,” declared Gran firmly. “Well, the Bible says the
young men shall dream dreams. That’s what that lad who said he rode
over twenty dead bodies must ha’ done. Let’s all go over to the church
steps and give thanks to God. Dream, joke, or error, I don’t care which
it was. It’s over now, and high time we went home.”
The two children were asleep on the seat of the wagon, but Nance
carried the shawl-wrapped baby and held it in her arms as they knelt on
the church steps of gray old stone. Gran lifted up voluble thanks to
the Almighty, and Kitty’s attention wandered. She watched a husky youth
who had been hiding in the crotch of a pear tree climb sheepishly down
and sidle off, gnawing a piece of salt pork. He had apparently taken
provisions to his refuge, in case the British kept him treed for a long
time. The sight of the pork made her hungry, and Nance must have seen
it, too, and thought of food, but not for herself. The minute Gran rose
from her knees, she asked if they could wait while she suckled the baby.
“Why of course,” said Gran heartily. “My, there’s not been one peep
out of the little thing. I trust it hasn’t got smothered in all this
uproar.”
Nancy sat down on the step, carefully pulled the shawls away, and bent
her head while the others stood looking on.
Suddenly she screamed. They peered closer.
“God save our souls alive!” gasped Granny.
Sally Rose giggled. Kitty swallowed and made no sound at all.
In her haste Nance had wrapped up the wrong creature, and now it was
the half-grown yellow cat that slept peacefully in the crook of her
arm.
_Chapter Six_
FUN WHILE IT LASTED
The young man sat on the steps of the tavern by Ipswich Green and
stared about him; at the old brown roofs with yellow moss growing on
their seaward sides, at the little rocky river that flowed like liquid
amber under its stone bridge, at the steepled church on the rocky hill.
Shadows lay long in the deserted streets of Ipswich, and far to the
west the sun was going down.
The young man wore a rough woolen shirt and homespun breeches. He had a
cleft chin, deep blue eyes, and black curly hair. He looked uncommonly
pleased about something.
The landlord came to the open doorway behind him and stood there,
peering into the dusk. He was a short plump man with a lame leg and a
worried expression.
“Not a sign o’ the British yet, be there, lad?” he asked anxiously.
The young man shrugged his shoulders. “Could be they’ve turned aside
and gone another way,” he said in a lilting tone. “Well, I guess I’ll
be taking the road myself, while there’s a bit o’ the daylight left.
How far did you tell me it was to Newburyport, sir?”
The landlord shifted his feet uneasily. “It’s a piece of a journey yet,
and the roads will doubtless be clogged with fleeing folk, if one’s
to judge by the rout that streamed out of here; likewise the half o’
Beverly tagging through. Why not stay the night? I’ll give ye free
lodging. It’ll mean there’s one able-bodied man in town, besides a
handful of petticoat folk.”
Again the young man shrugged his shoulders. “Well enough, if ’twill
please you--and supper be included in the offer.” He got to his feet
and stood there smiling.
“Come in, lad, come in,” cried the landlord in relieved tones. “Come,
and I’ll give ye supper, such as ’tis. Cook’s run off to the hills like
all the rest, but my daughter Nanny’s here, and Nanny can do. Come and
bring your box, if ye will. Where’d ye say ye be from? Have ye traveled
far?”
The young man stooped and lifted a small leather chest bound with iron.
Deep in the lid was burned the name “G. Malory.” It was a peculiarity
of his that although he often played other men’s parts and wore other
men’s clothing, he would never abandon his own name.
“Barnstaple,” he said. “Gerry Malory of Barnstaple, shoemaker.”
“Barnstable? Down Cape Cod, ain’t it? A fair ways from here.”
“Yes, Barnstaple’s a fair ways off,” said the young man.
Together they stepped into the dark smoky taproom. It was deserted
except for a little maid, scarce more than a child, who stood in the
doorway of the kitchen.
The landlord went to the hearth and stirred the dwindling fire. “What’s
in the pot, Nanny?” he asked.
“Dandelions,” said Nanny pertly. “Dandelion greens and a ham bone. But
the ham bone don’t smell like it should, Father.”
“Warm up the chowder then,” he ordered, and turned to his guest. “Are
ye handy with firearms, Gerry?”
“I’ve a pistol in my chest here, among my shoemaker’s tools. Guess I
know what to do with it.”
“No, no,” cried the landlord impatiently. “I got no faith in such pop
guns. I mean a man-sized weapon. Son Rob took my musket to Cambridge,
but there’s a fowling piece hung up on the kitchen wall. I don’t see as
well to aim as I did once. Who was it spread the word about town? Did
ye happen to hear?”
The shoemaker shook his head. “I couldn’t say, sir. As I told you
before, I was just passing through here on my way to Newburyport to see
a girl, when all at once a great stir began, and folks went rushing to
the green. Somebody shouted that the British had landed at Ipswich Bar
and were cutting and slashing all before them. Next thing I knew, the
wagons started rolling out of town, and everyone took to the highway,
afoot and on horseback. I watched them for awhile, and then came here
to catch my breath and maybe have a bite of supper.”
Again the landlord went to the door and peered nervously into the
thickening night. “Not a light in town,” he said. “Folk that hasn’t
fled away be keeping their houses dark, ’twould seem. Do ye mind if I
don’t light up, lad? Can ye see by the glow o’ the fire?”
“’Tis no trick to find a mouth the size of mine,” said the young man
gallantly. Then as Nanny put a steaming bowl on the table in front of
him, his nostrils quivered. “Did the ham smell stronger than this, my
lady?” he asked her.
“Yes,” said Nanny flatly, stepping back into the kitchen.
He sat down on a bench, picked up a ladle, and tasted the chowder
gingerly.
“None for me, Nanny,” called her father. “I be that worried about the
British, I wouldn’t relish victuals none.”
“Right, sir,” said Gerry, putting down the ladle. “It comes to me that
I, too, am worried about the British. Still, a piece of bread now--it
need not have butter--I could eat it dry.”
“Slice up a loaf of bread, Nanny,” called the landlord.
Nanny’s thin piping voice came back from the kitchen. “The bread’s
moldy. All that wasn’t, we sent to Cambridge.”
Gerry Malory sighed resignedly. “Well, perhaps a glass of milk
then--unless all the cows have fled away. Nothing stronger. I must keep
a clear head on me.”
The landlord himself brought a pitcher of milk and poured two glasses
full.
“Be ye just up from the Cape, Gerry? And did ye come by Cambridge?
We’ve had no news from there since the word o’ Concord Fight come
through.”
The young man shook his head. “I haven’t been near Cambridge, and it’s
a long time since I went Barnstaple way.”
“Where ye been, then?”
“Oh--round Charlestown most of the time, I guess. You know Job
Townsend’s tavern there?”
“Job Townsend? Keeps the Bay and Beagle, don’t he? In Crooked Lane near
Harvard Street. I knowed him when he was your age. Too bad. He lost his
wife young. Got a right pretty daughter, I’ve heard. Sally Rose, or
something like.”
“Yes, he’s got a pretty daughter,” said Gerry Malory, draining his
glass. “I been around the Bay and Beagle some.”
“I don’t get down that way much myself,” said the landlord
thoughtfully. “What’s the news thereabout? Do they think the British’ll
fight? And if they do....”
The young man shook his head solemnly. “You got no chance against the
British,” he said.
The landlord looked up sharply. “Ye say ‘you’ and not ‘we,’” he
protested. “Does that mean Barnstable don’t intend to join against
the cruel laws o’ the King? That they be not with the rest o’
Massachusetts? The Hampshire towns be with us, and I hear that so be
the west and south, New York and Virginia, too.”
“Oh no, no, I do not mean that at all,” cried the young shoemaker.
“’Twas a slip of the tongue. Of course Barnstable--on Cape Cod--will
join cause with you. I only mean that the outlook is dark, sir, dark,
for those who would fan the flames of rebellion in America.”
He put down his empty glass and leaned forward, his hands clenched
before him on the table. “How can _we_ defend a thousand miles of
seacoast with only a few scattered towns, against a great battle fleet
of three hundred ships and armed men? We can scarce put thirty thousand
soldiers in the field. England has one hundred and fifty thousand, and
can summon more. We lack guns, ammunition, money, and trade. More than
that, we lack the tradition of love of country, a tradition that will
make the meanest man fight and die bravely. For a thousand years men
have been giving their lives for England. What man has ever given his
life for America before?”
“Sounds like you been listening to some Tory make speeches, lad.
Happens there was a few gave their lives at Concord and Lexington the
day before yesterday,” retorted the landlord. “There’s a first time
for everything, Gerry.” His voice was milder than the milk in his
half-empty glass, but his eyes held a sharp look, a look of question.
Suddenly his face went white.
“Lord in heaven, I’ll fetch the gun for ye! Here they come!” he cried,
dashing from the room, tripping over a footstool unseen in the light of
the fire.
Gerry Malory lifted his head. He heard a shouting in the road, the
creak of wagons rumbling along. He, too, got up, went to the door, and
stared out into the soft April night. The moon had not yet risen, but
as he turned to look to the north he could see swaying lights and
shadowy figures, moving painfully slow, but drawing closer. He waited,
silent, to see what would emerge out of the dark.
As the cavalcade became more sharply visible, he saw that it consisted
of three oxcarts piled with boxes, kegs, and baskets, escorted by some
half dozen men. The oxen lumbered along wearily, and the men seemed
weary, too, as they plodded at the side. They were not young men, but
grayish and old and frail, except for a thin-faced lad with tow-colored
hair and an ancient gun gripped casually in his right hand. The wagons
drew to a halt in front of the tavern, one man stayed with the oxen,
and the others came forward eagerly, seeking refreshment.
Gerry stepped back into the taproom and turned to face the landlord who
rushed out of the kitchen with a badly rusted gun held in front of him.
“No British,” he said reassuringly. “Just some teamsters who want to
wet their whistles, I expect.” He retired to the shadows near the great
chimney, found a stool there, and sat down.
The landlord bustled forward to welcome the visitors. In a few moments
they were seated at the table, and Nanny was helping her father to set
out food and drink, greens, ham bone, chowder, and all.
“Not a fit man amongst us,” sighed the oldster with a face like a
russet apple and a scar across his forehead. “I fought in too many wars
already. But once we get these stores to Cambridge, likely I’ll stay
there and enlist for one more.”
“Don’t know how we’d ha’ got this far, if this Hampshire lad hadn’t
o’ertaken us,” said another. He turned to the thin-faced youth who was
eating chowder, the old blunderbuss leaning against the table close to
his elbow. “We was sure glad to see you, Tom Trask, when our cart broke
down the other side of Rowley last night. A proper wheelwright you
turned out to be.”
Tom Trask did not look up from his chowder. “Be a wheelwright when I
have to,” he muttered, “or most any other sort of thing.”
“Tell me, lads,” questioned the landlord eagerly, “did ye see aught of
the British that’s supposed to be marching on us, cutting and slashing
all before?”
“We heard the rumor, o’ course,” went on the russet-cheeked man, “and
saw the rout go past. Didn’t trouble us none. We kept on our way.
Word’s gone about now, that there be doubts the British ever was nearer
than Boston. Truth to tell, sir, I surmise we been made fools of.”
The landlord made a clucking sound with his thin lips. Tom Trask was
staring hard at the small iron-bound leather box on the table in front
of him.
“Who’s that there belong to?” he asked suddenly.
“That--oh, that belongs to Gerry Malory over in the corner. Gerry’s a
shoemaker from Barnstable--on his way to Newburyport to see a girl.”
The landlord’s voice was gay and jovial in his relief, now that he
had no further cause to fear the British. After all, he had not fled
away at the false rumor. He had not been made a fool of. He strutted a
little as he walked about the room, filling the glasses, replenishing
the fire. When his shame-faced neighbors came straggling back, he’d be
able to indulge himself in a boast or two. Then suddenly he pricked up
his ears. The tow-headed lad from New Hampshire Colony was speaking. He
held the leather chest in his hands, turning it about.
“‘G. Malory,’ it says here. And Landlord says G.’s for Gerry. Gerry
Malory--going to Newburyport to see a girl.” He sounded thoughtful.
The landlord noticed that the young shoemaker from Barnstable had edged
his stool further back into the shadows. He said no word.
“Seems to me,” went on Tom Trask, “I might know what girl he’s going to
see. A peacock-proud girl named Sally Rose, I wouldn’t wonder. Seems to
me I heard o’ Gerry Malory.”
His voice deepened, and there was a sharp edge to it that caught the
attention of everyone in the room and made them listen.
“That’s her!” cried the landlord excitedly. “Sally Rose! Job Townsend’s
daughter! He said he hung around the Bay and Beagle some!”
Still the young man in the shadows did not speak.
“The Gerry Malory I heard of,” went on Tom Trask, “was said to be a
captain in the Twenty-third. That’d mean he’s a British officer.” He
waited accusingly.
The landlord slapped his thigh. “Well, pickle my brains in rum!” he
cried. “I think ye be right, lad. He was talking like a Britisher just
before ye got here. Saying times was dark for us, and no man would give
his life for America. Out o’ that corner, sir, and answer the charge!
Be ye a lobsterback come in disguise among us?”
Then indeed Gerry Malory stepped forward. “You’ve mistaken yourselves,”
he said easily. “There may be a man with the same name as mine in the
ranks of the British. I doubt that I be the first Gerald Malory since
the world was made. I doubt if I be the last. I be a shoemaker of
Barnstable, loyal as any man here.”
“Loyal to what?” demanded Tom Trask. Then he bent down, pulled off one
crude cowhide boot, and held it out. “Here. I got a hole clear through
my sole leather tramping these rocky roads of Essex County. If you be a
shoemaker, prove it! Cobble my boot!”
Gerry Malory took the boot in his hands and examined it. Then he
shook his head. “’Tis scarce worth fixing, my good man,” he said
condescendingly. “Get yourself a new pair when you arrive in
Cambridge. That is the best advice I can give you.”
“You lie,” said Tom Trask steadily. “I can fix it myself, if you’re
unable. All I ask you to do is prove you be a shoemaker.”
The teamsters, the landlord, even Nanny, were staring in silence at the
two young men. Gerry Malory studied the boot in his hand. He frowned.
“Well enough,” he said. He opened the small chest and fumbled inside
it, took out a wooden last, hammer, and awl, a packet of pegs and
nails. “Ah, this should do it,” he murmured judiciously. He selected
a strip of leather and tried to fit it over the ragged hole Tom had
pointed out.
All eyes were upon him. No lips made any comment. He gripped the boot
with one hand under the instep. He fitted the leather over the hole
with the other hand. Then he stood there, conscious suddenly that he
had no third hand to set the nails in place, no fourth hand to wield
the hammer. He put the boot down and started all over again.
But his face was growing hot and his fingers even more clumsy. Suddenly
he ceased his efforts. “I am sorry,” he said. “I forgot my most needful
tool. You must wait until you get to Cambridge, unless you can find
another cobbler.”
Tom Trask stood up. He held the old gun lightly in his hand. “Your most
needful tool is there,” he said, “but you don’t know enough to know it.
Put the boot on the last, you should have. That would ha’ held it firm,
and left your hands free to get on with your cobbling. Right enough,
we’ll go to Cambridge, and we’ll take you along as our prisoner,
Captain Malory o’ the Twenty-third. All the world can see you’re no
shoemaker. Johnny Stark will know what to do with you. Landlord, have
you a length of rope, or better, a few links of chain, about the place?
For safety, we’ll tie him up now.”
Gerry Malory, of Barnstaple in English Devon, bit his lip and stared
around him somewhat wildly. That cursed Yankee with the gun that looked
as if it came out of Noah’s ark stood between him and the open doorway.
He doubted if it would shoot, but even if it didn’t, its owner looked
like no easy man to handle. And the Yankee had his friends about him.
While he hesitated, two old men ambled forward and bound his wrists
together with a heavy length of clanking chain. Then they stepped back,
and the whole company continued to stare at him.
“Captain,” said Tom Trask thoughtfully, “I be not so sure as I was
that you come this way to see a girl. Likely you did, but likely, too,
you might ha’ spread the false report that the British was upon us. It
might ha’ been a word o’ yours that sent us flying over hills far and
wide as if the devil was after. A fool’s prank, maybe--maybe a smart
trick to spread confusion amongst us.”
Suddenly Gerry Malory remembered the scenes of the afternoon: lean
spinsters rocking along like giraffes in the animal garden on Tower
Hill, fat men waddling off, their faces red and their eyes popping with
panic. He laughed aloud and looked down at his hands bound stiffly in
front of him.
“In either case, it was fun while it lasted,” he said.
_Chapter Seven_
OFF TO THE WARS IN BOSTON
“Cousin, I see no future for us in this place,” said Sally Rose bleakly.
She was sitting in the soft grass on the hill behind the Frog Pond,
looking down the dusty street that led through the Port, straight to
the wharves and warehouses along the river.
Kitty pulled herself up on her elbow and let her glance follow her
cousin’s. There appeared to be as many white sails in the channel as
usual, the same blue spring haze on the far shore, and the familiar
curve of sky overhead. But the town below them, commonly bustling with
life on a warm May afternoon, looked strangely deserted and still. A
brown dog slept in the middle of High Street, and two old men hobbled
past the Wolfe Tavern in the direction of Market Square. A farm cart
ground its slow way towards Old Newbury, and a group of children ran
hither and thither across the training green with laughter and shrill
cries.
Kitty pulled a golden dandelion blossom from the grass and began to
tear it apart in her fingers. “I think I see what you mean, Sally
Rose,” she said. “It is dull here with no one to talk to but grown
folk--and of course, the other girls. I never realized how many girls
there are in town. There never seemed to be so many before. I never
thought I bothered myself much about the lads, but what a difference it
makes--now they are all gone away.”
“Gone, and not likely to return very soon, from what I hear,” said
Sally Rose thoughtfully. “A few have come home, but mostly the older
men with families, or the fainthearted ones. Last night I heard Uncle
Moses telling Granny they plan to stay where they are and form a mighty
army that will circle round like a wall of iron to keep the British
penned in Boston.”
“Then there’s no knowing when they’ll be home,” answered Kitty. It made
her uneasy to admit to herself, as she had been forced to do, that
all her eagerness and anxiety were not for her long-time friend, Dick
Moody, but for that other one, the thin lad from New Hampshire who had
taken her father’s blunderbuss away.
“No knowing,” agreed Sally Rose. “Three weeks it’s been since Concord
Fight, maybe more. More than a month since I’ve seen Gerry. I thought
he might write to me, but he never has. Some of the Tory girls in
Boston are very fair,” and she sighed. “I thought I might find someone
to take his place, but I should have known I never could--here in this
dull, stupid, country town.”
“You’re better off not seeing him, since he’s British,” said Kitty
sharply. “I’m sure, most times, you’d find better lads than him,
walking down Queen Street any day. But just now--well, you know where
they’ve all gone. They’ve gone to fight for the rights of our colony,
and you ought to be proud of them, Sally Rose.”
“Ummmm,” said Sally Rose, chewing a dandelion stem and then making up
a face when its bitter white milk puckered her mouth. “Of course I’m
proud of them. How old does one have to be before they’re an old maid,
Kitty? It seems like I might be approaching the time.”
“Oh no,” cried Kitty. “We’re only sixteen. No one would think that of
us--not for at least two years more!”
Sally Rose stood up and tossed her bright hair in the sun. “Two years
isn’t long,” she said. “Well, you can sit here in the Port and wither
if you want to, but I’ve got other fish in the pan.”
She started walking quickly in the direction of Granny Greenleaf’s
weathered house.
Kitty watched her with apparent unconcern for as long as she could.
Then she jumped to her feet and hurried after.
“Where are you going?” she panted.
Sally Rose smiled at her. “Why,” she said, “I think I’ll go back to my
father’s house in Charlestown. If there’s a war in Boston, we’ll be in
the midst of everything there. Why don’t you come along, Kit? Tom Trask
may not be back this way, you know.”
Kitty felt her face turning hot and red, but she chose to ignore the
last part of her cousin’s remark. “You can’t go to Charlestown,” she
said. “Granny won’t let you go where there’s likely to be fighting. You
know that as well as I.”
They had turned in at the front gate now, and were walking under
the budded lilac bushes, Sally Rose in the lead, Kitty following
breathless, a few steps behind.
“A fig for Granny!” cried Sally Rose. “I love her, of course, but she’s
a timid old lady, fit only to huddle in the chimney corner. She doesn’t
know what it’s like to be bold and daring--the way a girl has to be
these days. Of course she won’t let me go, and so I shan’t ask her.
She drove out to see Nancy Davis this afternoon. When she gets back at
suppertime, I won’t be here. I’ll be halfway to Rowley--or further on.”
She opened the unlocked kitchen door and ran lightly up the back stairs
to their chamber.
Kitty followed, a little more slowly. She sat down on the edge of the
high four-poster and dangled her feet over the side; watched while
Sally Rose gathered ribbons, laces, and a few toilet articles and tied
them up in a shawl.
“It’s a long walk to Charlestown,” she said tartly.
“Not so far for a horse,” answered Sally Rose.
“You have a horse then?”
“I know where to borrow one. I know where I can borrow two. Uncle Moses
Chase keeps half a dozen in his barn on the Old Newbury road, and he’s
gone with Granny, so he won’t know if we take them. He won’t care, when
he finds out. Why don’t you come with me, Kitty? We’ll have a gay time
in Charlestown.”
Kitty shook her head, but without much conviction. “I couldn’t go
behind Granny’s back,” she said.
Sally Rose smiled sweetly. “I’m sorry you feel so, Cousin. Perhaps I do
wrong to make a jest of everything, but that is my way. Have you never
thought, when you hear all these preparations for war, that there is
work for us as well as for the lads? Who’s to cook and wash and sew for
them, and bind up their wounds when the fighting is over? I’m going
where I can be of use to my country. If you’re afraid to come with
me--well, you can stay here and sleep in the sun by the Frog Pond every
afternoon. You’ll surely be safe enough--unless a horsefly bites you,
or the dry rot settles in.”
She took a quill pen and inkpot from the mantelpiece, sat down at the
dressing table, and began to write.
Kitty jumped from the bed and took a few turns up and down the room.
“Do you really think we ought to go, Sally Rose?” she asked. “Do you
think--we might be needed there?”
“I certainly do think so,” said Sally Rose. “Don’t bother to pack any
clothes, Kit. At home in Charlestown I have more than enough for two.”
Under Sally Rose’s urging, Kitty opened a top drawer in the old
mahogany chest and began slowly to sort out the few possessions she
wanted to take with her, if she did go; an ivory comb, a pleated linen
fichu, her mother’s cameo brooch. Her fingers flew faster every minute,
as her heart warmed to the plan.
Her throat grew tight, and she felt tears of eagerness and excitement
sting her eyelids. She was going to serve her country, like Tom and
Johnny and Dick, and all the Newburyport lads, all the lads of the Bay
Colony, and maybe other colonies, too. She was going to take part in a
serious, and a mighty, and a very grown-up thing. Wars were history,
and she was going to help make history. It had been done before by
other girls who were just as young. She was glad, she thought, that she
was to have a chance to do it in her time. Her heart stirred just as it
did in church when one or another of the old warlike hymn tunes rose on
the air.
“You’d better take a cloak, Kit, for it’ll grow cold after sundown, and
we may ride late,” advised Sally Rose, pulling her own fleecy shawl
from the carved old press. “Come, let’s be off to the wars in Boston!”
On her way to follow Sally Rose’s bidding, Kitty caught sight of her
cousin’s note as it lay open on the dressing table.
_Dear Granny_, the note began, in dainty, pointed script, _Forgive me
for leaving you so suddenly, and practically forcing poor Kitty to
go along. But I dare not travel by myself, and I find that a sudden
yearning to see my father takes me...._
Kitty stood still for a moment and almost gave up all idea of this
desperate journey.
“We’ll have a gay time in Charlestown.” “I want to serve my country.”
“A sudden yearning to see my father takes me.”
Sally Rose could give many reasons for what she wanted to do. And she
would always give the ones most likely to get her what she wanted. And
what was her true reason? No one knew except Sally Rose.
Nevertheless, Kitty found she did not turn back, but folded her cloak
over her arm and hastened downstairs after her cousin. After all, what
was her own reason for wanting to go to Charlestown? She did want to
serve her country, but she was quick enough to see that she could serve
it quite as well at home, if she had chosen so. But she had not so
chosen. Was not she, Kitty, slyer, more secret and stubborn than Sally
Rose in getting her own way?
* * * * *
It was black dark when they rode into Ipswich, very few lights in the
town, and very few people still awake. The moon was hidden away behind
the clouds somewhere, and a light mist had begun to fall.
“I hoped we could get as far as Beverly,” said Sally Rose, “but we’ve
come only half the way. Uncle Moses said he had plenty of horses in his
barn, but he didn’t say they were plow horses. Well, there’s a light
in the tavern. I’ve stopped there before, and I know the landlord’s
daughter. A pert, homely little wench, but I’m sure she’ll find us a
bed.”
“I hope so,” said Kitty dubiously, climbing down from her horse and
following her cousin up the wide stone steps and through the low front
door.
The taproom smelled of cider and fish and the smoky wood fire burning
on it blackened hearth. It was dimly lit and empty, except for three
old men who sat at a table with glasses in front of them, and a
sharp-faced, sallow girl polishing other glasses behind a narrow bar.
When Sally Rose walked across the uneven floor, her head up, her eyes
shining in the candlelight, her hips swaying ever so slightly, the
heads of the old men turned toward her as sunflowers turn to follow
the golden light of day. Kitty walked demurely behind her, but nobody
noticed Kitty.
“Nanny,” cried Sally Rose, putting out her hand to the girl eagerly,
as if there was no one in the world she would be gladder to see than
Ipswich Nan. “Nanny, we’re o’ertaken with darkness, and we need a bed
for the night, my cousin and I.” She drew Kitty forward, and they stood
together at the bar. “We’ll need supper, too, Nanny,” she said.
Nanny curtsied. “Yes, Miss Sally Rose,” she answered, beaming adoringly
at the pretty, smiling face turned toward her. “The bed in the east
chamber is aired and ready. Should I serve you there, or....” She
glanced about the taproom.
Sally Rose began to pull off her embroidered gloves, put up a hand to
pat her golden hair. “Oh--at that table by the fire, please. It was
chilly, coming the last mile through the swamp willows, and with all
the fog about.”
Nanny lighted a candle in a pewter holder and carried it to the table
by the fire. “I’ll bring you supper right off, Miss Sally Rose. We got
dandelion greens and a ham bone--”
Sally Rose made up a face. “Oh Nanny,” she pleaded, “you know my
stomach’s delicate.”
Kitty clapped her hand over her mouth so that she would not giggle.
Sally Rose had never been sick in her life, and could probably digest
brass nails if she had to.
“Couldn’t you find a bit of chicken, Nanny?”
“Chicken I’ve not got,” answered Nanny. “But there’s a piece of spring
lamb I just been a-roasting for the minister’s wife. She’s got Salem
company coming tomorrow.”
“The lamb will do nicely,” said Sally Rose, sitting down at table.
“About our horses,” asked Kitty, taking the chair across from her
cousin.
“Oh, of course. I’ll speak to one of the men and have them seen to. I
noticed the landlord as I came in.”
They turned to look at the three men by the table. The men were all
staring at them and talking together in low voices. One of them now
rose and came forward. He wore a leather apron tied around his middle
and walked with a decided limp.
“Job Townsend’s daughter, ain’t you?” he demanded of Sally Rose. “Visit
kin in Newburyport on occasion?”
Sally Rose smiled and dimpled. “Why, how clever of you to remember
me! Of course I’m Job Townsend’s daughter,” she said. “And I’m on my
way home from Newburyport right now. I’ve often told my cousin Kitty
here, about your tavern--there isn’t a better one in the whole of Essex
County.”
Strangely enough, the landlord was not smiling at Sally Rose, and he
ignored her compliment.
“We had a young fellow here a short time back. A young fellow who said
he hung around the Bay and Beagle some.”
He waited, his face expressionless, for Sally Rose to speak. In the
silence Kitty heard the rattle of dishes from the kitchen. She caught
the delicious odor of roast meat, the tang of crushed mint leaves.
Sally Rose’s smile grew no whit dimmer. “We’ve many young fellows who
hang around the Bay and Beagle,” she said. “My dad would go poor, if we
didn’t. They keep the till full. Did he tell you his name?”
The landlord spoke accusingly. “He said his name was Gerry Malory. He
said he was going to Newburyport to see a girl.”
Sally Rose shrugged her graceful shoulders. “Plenty of girls in
Newburyport,” she said.
“Do you know this Gerry Malory?”
“I might,” she answered cautiously. “Was he a dockyard hand now, or
maybe a farmer from Breed’s hill--”
“This one was took up for being a British officer,” said the
landlord grimly. “Took up, right here in my tavern. Irons put on his
wrists--part of an old ox chain I had--and he was took to the camp at
Cambridge under guard. Likely they’ll hang the damn redcoat. I hope
they do.”
Sally Rose’s smile looked a bit frozen, but it did not vanish away.
There was a tremor in her voice, but she spoke imperiously still. “All
very interesting, Landlord, but your daughter has undertaken to fetch
us a supper of spring lamb. We are tired with long riding, and if you
could ask her to be spry about it, we should be grateful. Our horses,
also, are at your door and in need of attention.”
She sat down and turned her back upon him.
Kitty watched the lame man shake his head. Then he stumped off toward
the kitchen. She looked again at her cousin, and Sally Rose’s eyes were
shining with more than the candlelight.
“He was coming to see me,” she murmured happily. “Gerry was coming to
see me when they caught him.”
Kitty felt her face twist in a frown and spoke her disapproval. “Which
he shouldn’t have been doing, of course. He belongs with the other
British in Boston. Well, he’s got himself in trouble now. A prisoner of
our men, and the landlord talked of hanging. Aren’t you worried about
him?”
Sally Rose took off her bonnet and shook back her shining hair. “Not
a little finger’s worth,” she said. “They won’t hold him long. He can
come and go like a breath of east wind, Gerry can. My, oh my”--and she
patted the front of her muslin gown--“I’m so hungry. I wish Nanny would
hurry and bring that spring lamb!”
* * * * *
Twenty-four hours later they were hungry again, much hungrier, and very
tired. But they were riding down Crooked Lane in Charlestown, with
the Bay and Beagle almost in sight, and over the river the lights of
Boston.
“My, it’s been a tiresome day,” sighed Sally Rose. “Losing my purse,
horse going lame, taking the wrong turn in Danvers--I don’t see how I
could have been so stupid as to do that.”
“The black flies were the worst,” complained Kitty. “I’m bitten in a
dozen places, I vow. And I don’t dare scratch the bites, for if I do,
I’ll look as if I had smallpox.”
She thought back over their long day’s riding: village greens with
white steeples--Wenham, Beverly, Salem; long stretches of salt marsh
with the sea beyond it; then Lynn and Malden, as the towns drew
closer in. It was already night when they came to Medford, and there
a constable had ridden with them through town, straight to the Penny
Ferry. Part of the great New England Army was camped on the hills about
and overflowing the streets and taverns, he said, and he feared for the
safety of young maids abroad so late. What were their folks thinking
of, anyway?
For once Sally Rose had been too tired to be charming. She bowed her
head meekly and accepted his rebuke. But her spirits rose as they left
river and causeway behind them and took a field path so as not to have
to pass the Sign of the Sun tavern where there were apt to be British
officers about.
“My, but Daddy will be surprised,” she said. “I want a glass of Spanish
wine and a meat pasty. And then, bed! Oh Kitty, think what it’ll be
like to have a featherbed under us again! I swear, I’ll roll and
wallow in it! Why--why here we are, and there aren’t any lights in the
windows!”
They drew up their horses uncertainly in the deserted street. All the
houses were dark around them, and the cloudy sky was dark overhead. A
lantern burned at the top of a pole a little way off, so that Kitty
could make out the weathered sign before her uncle’s tavern, the wooden
profile of a tall bay horse pawing the air, and at his feet a trim,
alert hunting dog. But as Sally Rose said, the diamond-shaped panes
were dark. Peering closer, however, she noticed some letters traced in
whitewash on the iron-bound door.
“Look, Sally Rose, there’s a sign, but I can’t read it,” she said.
They got down from their horses and walked closer. “Neither can I,”
said Sally Rose. She tried the door. It was locked tight.
“I know how to climb in by the buttery window,” she murmured, for once
a little crestfallen, “but I still want to know what is written on the
door. I wonder where Father can be. He always keeps late closing time.”
She stood irresolute a moment. Then she drew a quick breath as if
something pleased her, and ran down the street to the lantern swinging
on its pole. Reaching, stretching, pulling herself up, she managed to
lift it down and hurry back, holding it proudly aloft, flashing it on
the paneled door.
In the light that flared uncertainly behind the thin panes of horn, the
two cousins bent close and read aloud the words, “Closed. Gone to the
wars till the damn British be beat. J. Townsend.”
They stood still and looked at each other. A salt-smelling wind blew
down the old street, and a wisp of fog came with it. Fog was dimming
the lights of Boston, that even now, close to midnight, still burned
on the other side of the river. The lights looked unfriendly, Kitty
thought, as she remembered that Boston was in the hands of the enemy.
Down by the wharves men were shouting and the shouts had an angry
sound. A burst of musket fire broke out, somewhere off Medford way. The
girls looked at each other and shivered. They were hungry and tired and
fly-bitten. They were a little frightened, maybe.
“What will we do now?” asked Kitty. The tone reminded Sally Rose that
she was to blame for the plight they were in, even if the words did
not.
“I--don’t--quite know,” faltered Sally Rose. “We can get into the
house. We’ll have a roof over our heads, and a bed to sleep in. Maybe
there’s something to eat in the cupboard. We’ll be safe for tonight.
But it’s after that I’m thinking of. We can’t run the tavern alone,
without father, and how are we to live if we cannot run the tavern?”
“We could send for Gran,” said Kitty a little mockingly. “Of course
she’s a timid old lady, but I notice she’s able to do most everything
that comes her way. I’ll bet she’d be able to serve up cider, or rum
toddy, or hot grog--or whatever it is they drink.”
Suddenly Sally Rose was smiling again. “Kitty, that’s a wonderful plan.
Let’s climb into the house now, and have supper, and sleep forever.
When we wake up we’ll send her a letter by the first post. The buttery
window’s around here at the back, under the apple tree. Come along. I
can unfasten the catch, but you’ll have to hoist me in.”
_Chapter Eight_
SAVED BY A PIPE-SMOKING MAN
Standing in the wet salt grass at the end of Chelsea Neck, Tom Trask
shifted the old blunderbuss from one shoulder to the other.
“Wisht I had my own gun,” he said to himself. “I’d rather try to lug a
young pine tree, roots and all, than this critter here.”
Then he smiled sheepishly as he thought of the pretty girl who had
loaned him the aged weapon. She was a pretty girl, too. Likely he’d go
to her house and see her when he went down river with the logs next
spring. Guess she wouldn’t have any eyes for the Newburyport lads when
he was about. This fuss would all be over by then, and folks back where
they belonged, plowing their own ground.
He shivered with the cold that goes before sunrise and tried to peer
through the blackness and mist around him to see if the others were
getting as restless as he. There were three hundred or more of them,
New Hampshire and Massachusetts men, here where the Neck narrowed down.
Not a torch, not a lantern, General Putnam had warned, and if any man
felt the need of tobacco, let him cut plug and chew, like an old cow
with cud. It was worse than being lost in the devil’s pocket, but even
at that, it was better than sitting around camp playing cat’s-cradle,
like they’d been doing for the past month. A man could get gray
whiskers before his time, that way.
Some of the lads who came a-running so quick after Concord Fight had
got tired of the game and put for home already, but Tom hadn’t quite
been able to convince himself he ought to go along. No, so long as
Colonel Stark saw a reason to sit around waiting for the British to
jump, he guessed he, Tom Trask, could wait too. He himself hadn’t been
far from the camp at Medford, but he’d heard Boston was all ringed
round with Massachusetts and Connecticut men keeping the redcoats shut
up tight.
“Can you hear me, lads?” bellowed a gruff voice up ahead.
“Aye,” came a dozen shouts from the tall reeds around him, and an
equally gruff voice added, “Aye! We be listening all.”
“Volunteers! Old Put wants volunteers!” roared the first speaker.
“There’ll be an officer come amongst you. There’ll be....” His voice
grew fainter as he turned to deliver his message in another direction,
but the words still sounded plain.
Tom put his blunderbuss down and leaned on it. He spoke to the man who
stood in the marsh grass just ahead of him.
“Got any idea what this is about?” he asked.
The other man took his time in answering. He was older, Tom sensed, and
more heavily built. In the silence they heard shouting and the rattle
of musket fire. A ship’s gun flashed on the dark waters of Chelsea
Creek.
“Yea--a,” said the man slowly. “I was down by the ferry stage awhile
back.”
“Was there fighting there?”
“Fighting there was. The British ships firing at us, and our men
waist-deep in water shooting back--even the General himself, Old Put.”
“Did you hear what the volunteers be for?”
“Maybe. You haven’t been here all along? You’re one o’ the reserves who
come in late last night? One o’ Stark’s men?”
“Aye. One o’ Stark’s men, and proud of it.”
The man was chewing tobacco, Tom’s keen nose told him. He spat suddenly
into the reeds, his own mouth tasting rancid.
“Likely some day you may have something to be proud of. You done no
more yet than anyone else, as I can see.”
Tom ignored the rebuke. “Volunteers now,” he murmured. “If I knew what
’twas about, likely I might take a notion to go.”
“Likely they wouldn’t want you,” sneered the older man. “If I was
Putnam--which I ain’t--I’d give the job to one o’ the Essex County
boys.”
“Why?”
“Because ’tis a seafaring operation, of a sort, and there be none like
the Essex men for maneuvers at sea.”
The firing from the river was steady now.
“Maybe,” said Tom. “What is this operation that takes such a picked
crew? I never see salt water yet will fight a man as hard as old
Merrimack when the freshets come down.”
“Volunteers!” sang out a voice nearby. A man, bareheaded, wearing a
torn brown coat, stood before them holding a carefully shielded lantern
in his hand.
“Eleven picked men I got. I need one more.”
“Twelve men, you got,” said Tom, shouldering his blunderbuss. “Where do
I go?”
The man held up his lantern so that the dim light shone on his new
recruit.
“Built for it, you be,” he said after a moment. “Long, and lean, and
tough, by the look of you. Are you tough, lad?”
“Tougher’n a biled owl,” said Tom imperturbably.
“Can you swim?”
“Like a muskrat.”
The man grinned. “What’s your trade?”
“I’m a timber man. Floating logs downstream out of the Hampshire woods
is my trade.”
“Good! Come along then. Down by the water. Ike Baldwin has charge o’
the action, and he’s gathered his men there.”
Tom followed as he was bidden, down a rough path to the border of
Chelsea Creek. Looking over his shoulder once, he saw in the sky a long
streak of sunrise, salmon and silver-gray.
The Neck ended in a narrow strip of shaly beach, and as Tom moved out
of the protecting reeds he drew his head down turtle-fashion. A British
ball whined past him, and then another. Half an hour now, and it would
be broad daylight. Whatever this seafaring operation was, they’d
better get it over, and soon. Then a little group of men loomed up in
the thinning mist ahead of him. Eight, nine, he counted, most of them
no older than he. They were stripped to the waist and unarmed, save
for their leader, a stalwart man in a blue coat and knee breeches who
leaned on a musket. Tom and his guide approached the group.
“Here’s your twelfth, Ike,” said the brown-coated man. “Swims like a
muskrat, tougher’n a biled owl, and is used to riding log rafts down
the Merrimack. Think he’ll do.”
Ike cleared his throat and spat into the water lapping gently along
the beach. “Have to, now,” he said. “We’ll be sitting ducks in fifteen
minutes more. Cal and ’Lisha’s gone for a keg of pitch.” He turned to
Tom. “You one o’ Stark’s men?”
“Aye. Tom Trask of Derryfield.”
“Good. Get rid of your gun and strip down.”
Tom looked around and found an outcrop of ledge where he thought he
could probably leave the blunderbuss in safety. Then he peeled off his
hunting shirt. British mortar fire still droned overhead--too high; he
had heard back in camp that the British usually shot that way. As he
shook his hands free from the loose sleeves and flung the garment down,
he lifted his head and looked at the man nearest to him. Then a wry
smile twisted his mouth.
“I think I seen you before,” he said.
The other lad peered through the thinning mist, then his eyes widened
in recognition and he smiled.
“Aye,” he answered jauntily. “Last time I seen you, you was playing
hide-and-seek. You grown up yet, I wonder?”
“There was others playing it, too,” retorted Tom.
“Yes, others. Kitty Greenleaf, you’ll likely remember.”
“Kitty Greenleaf! So that’s her name. I never did know the whole of it.
Promised her I’d call by and see her, if I ever happened back that way.”
“Don’t take the trouble. Kitty’s closer now. She’s in Charlestown with
her cousin, Sally Rose. I went home to get some clean shirts and a
better gun, and ’twas there I heard it.”
“In Charlestown?” asked Tom in surprise. “Charlestown’s not held to be
very safe these days. ’Tis thought the British may strike at us from
there. I heard there be only a couple hundred people left in the town,
and most of the women sent away.”
“I heard so, too. But Sally Rose took a notion to go home and nothing
would stop her, so Kitty went along. I ain’t got over there yet to see
them, but I mean to. I heard Granny Greenleaf went legging after them,
mad as time.”
Tom laughed in spite of himself as he remembered the thin old voice
quavering excitedly, “Stop, thief, stop!”
“Maybe I’ll just go along with you, when you do go,” he said. “What’s
your name now? Eben, was it?”
“Eben! No! You’re thinking of Eben Poore. He’s naught but a foolish
little lad. I be Johnny Pettengall.”
“So,” said Tom. In the river ahead of him he could see two low green
islands getting plainer every minute as the mist cleared away. “Well,
Johnny, for old times’ sake then, tell me what’s afoot and what are we
down here for?”
Johnny’s face brightened and his voice grew eager, now that he was
intent again on the business in hand.
“Likely, being a New Hampshire man, you come in with Stark’s reserves
last night.”
“No. I wasn’t detailed to go--nor to stay, either. Couldn’t sleep, and
long in the night sometime, I thought I’d just wander this way.”
“I been here all along. We was sent over to Noddle’s Island yesterday
to drive the cattle off. Farmers who pasture there have been selling
beef to the British. We’d cleared off Noddle, burned the house of one
man who resisted, and was on our way back across Hog Island, when a
sloop and a schooner sailed close in. Fired on us, they did, and o’
course we answered back.”
“O’ course,” agreed Tom.
“Been firing ever since, except for the schooner--the _Diana_, she is,
one of our men said who recognized her. She’s run aground and been
abandoned. It’s her we’re going out to burn.”
Tom looked where the other lad pointed. Sure enough, there in the gray
light, not very far from shore, rode a two-masted schooner, listing
badly to one side. Her foresail hung in long streamers that stirred as
the morning wind blew through them. Her colors had been shot away, and
the lower side of her deck was all awash with sea.
“All right, boys!” Ike Baldwin straightened them to attention with his
command. “Here’s Cal and ’Lisha with the pitch. Now we can go.”
Two young men, dark-haired and muscular, came panting up with a heavy
keg between them, swung in a cradle of stout rope. Baldwin went on,
speaking rapidly.
“Cal and ’Lisha will tow the pitch out to the schooner. Got that now?”
General murmurs of assent passed among the little group.
“Aye,” murmured Johnny brightly, like a smart lad repeating catechism.
Tom inclined his head and chewed nervously at a bit of grass he had
picked up somewhere. It had a rank salty taste. He wished he knew
exactly what he was supposed to do.
“The rest of you ain’t going along for the swim, remember,” the
relentless orders went on. “You’re there to help get the pitch aboard
and spread it around on whatever parts of her is driest and most likely
to burn. Don’t want her to go back into British service again. Don’t
want the British to think they can come shooting amongst us any time
they choose without having to pay.”
He stood still for a moment, in a defiant attitude, waiting for his
words to take effect.
“How we going to kindle the pitch, Ike?” asked a voice at the rear of
the group. “Flints and tinderboxes’ll be wetter’n a drowned cat ’fore
we get there.”
Isaac Baldwin frowned. Then his face cleared and he waved a nonchalant
hand. “Likely there’ll be a cookfire in the galley,” he said. “She
ain’t been abandoned long. Likely you’ll find a tinderbox there--or
somewhere else aboard. Her crew must ha’ had some means to light a
fire.”
“Maybe,” said Tom. He stood thoughtfully for a moment, wondering how
much time he would have before Ike Baldwin ordered them into the water.
It would take a few minutes, the thing he wanted to do.
Luck was with him, for Baldwin bent over just then to speak with Cal
and ’Lisha who were tightening the cradle ropes about the keg. He
looked up the hill in the direction he had come, then back at the creek
again. Out beyond the stranded _Diana_, the guns of the sloop were
still firing harmlessly away. After a moment of indecision, he turned
and ran up the hill.
He found the man he had been talking to a short time before, seated now
on a tuft of marsh grass, his gun beside him. He was just in the act of
filling a pipe, as Tom had gambled he would be. The New Hampshire man
loped up and accosted him.
“You with that pipe there!”
The man did not look up. His fingers moved leisurely with flints and
tinder. He lit the pipe, drew on it deeply, then took it from his mouth
and asked, “Was you speaking to me?”
“Yes. General Putnam gave out the word there was to be no smoking
amongst the men. He sent me to collect every pipe I found lighted. Like
this.”
Tom’s hand reached forth lightning quick and snatched the pipe from its
owner’s startled jaws. Then he sprinted off, down the Neck.
“Hey! Give me back my pipe!” yelled the man, scrambling to his feet,
his arms flailing the air. “Them orders against pipes was night orders
only. It’s safe enough, now day’s come.”
“Tell it to General Putnam,” called Tom over his shoulder. He did not
slow his pace until he reached the beach. Cal and ’Lisha had waded out
waist-deep, floating the keg between them. The others plunged in now,
and began swimming toward the schooner. Their officer laid his musket
down and shed his clothes, obviously intending to follow them, like a
shepherd after his sheep.
Tom stood still, put the pipe in his mouth, and took a pull on it.
Great Jehovah, it tasted worse than sulphur and molasses that the old
women dosed you with in the spring. It tasted worse than wormwood and
bear’s grease, worse than dragonroot tea. Ike Baldwin stepped into the
water now, and Tom followed at a little distance. By and by he felt
the river floor sloping away under his feet, but he managed to keep on
wading, though the others launched forth and swam. He held his head
high and his neck still, and kept puffing on the pipe. The schooner was
only a little way off, stranded in shallow water, but it seemed to Tom
as if he would never get there, with the ill-smelling wooden bowl and
its little treasure of fire. Maybe they wouldn’t need it, he thought,
but if they did they would need it bad, and he meant to have it on hand.
Once a British ball struck close by, throwing up a shower of spray that
left him shaken and half blinded, but he kept puffing away at the pipe
and forged steadily ahead. Then another ball struck even closer. The
British were finding the range, he thought. They must have realized
what their opponents meant to do.
When he reached the schooner, she was so sharply tilted that he found
it as easy to climb aboard her as it would have been to swarm up a
sloping beach. The other lads were there ahead of him, busy spreading
pitch on a pile of canvas mattresses and hammocks fetched up from the
sleeping quarters below, spreading it on the dry parts of the deck
above water line.
A brisk wind sang through the _Diana’s_ broken rigging. It struck cold
on Tom’s bare shoulders and drove the last of the mist away. Sounds of
firing came from the British sloop, but he forgot the sloop. He cupped
his hands about the pipe bowl to shelter its living contents from the
wind. He took a long puff.
“So this is the way Stark trains his lads!” Isaac Baldwin’s voice
lashed out at him. He turned sharply and looked into the grim, angry
face of their leader.
Tom took the pipe cautiously from his mouth. “’T hasn’t got nothing to
do with Stark,” he said.
“If this were a regular engagement, you could be court-martialed.
Smoking a pipe! Skulking here smoking a pipe! Look at the other lads!”
Tom stared miserably at the busy group who were still heaping up
whatever inflammables they could find. Then he put the pipe back in his
mouth and gave another dogged puff.
“Here! Give me that!” Livid with rage, Ike Baldwin made a grab for the
pipe.
Tom put one hand up before his face and ducked away. The deck under
his feet was worn by the tramp of many men, and it was slippery with
morning dew. He fell, half recovered himself, and then went down on his
knees, his teeth still clamped to the pipestem.
From the hatchway that led below came confused cries.
“Oh, Captain! Tell the Captain there’s not a spark aboard her! Galley
fire’s been put out and the ashes raked over! Not a flint! Not a
tinderbox! How’s to have a burning without fire?”
Tom felt his pulses quicken. It was as if there were shooting sparks
of triumph in his blood. His guess had been right, then. He lifted his
head. Baldwin had turned away, having greater troubles now.
“There must be flints somewhere,” he exclaimed crustily. “Have you
searched the officers’ quarters? The mess cabin? The hold?”
“Aye, sir. Everywhere.”
Tom got to his feet and looked around him. The men were standing idle
now, about the heap of mattresses. They looked bewildered and--well,
not afraid--uneasy, maybe. Turning his head a little, he saw the green
shores of Hog Island with Noddle’s Island just beyond it, and far
beyond that, the roofs of Boston touched with the morning sun. In the
foreground hovered the British sloop. Her guns were silent now, but her
sails were spread and she seemed to be drawing close. Perhaps this was
the time for him to speak.
“Give me that pipe!” Isaac Baldwin’s command had a different tone to
it this time. Before he had been angry and somewhat scornful. Now his
voice was full of eagerness, quick and keen.
Tom took the pipe from his mouth. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I thought we
might need it, sir. That’s why I brought it along. I--I’m not much of a
smoking man.”
“Good boy,” said Isaac Baldwin.
He walked quickly across the deck, knelt down, and ripped a bit of tow
from a mattress, testing the dryness of it with his fingers. Then he
placed it lightly across the bowl of the pipe.
The other men were holding their breaths as they looked on. Tom
watched, too, but he felt a strange dizziness coming over him, so he
went and clung to the rail.
At first nothing happened. Then it was as if the tow began to melt
away. Ike held a larger piece of tow above the first one--a fluffed-out
piece. Suddenly the fluff burst into open flame. Someone started to
cheer and quickly choked the sound back. From the fluff, Ike lighted a
still larger piece of tow and dropped that on the heap of bedding. The
men watched, fascinated. First one little tongue of flame leaped up and
then another. Then a tiny roaring sound began, growing louder every
moment.
When he saw that there was a splendid bonfire a-going, Tom turned to
the rail and hung weakly overside. He knew now that his trick had
worked and the British schooner would soon be a seething mass of
flame. Soon his comrades, their mission accomplished, would be leaping
overside and swimming back to Chelsea Neck. When that time came, he
knew, he would straighten himself up and go with them, but right now
there was a rancid taste in his mouth and the smell of burning pitch in
his nostrils. He’d had enough of pipe-smoking to last him a lifetime,
and he didn’t feel very well--in fact, he didn’t feel well at all.
_Chapter Nine_
NO CLOUDS ON BUNKER HILL
“Never expected to see you keeping a public house, Ma’am
Greenleaf--leastwise, not one with a strong drink license.”
Old Timothy Coffin’s voice had disapproval in it, Kitty thought, as she
turned from the small oak bar where she was polishing glasses. The warm
June sunshine struck through the diamond-shaped panes and lay in pools
of light with rainbow edges on the sanded floor, on the worn tables and
benches. A gentle breeze stirred the tall hollyhock stems outside the
window. Sally Rose was weeding the hollyhocks--or supposed to be. Now
that Gran had come to take charge, there was a task for everyone.
“You’re a-going to see a deal of things you never expected to see,”
said Gran tartly. She was seated by the hearth shelling peas, while
Timothy swept the tiles with a birch broom.
“Happen you’re right, Ma’am,” agreed the old man. “Never expected to
see the King’s men shooting at us--and we going to meeting, praying for
the King, all the while.”
“Yes, it’s a strange state of affairs, Timothy,” answered Gran. Her
voice had turned suddenly thoughtful, and her fingers played idly with
the empty pods as she stared through the open door at the empty house
across the way.
Kitty looked at the empty house, too. Most of the houses in Charlestown
were empty now, and scarcely any women left in the town at all. The
men came back sometimes to cut hay and weed their gardens, but they
had sent their families away to the inland towns, and swore they would
leave them there till this fuss with the British soldiers was ended,
one way or another.
This was bad for business, of course. Here it was, nearly ten o’clock
of a fine hot Tuesday morning, sixth of June by the almanac, and she
hadn’t served a single customer.
Everything seemed to be set up in terms of this “fuss,” nowadays.
For instance, she and Gran and Sally Rose living here in Charlestown
and running the Bay and Beagle, while Uncle Job was away with the
Massachusetts troops somewhere. Not knowing they were here, thinking
Sally Rose was safe in Newburyport, he hadn’t come home. Then when Gran
came to join them, hopping mad at the trick Sally Rose had played, she
brought Dick Moody and Timothy along to do the men’s work about the
place. They hadn’t stayed in camp long, for Dick was young and couldn’t
shoot well enough, and Timothy was old, and his bones creaked. But all
they wanted to talk about was the camp and the goings-on there. But
they didn’t call it a “fuss” like Gran did. They called it a war. And
that had a much more important and terrible sound.
War was terrible, Kitty knew, so terrible that it couldn’t be going to
happen right here in front of her eyes, to people she knew, maybe to
herself--not really.
Dick came in from the backyard with an armful of wood and stacked it
carefully beside the hearth. Then he stood silent and respectful,
looking at Granny.
Dick had grown taller, Kitty thought, and next time he went to camp,
as he threatened to do every day or so, it wasn’t likely they’d send
him home for being too young. Sometimes he and Timothy went to the
cow pasture at the foot of Bunker Hill and practiced a little with
Timothy’s gun--not much, though, because they didn’t want to waste
powder and ball. Suddenly she realized Dick was speaking. He looked at
her, but he addressed himself to Granny.
“I thank you for bringing me down here, near where I wanted to be. But
I’m quitting your service now, Ma’am Greenleaf.”
“Oh, go get yourself a slice of bread and molasses, and you’ll think
better of it,” said Granny. “You can put maple sugar on it, too,” she
added.
Dick’s face grew red, and his young voice had an unfamiliar harshness
in it. “You’ve fed me well enough, Ma’am. It’s not on account of the
food and wages I’m leaving.”
“What is it then, and what do you think to do?” asked Gran, with an air
of rapidly exhausting patience.
“Up the Mystic a ways--in one o’ the swamps there--some men from
Gloucester are building fire boats. I been in the ship-building trade.
They said I could help them.”
“Fire boats!” Granny tried to laugh, but there was no merriment in the
noise she made. It sounded like a cackle. “And what do you think to do
with fire boats, pray?”
“Why, what do most folk do with fire? Burn something. Maybe one o’ the
British schooners, or men-o’-war, even. Maybe burn Boston, for all I
know. Whatever our orders say.”
“You can’t burn Boston,” retorted Granny severely. “Boston don’t belong
to the British soldiery. Houses and shops and all belongs to Americans,
as good as you be. True, they’ve most of them fled from it now, but
they’ll be back some day--when this fuss is over, and God send that
happen right soon. Now whatever is that drum a-beating for?” She held
up her head and listened. “I’ve heard fife and drum music enough to
last me a long time.”
“You’ll hear more of it before you hear less, Ma’am,” muttered Timothy.
Dick hurried to the door and stared up the road that led to the Neck,
from which the sound came. Kitty went to stand beside him.
“Are you really going back to be with the Army, Dick?” she asked, in
one of the brief pauses between the slow beats of the drum.
Dick cleared his throat. “Seems like I have to,” he murmured. “Would
it matter to you, Kit, if I--” His voice broke off, and his hand just
brushed her shoulder.
“Oh Kitty! Kitty!” cried Sally Rose as she came flying down the street,
her bright hair loose on her shoulders and her cheeks flushed with
excitement. “They’re bringing the prisoners! There’s going to be an
exchange! Perhaps Gerry will be in it!”
She dropped down on the broad doorstone and sat there, trying to get
back her breath.
“How do you know?” asked Dick quickly. He was not looking at Sally
Rose, but up the winding street that led to Charlestown Neck and the
towns beyond it on the mainland.
Kitty looked, too. Down the narrow way between the gabled houses came a
slowly moving procession. First the drummer stepped out, a scrawny lad
not much taller than Dick. He walked all alone, beating a brass-bound
drum, and behind him followed a black horse drawing a phaeton with two
men in it. After the phaeton rode two British officers on horseback.
She could see nothing more at the moment because of a crook in the
street. A little crowd was beginning to gather in the direction of
Market Square. Sally Rose finally got back her breath and answered
Dick’s question.
“When I heard the drum I ran down to Mr. Bassett’s wine shop. He’s back
in town, you know, to cut his hay on the Point Road, and I asked him
what was happening. He said he heard--”
The drummer had come even with the Bay and Beagle now, and his steady
beating drowned out the girl’s excited voice. Sally Rose stopped
talking and got to her feet. She and Dick and Kitty stood together in
the tavern doorway and watched the slow procession advance and pass
close by them.
The two men who rode in the phaeton behind the drummer were in odd
contrast to each other, and yet there was the same air of dignity and
purpose enveloping both of them. One was old--not so old as Timothy,
but not young any more. He was broad-shouldered and sturdy and had a
round, good-natured face and a shock of tousled gray hair. He wore a
blue uniform. His companion was younger, fair-haired and blue-eyed,
with a ruddy face and a fresh, scrubbed look about him. He was not a
soldier, apparently, for his coat was fawn-colored with a white-fringed
waistcoat underneath.
“That’s Old Put,” said Timothy proudly, for he and Gran had come to
stand just behind them. “See! In the blue coat there! General Putnam.
His wife must ha’ sent him his uniform.”
“Why would she have to do that?” asked Gran tartly. “Wouldn’t go off to
war without it, would he?”
Timothy chuckled. “That’s just what he done! When he heard about
Concord Fight, he was building a stone wall on his farm away down in
Connecticut. But he come just as he was, in leather breeches and apron.
Got here at next day’s sunrise, they say.”
“I guess there was others got here just as quick as he did,” answered
Gran. “Yourself for one.” She peered over Kitty’s shoulder. “Who be
that by his side?”
“That’s Dr. Warren. Best damn man, I say, that ever come out o’
Boston. Don’t know how General Ward would run Cambridge Camp without
him. Figures out how to get supplies, and men, and money, and all. He’s
got book learning and can talk to anybody. More’n that, he’s a good
doctor.”
“Where are the prisoners, I wonder?” asked Sally Rose.
Kitty nudged her, and she subsided.
After the phaeton came two British officers, splendid in white
and scarlet, and riding sleek horses; then another officer in a
chaise; then a handful of officers on foot. They were escorted by a
blue-uniformed guard that Timothy said looked to him like Connecticut
men. By now the drummer had turned into Ferry Street, heading for the
wharves at the waterside. Here and there stood a little cluster of
men, here and there a woman’s head appeared at a gable window, but the
spectators were few. At the very end of the procession a farm cart
rattled along, drawn by two plow horses. A group of men sprawled on
the floor of it, men in tattered British uniforms, pale and unshaven,
unable to walk, apparently, because of wounds or illness. They looked
so forlorn and miserable that Kitty felt tears start to her eyes.
“Oh,” she whispered to Sally Rose, “I’m sorry for the poor lads. I
don’t care if they are British.”
“If they hadn’t come out shooting at us, they wouldn’t be in this
pickle now,” growled Timothy. “Wonder where is our boys we’re supposed
to get back in the exchange.”
“Mr. Bassett says they’re aboard the _Lively_,” said Sally Rose.
“Oh--oh--Kitty--” She clapped her hand over her mouth.
For a moment Kitty did not see anything to exclaim about. The cart full
of prisoners trundled slowly by. Close beside it walked a young man in
a rough woolen shirt and homespun breeches. He carried a knapsack, and
a large wooden bottle was slung from his shoulder by a leather strap.
Just then the procession halted a moment. Up ahead, the drummer turned
down Ferry Street on his way to the docks to meet the boats from the
_Lively_. The phaeton bent its wheels sharply to round the corner. In
the pause the young man unstoppered the wooden bottle and held it over
the side of the cart so one of the prisoners could drink. The rear
guard, another group of blue-coated Connecticut men, halted too. They
were apparently the last of the procession.
Kitty glanced again at her cousin. Sally Rose stood up proud and
smiling. The long lashes about her hazel eyes flickered provocatively.
Sally Rose was watching the young man with the bottle. For that reason,
and that reason alone, Kitty looked closer at him herself.
He turned just then and smiled at them. He had dark hair, she saw, and
deep-set blue eyes. My, he was certainly handsome! Living all her life
in Newburyport, she hadn’t realized how many handsome men there were
in the world--drifting down the Merrimack on a log raft, walking the
road that ran past Bunker Hill. They were everywhere, now that she had
suddenly grown up enough to look at them. Sally Rose had always known.
Sally Rose was born grown up.
She cast a sudden look at Dick, and knew instinctively that she would
never kiss him good night again, or if she did, it would be with a
difference. Their kissing days were over. Dick was an old friend now,
and only that. Never again would he stir in her that strange tremulous
feeling that went with a new moon and apple blossoms and the first warm
nights of spring. She knew, but she did not know how it was that she
knew.
The young man in the leather breeches was still smiling. He lifted his
hand, oh so slightly, and motioned toward the docks. Then the cart
wheels began to turn again, and the procession plodded on. The little
group around the door of the Bay and Beagle watched until the last
straggler was out of sight.
“Well, that’s over,” said Gran briskly, “It’s well past noon, and I
expect we’ll have custom. If you’re leaving us, Master Dick, you might
as well be off, and good luck to you--the same as I’d wish to the son
of any neighbor. Timothy, you better bring up another keg of brandy
from the cellar. You can tend the taps for awhile, Kitty, and Sally
Rose--why, where is Sally Rose?”
They called and called and searched the bedrooms and the attic and the
back garden, but the girl was nowhere to be found. Dick left, after a
bit, taking his spare shirt with him, a small ham, and a hunting knife
proffered by Timothy. The old man went on his errand to the cellar,
and Kitty returned to polishing glasses. A few men drifted in to drink
beer and cider and talk about the exchange of prisoners. Gran muttered
a few dark words about the flightiness of the younger generation and
went into the kitchen to put the bread to rise and make pease porridge
for supper. Bread and beer and pease porridge folk had to have, thought
Kitty, no matter if wars came about, and handsome young men went out to
be killed in them, and girls grew up all too late.
* * * * *
Trade got brisker during the long hot afternoon, and Kitty was kept
busy filling mugs and glasses. She learned from the talk of the men who
happened in that the British prisoners had been sent out by boat to
the great, threatening man-o’-war that swung at anchor in the channel,
halfway to Boston. The officers in charge of the business had all come
into town to take some refreshment and expected shortly to return to
the dock to receive the American lads whose delivery would complete the
exchange. Everything had been conducted in an orderly and courteous
fashion.
Gradually the excitement died down. Gran put on her second best straw
bonnet and went out to look for Sally Rose. Timothy had trouble getting
the brandy keg up the cellar stairs. Bees droned loudly in the
hollyhocks, and gulls cried from the harbor. Slowly the sun moved over
to the westward side of the roofs and gables. It was a summer afternoon
like any other summer afternoon.
And then, all of a sudden, Sally Rose was back. She slipped in quietly,
like a shadow. On her face was that cat-stealing-cream look that fitted
her so well. She went straight to the kitchen.
Kitty hastily served a waiting customer, that same Mr. Bassett who had
come back to Charlestown to cut his hay, and then she followed her
cousin. Sally Rose stood by the water bucket, the dipper lifted to her
mouth. She drank thirstily.
“My, that tastes good,” she said, licking her wet red lips. “It was hot
down by the dockside. Not a sea breeze anywhere.”
“You’ve been to the docks?” asked Kitty curiously.
“Of course. Didn’t you see Gerry wave to me to follow him?”
“Gerry?”
“Oh, of course, Kit!” Sally Rose’s voice had a ring of impatience in
it. “I tried to make signs to you. I thought by the look of your face
you understood me. You were surely staring at him.”
“Staring at whom?”
“Oh Kitty! You saw him! Gerry was the lad in the homespun breeches who
marched beside the prisoners’ cart. He was the only one able to walk,
and so he had to wait on them.”
“But--but that lad--he looked like an American. His clothes--I
thought--”
“Of course! Gerry was pretending to be an American when we captured
him. That’s why he was looking so shabby. You should see him in his
captain’s uniform! He’s been kept in a tent in Cambridge--a tent made
of old sailcloth that the rain came through, and guards all around
him. But he was exchanged this afternoon. I went down to the dock
and talked to him while the boats were putting off. He’s gone safe to
his own regiment in Boston now. But he says he’ll come back to see
me--another day.”
“That’s nice,” said Kitty. “That’s very nice indeed.”
She felt cross suddenly. It must be the heat, or because she had been
working so hard, or because she had forgotten to eat any dinner. It
might be the outrageous behavior of Sally Rose. There are many ways to
explain such a thing.
“And you know he said ...” Sally Rose rattled on.
Suddenly there was a hoarse cry from the cellar stairs--a burst of
strong language, then a deep groan of pain. The girls looked at each
other.
“Oh, it’s Timothy!” gasped Kit. “He was trying to bring up a brandy
keg. He must have fallen.”
The groans continued. She ran to the head of the cellar stairs and
looked down. Sure enough, the old man lay on the dank earth that served
for a flooring, the heavy keg on top of his right foot, his left leg
bent beneath him.
“We’re coming, Timothy,” she called. “We’ll help you.”
She gazed desperately around the taproom, but it was empty. The last
customer had gone. Again she and Sally Rose stood looking at each other.
“He’ll need a doctor,” murmured Kitty. “He’s sure to need a doctor.
Whether there’s one left in town or not, I don’t know.”
Suddenly her cousin’s face lighted. “Of course there’s one in town,”
she cried. “Timothy himself pointed one out. That kind-looking man who
rode in the phaeton with Old Put. Dr. Warren of Boston.”
“Oh--of course I remember. But he’ll be dining with the British
officers. He’s an important official, I think, like a minister or a
judge. He was wearing a fine coat, Sally Rose. He won’t want to leave
his wine and go down in a dirty cellar to tend a poor old man.”
“You can’t tell,” said Sally Rose. “You can’t tell at all. He looked
kind. I’m going to try to find him.” She ran through the doorway.
Kitty stepped gingerly down the cellar stairs to see if she could help
the old man. He could only moan and grunt and utter inarticulate sounds
when she tried to talk to him, but she managed to roll the heavy cask
off his foot and drag him into a sitting position against the roots of
the massive chimney. It seemed hours before she heard footsteps on the
floor overhead, but later she realized it could not have been very long.
A moment later the fair-haired doctor in his neat coat and breeches
stepped nimbly down the stairway. Four of the blue-coated Connecticut
lads swarmed after.
Dr. Warren looked around him in the dim light, at the cobwebbed depths
of the cellar: at the empty vegetable bins waiting for this year’s
harvest, the shelves of preserves and jellies in stone crocks, the
casks that held the stock in trade of the tavern above. He smiled
briefly at Kitty, then he went down on his knees on the earth floor.
“A bad mishap, Timothy,” he said, bending over the old man. There was a
note of cheery courage in his voice. Kitty felt it, and she knew that
Timothy felt it too. The old man spoke weakly.
“Aye, sir. All the brandy in the house be not in that blasted keg
there. Have the lass to fetch me a swig, if you will, sir.”
Kitty did not need to be told again. She ran upstairs to fetch a glass
of brandy. When she came back, the doctor had cut Timothy’s boot away
and bared the flesh beneath it. He shook his head, and there was a
sober look on his face.
“’Tis somewhat crushed I fear. Drink up your brandy, sir, and I will
patch it as best I can. Then the lads will carry you upstairs--where
there should be a bed waiting.” He looked questioningly at Kitty.
“There will be,” she assured him tremulously. “I spoke to my cousin,
Sally Rose. She’s getting it ready.”
She held the brandy glass to Timothy’s mouth, and the old man sipped
feebly. Sometimes he flinched, as the doctor worked at the broken foot,
reshaping it, applying splints and bandages. He did not utter a word,
but his breath came in painful gasps, and he was shivering. The young
soldiers stood looking on.
Dr. Warren talked as he worked, hoping, perhaps, to distract the old
man’s attention.
“Well, sir,” he said, “to tell you the truth, sir, I was glad enough
when the young lady came to fetch me here. I was in the act of
quarreling with Old Put as we partook of a roast goose and glasses
of claret. Somehow, in spite of the present triumph of more cautious
gentlemen, I fear the General may yet have his way.”
Timothy grinned faintly. “I be sorry for ye,” he whispered, “if ye
quarreled with Old Put.”
“Yes, and I felt I was getting the worst of it, though it seems that
at the moment all the greatest powers in our Great American Army be
on my side. Steady, Timothy! This will take but a minute. There! As I
was saying, the whole camp has been in an uproar the past month, as to
whether or not we should fortify Bunker Hill and make a stand against
the British there. Some say we must fight them, and it better be soon
rather than late. Old Put and Prescott go with that way of thinking.”
“Fortify Bunker Hill?” whispered Timothy manfully through his pain.
“Why, that be close by!”
“Very close,” said the doctor. “General Ward and I have talked much
about it. I have been housed at his Cambridge headquarters of late,
where I can easily visit the Provincial Congress in Watertown. He and
I think our men are not yet ready to make a stand. We are against such
an incautious display of valor. Later, perhaps, but not until we have a
better equipped and conditioned army.”
“I wisht,” muttered Timothy, “I had displayed less incautious valor
with that brandy keg. In God’s mercy, I do, sir.”
Dr. Warren tightened the last bandage and got to his feet.
“Take him up carefully, lads,” he said, “and carry him above stairs.
The little golden-head will show you where.”
Kitty thought fleetingly that even the great doctor had been enough
like common men so that he had an eye for the beauty of Sally Rose. She
had hardly noticed what he said about a battle on Bunker Hill.
But she thought about it later when she was standing at the tavern door
in the hot dusk, looking past the roofs of Charlestown at the green
countryside rising behind it. Gran was at home now, alternately tending
Timothy and scolding Sally Rose. The doctor and the soldiers had long
since gone, and the exchange of prisoners was probably complete.
Bunker Hill rose smooth and round and green. Breed’s Hill, not so tall,
was nearer the point, and the third hill, away to the southeast, she
could not see. The hills were criss-crossed with rail fences and stone
walls, divided into orchards, gardens, and pasture land. Daisies and
buttercups bloomed all white and gold in the hayfields. The locust
trees rose tall, and the elm trees taller. Hard green fruit clung to
the apple boughs, and tassels were coming on the stalks of Indian corn.
Gulls cried from the harbor, and a bat swooped down from the eaves
above her head, and darted off, winging its way from side to side of
the crooked street.
Away to the eastward a low-lying cloud bank merged with the dim sea.
There were clouds in the west, too, and thickening round the hills and
steeples of Boston. But over Bunker Hill the sky was clear, lighted
with one pale star. She took it to be a good omen--that there would be
no battle there.
It seemed to Kitty the most peaceful landscape she had ever seen in her
life. And yet, the talk was, “Fortify Bunker Hill! Make a stand against
the British there!” She was glad Dr. Warren did not favor it, and she
hoped he would have his way. She thought maybe she would have liked the
young man by the prisoners’ cart, if she had ever come to know him. But
then, she had never dreamed that he was not an American. And he had
turned out to be her cousin’s British Gerry. He probably wouldn’t have
looked so handsome to her if he had been wearing his red coat.
_Chapter Ten_
A TRYST WITH THE ENEMY
“But what makes you so sure he will be there, Sally Rose,” asked Kitty,
“if you haven’t had any word?”
She was curled up in the middle of the four-poster bed which she shared
with her cousin. Sally Rose sat at the dressing table. A candle burned
at each side of the mirror, and she was studying her reflection in its
glass. She wore nothing but a thin cambric shift, and her feet were
bare.
“He told me he would come in a week’s time, if not before. He promised
it wouldn’t be more than that. When he got aboard the boat to go to the
_Lively_, he promised me.”
Kitty stared past Sally Rose’s golden head into the dark street. Their
bedroom was over the kitchen, and she could hear Gran’s brisk footsteps
trotting about below. Gran was roasting mutton to feed tomorrow’s
customers, but she had sent the girls upstairs to get their beauty
sleep.
“I’ve slipped out to our old meeting place in the graveyard every
night, but he was never there,” she went on. “But tonight it’s Tuesday
again, so he has to be. He just has to be there tonight.” She pulled
on a pair of delicate thread stockings, and thrust her feet into
high-heeled slippers with roses on the toes.
Kitty eyed them disapprovingly. “As I remember the old graveyard, it’s
full of holes and hummocks,” she said. “You’ll trip and fall in those
shoes, if you go walking there.”
“I don’t expect to do much walking,” said Sally Rose.
Then a mischievous light shone out of her hazel eyes. “Kitty! Wait till
you see what I bought today. The shops are full of bargains, with all
the Tories gone out of town. You’ll have to help me, I think.”
She scurried to the clothespress, reached inside it, and brought out
the most hideous contraption Kitty had ever seen. It was a pair of
stays, she supposed, but what a pair! A long cruel case of whalebone
and stiff buckram, high in the back, very low in the front, pinched
and pointed like the body of some vicious insect. That it was covered
with white velvet and sewn with brilliants did not make it any the less
frightening. Kitty got a cramp in her stomach as she looked at it. Her
chest tightened, and for a moment she had trouble in breathing. But
Sally Rose had a gleam in her eye.
“I got this at the staymaker’s this morning,” she said. “He ordered it
for a rich Tory lady, but she fled away to join the British in Boston,
so he let me have it cheap.”
“I should think he might,” said Kitty. “Why it’s hardly a foot around
the middle. You’re slender, but not that slender, Sally Rose. How do
you think to lace it up?”
Sally Rose smiled engagingly and stepped into the dreadful garment,
dragging it over her hips and around her slight form. “Oh, you’ll have
to lace it for me, Kit,” she announced. “I’ll have a truly fashionable
figure now. I always wanted one. Remember, Gerry’s been looking at
those rich Boston ladies all the week long. I don’t want him to feel
disappointed when he sees me.”
Kitty climbed down from the bed and went to her cousin. She picked up
the ends of the lacings and began to weave them into the metal hooks.
Sally Rose stood there beaming, holding the stays in place.
“Hurry and lace them up, Kit,” she urged. “It will be easier if I can
slip out while Gran is still at her work. Before she comes upstairs, I
mean to be gone.”
With a great effort Kitty drew the stays together at the bottom,
clamping her cousin’s slim hips and belly into a frighteningly narrow
space. The garment had been designed for a much taller girl, and came
well down over the thigh, almost to the knee. It fastened at the bottom
with a tiny jeweled padlock, and Kitty noted a similar one at the top.
She hesitated.
“Does this unlock with a key?” she asked.
Sally Rose held up a tiny bit of gold on a satin ribbon. “Oh, it does,
Kitty, and I have the key here. Isn’t it all deliciously clever?”
“I don’t know,” muttered Kitty. “Hold your stomach in.”
Sally Rose compressed herself to the utmost and closed her eyes. Kitty
fastened the padlock and struggled with the lacings.
“Tighter! Tighter!” gasped Sally Rose.
Kitty pulled at the strong cord until it almost cut her fingers. It was
waxed, and it had a toughness about it that made her think of wire.
After a moment she shoved Sally Rose up against the wall, sat down in a
chair in front of her, braced her knees, and laboriously threaded and
pulled till the task was over and she could snap the jeweled padlock at
the top. Then she stood off to view her work.
Sally Rose looked like a long white worm standing up on its tail--or
like a white candle, if you wanted to be poetic--but more like a worm.
Her face was flushed, and she could take only the shortest, shallowest
breaths, but there was triumph in her eye.
“Now my dress and petticoat, Kitty, if you’ll be so good. Oh wait till
Gerry sees me! He’ll be so o’ercome with admiration he’ll scarce know
what to say!”
“He’ll be o’ercome, I don’t doubt,” said Kitty. “Especially if he
tries to put his arm around you. You feel like a stick of cord wood.”
She fastened the gauze petticoat over the stays and then brought the
sky-blue muslin gown Sally Rose had laid out on a chair.
Was life going to be like this always, she wondered somewhat wistfully;
helping Sally Rose to dress, letting Sally Rose in when the evening
was over; herself never dressing up, never meeting anyone, never going
anywhere? She wished that Tom Trask the logger had the daring British
Gerry had. Gossip said that the New Hampshire men were in camp in
Medford, and Medford wasn’t much farther than Boston. But he had no
way of knowing she was so near him, of course. Perhaps when things got
quieter after Concord Fight, he’d gone back to Newburyport to return
her father’s gun. But now it seemed that battles were threatening
again. Perhaps--
“Now my gold gauze kerchief and my scent bottle,” panted Sally Rose.
Kitty brought them. “Are you ready now?” she asked, trying to keep the
envy from her tone. It wasn’t Sally Rose’s fault that she felt lonely
and neglected, not Sally Rose’s fault at all.
“Yes, I’m ready,” sighed Sally Rose. “I’ll go down the back stairs, I
think, and through the garden. Good-by, dear.” She held up her soft
cheek.
Kitty brushed her lips against it. “Good-by, Sally Rose,” she said.
“Don’t get into any trouble, and come home soon.”
Sally Rose laughed a little uneasily and made an awkward motion to
step forward. But she did not step forward. She stopped suddenly,
twisted her body, or tried to, and put her hand to her side.
“My, a bone jabbed me,” she said.
After a moment she tried again to move forward. This time she succeeded
in taking three little hobbled steps. Then she swayed clumsily,
tripped, and fell on the rag rug. There she lay like an overset turtle,
unable to rise.
Kitty stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth to choke back her
laughter. Then she ran forward and struggled to hoist Sally Rose to her
feet.
“I--I don’t think I can walk in this thing,” gasped Sally Rose. “It’s
like having two feet in one breeches leg. And the bones hurt me. And
it’s getting late. Take it off, Kit. Take it off at once. Here’s the
key.”
Still trying to keep back her laughter at the other girl’s ridiculous
plight, Kitty pulled off the blue dress and the petticoat and fitted
the tiny key into the jeweled lock. It refused to turn, and she twisted
it gently.
“You’ll be in a pickle,” she muttered, “if it should break.”
“Don’t you dare break it!” squealed Sally Rose.
Kitty worked the key this way and that. Below in the tavern kitchen
Gran’s voice lifted up the words of an old hymn. Through the open
window drifted the scent of garden flowers in the warm dark. Her hands
got sticky with sweat. She kept dropping the wretched little key.
“Hurry!” pleaded Sally Rose. “I’m afraid he’ll come and not find me.
I’m afraid he’ll go away.”
Desperately Kitty twisted the bit of metal.
“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” she said at last. “I can’t make it work.
What will we do?”
“Cut the lacings, I suppose,” sighed Sally Rose, “and I’ll try to
wiggle out through the gap in the middle. I don’t care much. I never
should have bought it. Maybe the staymaker will take it back. Get my
shears. They’re in the workbox in the top drawer.”
“But you left your workbox in the kitchen,” said Kit. “I saw it there
when we were scouring the pots after supper. All the other shears and
knives are there too, and if I went down, I’d have to explain to Gran.”
The two girls looked at each other in dismay. Sally Rose bit her lip.
“Yes, you would,” she said. “And whatever excuse you made, she might
come back upstairs with you, and then I’d never get away. Can’t you
break the lacings?”
“I doubt it,” said Kitty. “It’s the toughest cord I ever saw.”
“Try.”
So Kitty yanked and tugged and twisted, but the cord refused to break.
Sally Rose was hopelessly trapped.
They were silent for a moment. Then she clenched her soft hands and
stiffened her mouth. “I’ll have to go just as I am,” she said, and
tried to walk again. Again she fell.
Kitty helped her up and led her to a chair. “Sit down, Sally Rose,” she
said gently. But Sally Rose could not sit down.
“I guess it’s no use,” she murmured, reluctant, almost tearful. “You’ll
just have to go and tell Gerry I’m sick, or something. Tell him to come
back tomorrow night. I’ll surely be there.”
Kitty hesitated. She didn’t know quite why. Was it because Gerry
was British and she disapproved of the British? Or was it a deeper,
stranger thing--a sort of foreboding? A fear, and yet an eagerness, too.
“Are you sure you want me to, Sally Rose?” she asked.
Sally Rose stamped her foot, or tried to, then writhed as a whalebone
jabbed her. “Of course I do,” she cried. “Go quickly, do, and come back
and tell me what he has to say. Then we’ll have to get the shears and
cut me out of this thing. Oh Kitty, go now!”
And so it was that Kitty Greenleaf slipped away to Charlestown’s old
graveyard that night to meet her country’s enemy, her cousin’s exciting
young man.
* * * * *
An eerie little wind was blowing through the town that night, a warm
wind, and it had the tang of sea salt in it, and the heavy sweetness of
the new mown hay on Bunker Hill. It ruffled Kitty’s hair and cooled her
hot face as she walked through the empty streets, past the Two Cranes,
the courthouse, and the meeting house with its tall white spire rising
against the dark. Few of the windows were lighted, but down by the
docks she could hear the familiar cry of the watch, and over the bay
the lights of Boston shone out bright and clear. It was hard for her to
remember that Boston was no longer a friendly town.
When she reached the graveyard she felt her way along the low wall that
protected it from the street. Shadow lay thick about the grassy mounds
inside, and crooked elm boughs meeting overhead shut out the thin glow
of the starlight. There was no moon.
Leaving the wall she blundered forward, now and then brushing against
one of the old headstones. She knew what they looked like well enough:
short thick slabs of greenish slate with a death’s head at the top;
some of reddish sandstone; beyond them the granite tombs where the
great families lay. But she could not seem to find the path that would
lead her through. And then, somehow she did find it, and groped her
way to the wall on the far side with the open fields beyond. He was
standing there, just as she knew he would be.
He carried a dark lantern, half open now to let a little light shine
through, and he wore the rough shirt and breeches of an American
farmer. Sally Rose would have been disappointed had she hoped to see
the scarlet coat. As he heard her footstep on the worn grass he drew
in his breath sharply.
“Ah, Sally Rose!” he whispered, and turned the lantern full upon her.
“I--I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I’m her cousin Kitty. She sent me to
tell you--”
And then suddenly, to her own horror, in spite of the awe she felt for
this handsome young stranger from the enemy camp, in spite of the need
to keep this tryst in silence and secrecy, she began to giggle. She
couldn’t help it when she thought of Sally Rose trapped in the stays;
of her pretty, angry face on top of the body of a pinched white worm.
She put both hands to her mouth and rocked and rocked with stifled
mirth.
Then she realized that he was shaking her. “Stop it, Kitty, if that’s
your name,” he said. His voice was firm but not unkind. “Where’s Sally
Rose? Tell me what you are laughing at? I want to laugh, too.”
He had put the lantern down and was holding her by both shoulders. She
could not see his face, and yet she knew what he looked like. She would
always remember him, she thought, from that day when he marched past
the Bay and Beagle and she was standing at the door. Suddenly she found
herself telling him all about the stays and Sally Rose.
He kept very quiet until she had finished, but then he did not laugh
as she had expected him to do. When he spoke again, his voice had an
impatient sound.
“I’ve often heard the men in barracks say--the married men, that
is--that women have no sense at all. And I guess they be right. I’m
sorry Sally Rose did such a foolish thing. I--I wanted--tonight it
really mattered that I should see her.”
“But she will be here tomorrow night, sir,” answered Kitty, not quite
sure how one addressed a British officer who pretended not to be a
British officer. “It will be such a little time till then.”
“A little time,” he muttered, “but much may happen in it. I may be here
tomorrow night--but I trust she will not be.”
“What do you mean?” faltered Kitty.
A bough rustled a few yards off, and he flashed his lantern that way
and listened. After a moment he spoke again in a lower tone.
“How does it happen you womenfolk are still in Charlestown? I
understood that it had been evacuated.”
“Oh, it has been--nearly. But Granny says she will not abandon my
uncle’s property here until she must. She says she will stay and try to
keep it intact for him, if she can.”
“It’s been known since April that we might burn the town any day.”
“I know. But time goes on, and you do not do it, and we grow less
afraid. And all the while our Army is growing larger and more strong.”
“So is ours,” he retorted. “Three new generals arrived from England;
martial law proclaimed in Boston yesterday. General Gage denounced you
for rebels and traitors. If you don’t disband and go your ways in peace
soon, we’re coming out to make you go.”
“Then I suppose there will be a battle,” sighed Kitty. “I’ll never
know why it is men can’t settle a squabble without trying to kill each
other.”
Again he flashed the lantern on her face and held it there a moment.
Then he spoke to her from out of the dark, and his voice had a
different sound.
“You know--Kitty--I don’t think I understand it either. I never really
wanted to be a soldier.”
“A captain,” she corrected him. “A captain in the Twenty-third.”
“Ah yes, a captain. I can hear the watch coming down the street, and
we cannot leave here until he is gone. Sit down on the grass.”
Indeed it was the watch, and she could hear him shouting as he turned
the corner by the brick well. “Ten o’ the clock, this thirteenth night
o’ June, and the weather fair. Town’s empty, Sons o’ Liberty gone to
camp, Rogues and Tories to Boston!”
The young Englishman drew her down in the shadow of a flowering quince
tree. She sat there straight and proper and he sprawled with careless
grace beside her, not alarmingly near.
“No, I never meant to bear arms, and how I came to do it is no matter,
but I, too, wish England and America could settle their differences
without spilling blood. Do you think I am a coward, Kitty?”
“No,” she said slowly. “I do not think that.”
The voice of the watch grew louder. He must be passing very close by.
“I have cursed the Americans, and yet I am not sure I was right when I
did it. I have gone amongst them some, even been kept in gaol by them,
and yet I can’t see that they’re any worse fellows than I. I cannot
help thinking that I myself might have been an American. Except for a
choice a man made some hundred and fifty years ago. The right choice,
of course--and yet--”
Kitty felt her blood stir in a different way now. She had been
thrilling to his strangeness and his handsomeness, and the excitement
of this secret meeting. But now she had the uncanny feel that there
were ghosts about. Mighty ghosts, ghosts of countries coming together,
here in the dim starlight in the shadow of Bunker Hill.
“You an American? How?”
He settled comfortably in the grass. “Listen, Kitty, I’ll tell you more
of myself than I ever told Sally Rose. I do not know why, unless it
is because you are less distractingly fair. Alas, I am afraid I like
overwell to talk, Kitty.”
“So does everyone, it seems,” murmured Kitty. “But what happened--a
hundred and fifty years ago?”
“I like to talk, I suppose, because my mother was a strolling player,
and famous for the way she spoke her lines as well as her good looks.
She traveled the fairs and market towns, and everywhere she was made
welcome and a stage set up for her. My father was a West Country
farmer, and a dull husband I think he made her. I cannot recall her
too well. But it was through his blood that I might have been born an
American.”
The voice of the watch was fading now, down by the tannery and the
distilleries, but Gerry Malory kept on talking.
“My father would shake his head, I remember, whenever anyone mentioned
America. ’Twas a legend in our family that once an old grandsire of
ours, about the time I mention, had journeyed to Plymouth and watched a
shipful of people leaving that country to settle in this one. That he
thought for a time to go with them, but decided against it. Sometimes I
wonder if he had gone--”
The watch was coming back. They saw the light he carried. It wavered
to and fro. Then it stopped just at the wall of the graveyard. Gerry
Malory sprang hastily to his feet. “Kitty,” he whispered, “go back and
tell Sally Rose--I don’t know when I’ll see her--but tell her to get
out of Charlestown. We’re getting ready to move against the Americans.
I don’t know when. At least by the end of the week. Some say we’re for
Dorchester Heights, and some say Bunker Hill. Tell her to be gone. And
you go with her--Kitty.”
He vaulted over the low wall and disappeared in the darkness between
the fields and the flats along the river. Kitty peered after him, but
she saw only a scatter of fireflies and a light mist rising from the
earth. She was not afraid of the watch, but he did not challenge her
as she crept back to the Bay and Beagle. He did not know she had been
keeping a tryst with the enemy. Well, she had been, and felt herself
none the worse for it.
She, too, was wondering what would have happened if old Grandsire
Malory had taken that ship so many years ago.
_Chapter Eleven_
A GREAT SECRET
“We been long enough getting here,” said Tom Trask, as he dragged the
prow of a small rowboat up the shaly beach. “Are you sure this be
Charlestown Neck, Johnny?”
Tugging away at the other side of the boat, Johnny Pettengall answered
him. “Charlestown, sure enough. Hold on. Give me your hand. I got my
foot caught in a patch of eel grass or summ’at like.”
Tom did as he was bidden, and in a moment the two were climbing up a
steep bank into the hayfield above. Just to their left loomed a low
hill, sharp on its eastern side. A taller, more gently rounded hill
stood up behind it, and through the thick, fragrant grass around them
a rail fence wound away toward higher ground. Tom could see no lighted
windows anywhere.
“You ever been here before?” he asked doubtfully.
“No,” said Johnny, “but I come by here yesterday when I was aboard our
sloop that went up to the Penny Ferry to meet the supply carts from the
eastward. I had it pointed out to me. This is Breed’s Hill just ahead
of us, and Bunker Hill’s behind.”
“Charlestown’s said to be a village,” Tom continued to object. “I can
see orchards, and what looks like a brick kiln over there, and by the
smell there’s clay pits somewhere about. But I don’t see any houses at
all.”
“Town’s the other side of the hill,” Johnny reassured him. “Come on. We
got to get to the Bay and Beagle before Ma’am Greenleaf locks up for
the night.”
Uncertain and on his guard, Tom followed his companion up the slope
through the firefly-studded grass. More than a week now, he and the
Newburyport lad had been sleeping at night with their feet toward the
same campfire--when they did sleep--sharing the same ration of salt
pork and corn meal. He had not gone back to Medford after they burned
the _Diana_, for he and Johnny kept telling themselves that they would
borrow a boat and row over to Charlestown to see the girls, but not
until tonight had they been able to get away. They had not wasted their
time, though. They had gone with the raiding parties that constantly
scoured the islands all the way from Chelsea Neck to the deep sea. They
had helped to burn Tory barns and steal Tory cattle. Tom felt he could
give a good account of himself when he got back to his own company,
but he was not so sure Captain Moore would consider it a good account.
He was even more dubious about the attitude of the Colonel, his old
friend, Johnny Stark. That they were old friends wouldn’t make any
difference at all, when there was business in hand.
Yes, tonight after he’d seen Miss Kitty again and stolen a kiss or
two, he thought he’d better make for Medford, with or without young
Pettengall. Maybe he’d better ask now just what his companion intended
to do.
At that moment they reached the crest of Breed’s Hill and paused to
look down.
“Them lights over there must be Boston,” Johnny told him. “You ever
been there, Tom? I heard it’s the greatest city in North America. The
best anyway.”
“Didn’t know we had any other cities,” said Tom, grinning in the
darkness.
Johnny took him seriously. “Course we have,” he hastened to protest.
“There’s New York, and Philadelphia where the Great Congress meets.
Some others further south, I guess, and all of ’em sending help to
Boston. There’s talk they’ll even send their soldiers here.”
“Believe it when I see them,” said Tom skeptically. “But you ask me,
and I say no, I never been to Boston. I live a sight of a ways off, you
know, up the Merrimack.”
They stood there together a moment in the starlight and cool sea wind,
the sweetness of ripe hay.
“I know,” said Johnny. “You didn’t go back there, ever--after we got
news of Concord Fight, did you? Ain’t you got some folks waiting for
you to come home?”
Tom shrugged. “Folks is all dead,” he told Johnny. “Won’t nobody miss
me. Well--maybe a girl or two.”
Then he spoke more quickly and in a lighter tone. “But I know where I
will be missed, I bet, and that’s back in Medford. My company was less
than half full strength when I left, and I better be getting myself
over there. How about you?”
“I ought to be in Cambridge, I guess, with Captain Little’s company.”
“Moses Little? Heard he’d been made a colonel, just like Stark.”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear.”
They were starting down the hill now, toward a cluster of roofs and
gables with a tall spire in the midst of it, toward a shadowy line of
wharves along the shore.
“I know sure enough about Johnny. I was there in the tavern when we
chose him by a show of hands. They say some voted twice. I know I did.
He was my neighbor up in Derryfield. I worked in his sawmill some and
went hunting with his son Caleb. Caleb’s a right smart lad.”
It was harder going down Breed’s Hill than going up, for the western
side was as steep as the eastern, and they had to hold back. There were
stone walls to climb, and the dew-wet grass was hard to wade through,
but Tom scarcely noticed that. Funny, he thought, as he heard his
tongue run on, how he never had very much to say, unless it was about
John Stark.
“Oh, Johnny’s the man for you,” he was saying. “Once when the Indians
captured him and put him to hoeing their fields, he cut down the corn
and left the weeds standing. When they made him run the gantlet, he
whacked them as he went through, instead of t’other way. Kept singing
while he ran that he’d kiss all their women. He never liked the British
either, after he fought beside them at Quebec. ’Fore I was high as a
rail fence, I heard him say we’d have to fight against them sometime.
There was folks who laughed at him, but I guess they ain’t laughing
now.”
“Here we be,” said Johnny as they came to the beginning of a street
that led past the darkened windows of Charlestown. “I got no idea where
the place is. Likely there’ll be a horse and a dog on its sign.”
But Charlestown was no very extensive metropolis, and after a little
wandering through its dim lanes and uncobbled streets, they found the
tavern they were seeking. The door stood open to let in the night
breeze, and the two boys stepped uncertainly through.
A few candles burning in iron holders lit the dim taproom. Clean mugs
and glasses stood neatly on shelves behind the bar, and the long brown
braid of tobacco leaves hanging near it swayed gently in the draft from
the open door. Tom thought that the braid looked like a cow’s tail. He
made up a face when he remembered the pipeful of tobacco he’d had to
smoke the night they burned the _Diana_. Here was one customer of Ma’am
Greenleaf’s who wouldn’t ask her to cut off a few inches for him, that
was sure. But where was Ma’am Greenleaf? Or Kitty? Or the other girl?
The room was empty, so far as he could see.
Johnny, too, was looking around him. “Don’t see where they could have
gone to,” he muttered, “and left the door open and the lights burning.”
Just at that moment there came an anguished wail from somewhere
overhead.
“Stop it! Oh stop! You’re killing me!”
“Robbers!” gasped Johnny.
“Or them British devils!” cried Tom, looking desperately for the
staircase. He finally saw it, winding up from a little alcove that led
to the kitchen, and in a flash he and Johnny pounded up the narrow
treads, bursting breathlessly into a long hall at the top. From a room
on the side toward the river emerged another half-stifled cry.
“In here!” shouted Tom, flinging the door open.
Then he stood quite still. The sight before him was such a one as he
had never seen by the falls of Derryfield. Johnny’s astonished gasp
told him that his friend was as taken aback as he.
Sally Rose Townsend sat precariously on the edge of a four-poster bed,
her face flushed and distorted. Granny Greenleaf stood in front of her,
her hands busy about the girl’s dress--except that Sally Rose wore no
dress. Her shoulders were bare and gleamed whitely in the candlelight,
but her entire body below her shoulders seemed to be shut up in some
sort of cage. The cage gapped apart in the middle to show an expanse of
some white fabric underneath. It was gripped firmly together at a point
just above the girl’s waist, and again below.
“It’s no use, Sally Rose,” Gran was muttering. “I can’t get this
foolish contrivance apart, and there isn’t a locksmith left in town.
I believe there’s a blacksmith, though. We’ll send Kitty to fetch the
blacksmith. Mercy, where is Kitty? I never thought of her before. Where
has Kitty gone?”
“Quick! Cover me up, Gran!” gasped Sally Rose frantically, her breath
short, her words not quite clear.
Gran glanced backward over her shoulder. Then she turned completely
round and faced the intruders.
“Johnny Pettengall! And you--” she peered closer, “the thief who made
off with my son’s musket! What are you doing in the bedchamber of a
decent lass?”
“We didn’t mean no harm, Ma’am Greenleaf,” explained Johnny. “We just
came from camp to see the girls, and walked into the taproom like--like
anybody would. Then we heard Sally Rose scream she was being killed--”
He broke off and stared again at the bent golden head of his adored
one. Sally Rose was beginning to weep tears of embarrassment.
“I see,” replied the old lady grimly. She stood protectingly in front
of her granddaughter. After a moment she seemed to come to a decision.
“Well, since you’re here, you’re here. And it’s plain some male critter
will have to help us. ’Tisn’t as if the girl weren’t decently covered
underneath. Can you boys get her out of that contraption?”
Johnny swallowed and made inarticulate sounds.
“We can try,” said Tom. “What is it? What’s it made of?”
“It’s a pair of stays. An outlandish pair brought from New York for
some Tory hussy.”
“My mother’s stays are laced together,” said Johnny, his embarrassment
lessening a little. “Won’t they come off if you unlace them?”
“I cut the laces--first thing I did when I came upstairs and heard her
moaning,” snapped Gran. “But these are fastened with locks at top and
bottom. Come and look at them.”
Gran motioned the boys forward and they gingerly approached Sally Rose.
Tom reached out coolly and fingered the jeweled padlock.
Sally Rose sucked in her breath and closed her eyes. Johnny looked the
other way.
“I could force it apart,” said Tom thoughtfully, “but it’s too small
for me to get a grip on. What we need is a file. You got one about the
place somewhere?”
“Does your father keep a tool chest handy?” demanded Gran of Sally Rose.
“I think--in the barn--out the back way through the garden,” Sally Rose
whispered.
“Go find it, Johnny,” ordered Tom.
Johnny dashed for the stairway, and the Derryfield lad walked to the
window and stood there with his hands behind him, gazing into the
summer night. Nothing could be done until Johnny came back, and he had
no wish to embarrass the poor girl further by staring at her.
He looked at the gable windows of the house across the street, and
then down the narrow way that led to the market place. Then he craned
his neck at what he saw, and felt a little smile crooking the corners
of his mouth. Miss Catherine Greenleaf was coming hot-foot home from
somewhere, and he guessed he’d see she got a proper welcome. He turned
back to Gran who still stood in front of Sally Rose, tapping her
slippered foot on the pine floor.
“Think I’ll go help Johnny hunt for the file,” he said.
He stepped into the taproom of the Bay and Beagle just as Kitty entered
from the street. He had the advantage, for he had expected the meeting.
She stopped still and gave a little gasp, but he spoke calmly enough.
“You ought to stay to home when you have company, Miss Kitty,” he
rebuked her mildly.
Kitty recovered herself quickly, lifted her head, and smiled.
“Perhaps I would have,” she said, “if I had known. Wherever did you
come from?”
“Sit here,” he said, and drew her down beside him on the wide ledge
that ran under the window. “I come from Chelsea Neck on my way back to
the camp in Medford--”
“You--you’re going back to camp?” she interrupted him.
He looked at her keenly. Something was the matter with her. She was all
upset like, but trying not to let him see. He’d thought to steal a few
kisses, but he felt pretty sure she wasn’t in the mood for kissing. Too
bad. Well, another night, maybe. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes, I think likely they can use me there. I been away driving cattle
off the islands the last week or two. Met up with Johnny Pettengall and
he told me you was here. Tonight we borrowed a boat and rowed over the
Mystic. But I didn’t see you anywheres as I come across Breed’s Hill
and through the town. Where you been tonight, Kitty?”
She looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t know that--but maybe I ought--”
“Here ’tis!” cried Johnny triumphantly, rushing into the room with a
small iron file in his hand. He paid no attention to Kitty. “Come on,
Tom! Let’s go file Sally Rose!”
Tom waved him away with a flippant gesture. “You go file Sally Rose,”
he said. “She’s your girl. I got business with Kitty.” He turned his
back on the other lad.
Kitty put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I forgot!” she gasped. “Sally
Rose is still in the stays!”
“Sure enough she is,” agreed Tom. “Johnny’s got a file, and he can
shave the lock away. I asked you where you’d been tonight, Kit. Walking
out with some other lad, maybe. No moon, but it’s sweet-aired and
warm. A good courting night.”
Kitty sat twisting her hands in her lap and did not answer. Johnny made
a pitiful noise of dismay and turned reluctantly toward the staircase.
“Where’s Gran?” asked Kitty.
Tom smiled widely. “With Sally Rose,” he said. “Likely to stay there
awhile, wouldn’t you think so?”
“Oh, of course. She wouldn’t leave Sally Rose like that--and with
Johnny. I--I--” she stopped again.
“What’s on your mind, Kitty? Something, I can tell.”
“Yes. Yes, there is. I don’t know--maybe I should--or maybe I should
wait and tell Sally Rose first. But maybe you’re the one.”
“You better tell me,” he said, trying to put strength into his voice,
and a little tenderness, but not too much. He didn’t want her breaking
down.
“Yes,” she said after a moment, lifting her head and looking straight
into his eyes. “Yes, I think I should probably tell you, for you’ll
know what to do about it. If you’re going back to camp--it ought to be
made known to the officers there.”
“I aim to go tonight, not tomorrow morning,” he said. “Say what’s got
to be said, Kitty.”
“Well then, I will.” She was not looking at him now. She fixed her eyes
on a candle burning in a sconce across the room. “Tonight I went out to
meet--a man--who was expecting Sally Rose. You can see why she couldn’t
go.”
He grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Sally Rose ain’t geared right now to
travel far. Who was the man? Oh--I bet I know--that redcoat she took
such a notion to.”
“Yes, it was Gerry. Captain Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third. I did
see him, and he warned me. He told us to get out of Charlestown, for
the British are about to strike.”
Tom leaned forward. “When?” he demanded. “Where?”
“Any night now. By the end of the week, surely. Here, or in Dorchester.
Gerry wasn’t sure. But if it should be Bunker Hill--”
“Bunker Hill would be a right handy site for them to hold,” muttered
Tom. “We thought they was about ready to go. But before this we had no
real word.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he laid his hand over hers. Then he
stood up.
“Guess I better make for camp,” he said. “This is important information
you got here. I’ll carry the news straight to Stark. He’ll be the man
to tell. He’ll know what steps to take. You was smart, Kitty, to tell
me. May make a big difference--to both sides. Don’t suppose you’ve got
a horse about?”
“Indeed we have,” cried Kitty, relieved that she had told her
disturbing secret and eager to be of further help, if that were
possible. “There are two horses in the barn that belong to Uncle Moses
Chase. Sally Rose and I brought them from Newburyport. Gran says
they’re eating their heads off, but she hasn’t sent them home. But
they’re only plow horses.”
“Kind I’m best used to. Like the gun, I’ll see you get it back some
day.” He stroked the blunderbuss that now accompanied him everywhere.
“Don’t know when I’ll see you again Kitty. Not here, likely. If the
British are aiming to come this way, you folks will have to go.”
“Oh, we will. Just as soon as I can talk to Gran and Sally Rose. Back
to Newburyport, perhaps. Why don’t you come to see us there?”
“Can’t tell. Looks like I’ll have some fighting to do first. Glad you
took our side and told me that British fellow’s secret, instead of
hiding his little plan for him.”
A startled look came over Kitty’s face. “Why--why, I did betray Gerry,
didn’t I? I--I never thought of it like that.”
“’Course you betrayed him. You’re too good a Yankee to do aught else,
as I can see. Good-by, Kitty.”
He strode into the kitchen on his way to the garden and the barn behind
it.
The last thing he heard was a triumphant squeal from Sally Rose.
* * * * *
Colonel John Stark of the New Hampshire line was not in his quarters
that night, but walking among the tents on the hillsides above Medford,
talking with his men. After the long ride from Charlestown, Tom Trask
felt weary and breathless when he finally caught up with his old
neighbor.
The colonel stood in a grove of oak trees where a little brook drained
down. All along the brook the crude sailcloth tents clustered very
thick. Campfires were burning low now. Some of the men lay sleeping on
the ground beside them. Others were playing cards, jubilant when they
could fling down the ace to take the queen. Stark was talking with a
couple of grizzled veterans who had fought beside him in the Indian
wars, but he broke off when the younger man came panting up.
“Where you been, lad?” he asked, and clapped Tom on the shoulder.
“Couldn’t believe it when Moore reported you missing. Shut up in gaol,
maybe? I know you got some good reason for being away.”
Tom could not bring himself to look at the keen blue-gray eyes and
sharp, viselike face.
“I been raiding the islands with some of Putnam’s men,” he muttered.
“But on my way back tonight, I heard a word in Charlestown you ought to
know.”
“You got no business raiding islands, nor being in Charlestown,”
snapped the colonel, all the warmth and friendliness gone from his
voice. “Get back to Captain Moore, and tell him where you been. He’ll
deal with you.” He turned away.
Tom nerved himself to step forward and pluck the sleeve of Stark’s new
blue uniform.
“Colonel Stark, sir,” he stammered. “You know what I heard in
Charlestown? It come straight from a British captain, what I heard.”
The colonel turned toward him again. “What was it?” he demanded.
Tom lowered his voice. No use in alarming the men. “Oh, a very great
secret it was, told in confidence to a girl. This captain said that the
British mean to move out of Boston before the week’s end. They mean to
seize and fortify either Dorchester Heights or Bunker Hill.” He paused
expectantly.
John Stark uttered a mirthless ha-ha.
“I know,” he said. “Seems like you be about the forty-first private to
come up and tell me that. The word’s spread wide, from here to Jamaica
Plain.” Then he shook his head. “Too bad you done what you done. I’d
ha’ liked to ha’ recommended a sergeant’s knot o’ red for your shoulder
when I sent you back to Captain Moore.”
_Chapter Twelve_
THUNDER IN THE AIR
The bells were sounding midnight in Medford Steeple, turning Tuesday
night into Wednesday morning, when Tom Trask tied his borrowed horse
to a nearby fence and lay down beside the dying campfire of his own
company. After the rebuke by his colonel and another one next day by
Captain Moore, he hardly expected John Stark to send for him within a
day or two, but that was what came about.
Stark was holding a conference with a handful of his captains in the
little hollow between Plowed Hill and Winter Hill. It had probably been
a green valley once, but now the young grass was all trampled away, and
so was a field of what had started out to be Indian corn. All about
stretched the tents and crude wooden shelters of the New Hampshire men.
The colonel was in his shirt sleeves, and his lean face looked grimmer
than usual. He had no smile of greeting, but he did not seem to be
angry any more.
“See you brought your horse, Tom, like I said. Was surprised when ’twas
reported to me you owned such an animal. They’re scarcer’n hen’s teeth
around here.”
“I only borrowed him, sir,” replied Tom quickly. “Borrowed him in
Charlestown. He belongs in Newburyport. When I can, I mean to return
him home.”
“Don’t hurry about it,” replied the colonel. “See that cart over
there?” He pointed to a heavy wagon, empty, three young men standing
close by. A horse was fastened between the shafts of it, but he was a
lank, ill-favored nag and looked scarce able to go.
“Yes, sir,” said Tom.
“Then take your critter over to help the other one pull. General Ward
has promised to issue some lead to us, if we send to Cambridge for it.
That’s Peter Christie, Hugh Watts, and Asa Senter who are going with
you. Good lads. I knew their folks in Londonderry before I was grown.
Be as quick as you can about it, too. We haven’t got enough powder and
ball to scare off a herd of deer, let alone the British Army.”
“Yes, sir,” said Tom again. He waited for further instructions, but
none were forthcoming. Colonel Stark turned back to his worried-looking
officers. After a moment Tom led his horse over to the wagon.
The Londonderry men were indeed good fellows, he soon found out, used
to the same life as he. They had fished in the same streams and hunted
over the same mountains, knew as little about books and high living,
as much about how to plant corn or cut down a white pine so it would
fall the right way. And soon they were all singing crude old-fashioned
country songs as they drove along the winding road.
Tom looked westward across the pleasant farms to the faint blue line
of hills beyond them, and he thought of the unseen army that was
supposed to be circling tightly all around Boston, an army of men
like himself and the Londonderry boys. Some said it was ten thousand
strong, and some said twenty, all the way from Medford River to Jamaica
Plain. He thought of that other army, swaggering through the streets
of Boston; men, he supposed, like that redcoat captain he’d brought
home in chains a while back--and nobody knew what strength they had.
He remembered Kitty’s warning that the British meant to strike by the
week’s end. Well, here it was, Friday, June sixteenth, and the weather
hotter’n the burning roof of hell. If the British were coming, they’d
better be on their way. Maybe they were on their way. Everybody in camp
was worn out and restless with expecting them, but nobody seemed to
know.
Just then his horse gave a neigh, laid back its ears, and stood still.
Perforce, the other horse halted, too.
“Must ha’ seen a rabbit,” said Hugh Watts, peering over the side of
the cart into the thick grass that grew beside the road. “I don’t see
anything but ripe strawberries, though. Think we could stop to pick a
few?”
Asa Senter shook his head. “Wouldn’t hardly dare it,” he objected.
“Stark wants us to go and get back. By the look o’ the sun, it’s
already six o’clock, and we still got about another mile.”
Tom leaped down from the wagon. “I don’t think it was a rabbit,” he
said. “He acts more like there was thunder in the air.”
“Not a cloud anywheres that I can see,” said Peter Christie.
“Don’t have to be.” Tom patted the horse’s flank and started to lead
them ahead. “If there’s thunder somewheres over back, a critter’ll
always know.”
“Feel a bit uneasy myself,” said Asa, getting down to walk beside Tom.
“Look! There’s a steeple and some roofs sticking up through the trees.
Cambridge must be just ahead.”
There were a sight of mighty fine houses round Cambridge Common, Tom
thought, as they approached it. Big square mansions, some of them; some
with gambrel roofs, mostly painted yellow and white. But he didn’t see
any of the sort of folk who looked as if they lived in the houses;
pretty women with flowers and jewels, or gentlemen in velvet jackets
wearing swords. The roads that led to the Common were thronged with
soldiers like himself, in cowhide shoes, leather breeches, and tattered
tow-cloth shirts, with bandanas round their heads; and all too many,
for his taste, had a short-stemmed pipe gripped between their teeth.
They all seemed to be excited about something.
He had no trouble in getting the old Hastings house pointed out to
him, but he was unable to lead his horse anywhere near it because the
crowd was so great. They seemed to be having some sort of muster on the
Common, for men were drawn up in rank there, maybe a thousand or so.
“What’s a-going on, Tom?” Peter demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Tom, “but I aim to find out. You boys stay here
with the cart, and I’ll go over to General Ward’s and ask. We got to go
there anyway to get the lead.”
He left his companions and made his way forward till he reached the
rail fence before the dwelling house that had been pointed out to him
as the headquarters of the Great American Army. A row of Lombardy
poplar trees stood up tall and pointed behind the fence, and just as
Tom elbowed his way to the gate, a man came out to stand before the
wide front door.
First there was a loud shouting, and cheers, and then a hush. The
seething mass of men around Cambridge Common stood very still.
The man in the doorway was not General Ward, surely, for he wore a long
black gown with flowing sleeves and a square-topped cap such as Tom
had never seen before, with a tassel hanging down. But two other men
stood behind him in blue coats and three-cornered hats, and they were
officers, right enough.
However it was the black-clad man who spoke, loudly and clearly, so
that as many as possible might hear.
“I, Samuel Langdon, President of Harvard College, am here to assure
you that the hearts of our little community go with you in your heroic
venture. With you go the hopes of Massachusetts, and the future,
perhaps, of our whole great country. I am here to bless your going out
and your coming home. May His strength uphold you when your need is
greatest, His spirit restore you when you falter, and His truth abide
in you always. My sons, let us pray.”
Tom whipped off his cap, bowed his head, and closed his eyes, aware
that hundreds of other men were doing the same. But his throat
tightened and he heard no more of President Langdon’s prayer. This was
the beginning, he thought. Concord Fight hadn’t been anything to what
this would be. At Concord Fight they had all come a-running, just the
way men come when the word goes out that a house is afire. But this was
like when a whole town got together by plan and moved out against the
French or the Indians. Concord Fight had been a fight--just that--but
this wouldn’t be a fight, what was coming now. It would be a battle. It
would be a war.
“_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_,” finished Dr. Langdon soberly.
“It is sweet and fitting, my sons, to die for one’s country.”
He lifted his eyes and stood silent, looking over the heads of the
company, straight at the small square bell tower of a church across the
way.
Everyone began to talk at once, it seemed, and in the uproar Tom thrust
open the gate that led to the Hastings house and crossed the lawn to
the back door. Lilac trees grew close to it, and here, away from the
glare of the sinking sun, the air was fragrant and cool. A young man in
a trim blue coat sat at a table just inside the door.
“Lead for Colonel Stark?” he replied to Tom’s question. “Yes, he’s to
have a supply our men cut out of the organ pipes in the English church
across the Common. Trouble is, I can’t think for the minute where ’tis
stored. Suppose you come back tomorrow.”
Tom pulled a tendril off a grape vine that grew on a trellis over the
door and began to chew it. “Stark wants me to bring it back tonight,”
he said.
The young officer sat up and surveyed him insolently.
“Stark may not know it, but there’s a war beginning,” he announced.
“Yes,” agreed Tom. “There is. That’s what he wants the lead for.”
Suddenly they were both laughing.
“You’re right, man,” answered the young officer in a friendlier tone.
“We’re all on edge, and it takes us different ways, I guess. But I
still don’t know where the stuff has got to, and I’m afraid we can’t do
anything till Prescott takes his force out of town, which he’ll do as
soon as it’s dark enough. Come back a little after nine.”
“Where’s Prescott going?” Tom asked.
The officer laid his finger across his mouth. “Prescott knows--and
nobody else has any need to. Have you got rations, lad?”
“No,” said Tom, “we come empty-handed. Three others besides me.”
The officer wrote rapidly on a slip of paper.
“Here. Take this to the head of the Common when you hear them blow a
bugle up there. Give it to the mess sergeant, and he’ll see you have
some supper.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Tom. He went back to where he had left his
companions.
He found them sitting along the top rail of a fence while the horses
cropped the wayside grass.
“Did you find out what’s afoot, Tom?” asked Hugh Watts eagerly.
The men in the streets were thinning out, but those on the Common,
though no longer drawn up at attention, still remained there.
“Oh, there’s a war beginning, and nobody knows where the lead is,”
said Tom, flinging himself down on the grass. “Didn’t find out a thing
beyond that.”
“We did,” said Asa. “After the man got through praying, we asked
around. Seems Colonel Prescott’s taking out twelve hundred men with
packs and blankets and a day’s ration. There’s a fatigue crew along,
and picks and shovels like they mean to fortify. Nobody knows where.”
“It’ll either be behind Dorchester or Charlestown,” said Tom. He
thought fleetingly of Kitty, and the yellow-haired minx, and the
gallant old woman. He hoped they’d got safe away, but he didn’t think
of them long. “There’s the bugle,” he said. “Let’s go get supper.”
Supper in Cambridge camp that night, for such men as did not have
regular rations, consisted of a slab of salt fish and a hunk of hard,
grayish bread, served with a noggin of sour beer. After the boys had
eaten they walked about the town, down to the red brick buildings of
the college, filled now with soldiers instead of scholars, and into the
gray flush-board English church to see if by any chance the lead was
still there. The church was full of Connecticut men who were using it
for barracks, and they knew nothing about the lead at all.
By nine o’clock the twilight had gathered thickly about the little
town, and the men on the Common formed in ranks and began their march.
Two sergeants walked ahead carrying dark lanterns, half open so as to
throw the light behind. Then came two blue-coated officers, Colonel
Prescott and Colonel Gridley, then the rest of the detail, made up of
Massachusetts and Connecticut men. Tom was not surprised when he saw
that they took the Charlestown Road.
“Bet they’re going to fortify Bunker Hill,” he told his friends.
“They’re carrying entrenchment tools. Wouldn’t bother with them if
the British had already struck. Must be we mean to get there first
and beat them to it. You go back to the cart, and I’ll call round at
headquarters again. We got to get that lead and start for Winter Hill.”
The town had quieted down now, and most of the men remaining there had
gone to the houses where they were quartered, or to their tents in the
fields beyond. Nobody would do much sleeping, Tom thought. Tense and
nervous they all felt, trying to tell themselves they were too much
men to be afraid--just like any flesh and blood thing when there was
thunder in the air.
Two lanterns were burning on poles set up in the yard of the Hastings
house, but the back door was locked when Tom rapped on it. So was the
front door, when he tried to enter there. Through the window he could
see candles burning in prismed holders, and a group of men sitting
around a mahogany table, some in uniforms, others in buff and gray
and bottle green coats. One of the officers stood up to speak. He was
heavily built, with pointed features and bright eyes, but his face had
an unhealthy look. Must be Ward himself, thought Tom. All the Army knew
their leader was a sick man.
“When the Committee of Safety advised me this afternoon,” he began,
“that it was deemed best for us to fortify Bunker Hill--”
Just then a sentry tapped Tom on the shoulder with a gun barrel. “What
are ye lurking about for?” he growled in a rough voice.
Tom turned around sharply. The sentry was an oldish man, unshaven, with
shaggy hair and beard.
“I got business here,” he said. “I come to get Colonel Stark’s lead,
and by the great Jehovah, I mean to do the same.”
The sentry spat. “Maybe ye’re honest,” he said. “Ye look to be. But
General Ward’s a-talking to some important men from the Congress o’
Massachusetts right now. Couldn’t let ye in there if ye was King George
himself, with the Queen tagging along.”
“I’ll wait here till they’re through then,” insisted Tom. “I’ll wait
right here.”
The sentry shrugged. “Guess there’s no harm in that,” he muttered, and
ambled off.
Tom sat down on the grass with his back against a poplar tree and
looked up at the stars. They were just as bright as they had been when
he crossed Breed’s Hill a few nights ago. He wondered if tomorrow
he’d be going back there, lugging Kitty’s old blunderbuss with him.
Suddenly he realized that he was sleepy. The tension had eased out
of him, even though there was still thunder in the air, the thunder
of war about to break. A man could only keep himself keyed up for so
long. But it wouldn’t do--now--to go--to sleep. He ought to get up and
walk--get--up--and--walk--
He opened his eyes and shook himself. How did it get to be like
that--early morning, the light as broad as day? The sky was red and
golden over eastward where the sea must lie. The grass around him was
wet with dew. Smoke was curling upward from the chimneys round about,
and in somebody’s barnyard he could hear a rooster crow. Lord forgive
him, he’d slept all night. They’d drum him out of camp or at least give
him forty lashes, and he deserved it, too.
He stood up just as a horse and rider came spurring to the gate. The
rider dismounted hastily and approached the front door. He was a
trim, neat man with fair hair, but he looked feverish and ill. Almost
immediately a pint-sized man came out to let him in. The two shook
hands.
“Ah, Elbridge, Elbridge Gerry, my good friend,” murmured the newcomer.
“It is folly to try to seize and hold Charlestown. Yet, I must go.”
“Ah no, Dr. Warren,” pleaded the smaller man. “You are too well known.
You stayed in Boston too long, and the British know too well what a
great pillar of strength you have been to our colonial cause. As surely
as you go up Bunker Hill, you will be slain.”
“I know,” answered the doctor tensely. “I told the friends with whom
I dined last night that I would go up the Hill today and never come
off again. I slept wretchedly, and my head aches, but after an hour or
two--”
“Sirs,” interrupted Tom politely, “I am sorry to bother you when you’re
about such weighty business, but I been here since six o’clock last
night, trying to get some lead for Colonel Stark.”
Elbridge Gerry gave a snort of impatience, but Dr. Warren turned and
smiled at the boy.
“I am sorry you had the long delay, lad. I myself saw that the lead was
dispatched to Stark late yesterday afternoon. He’ll know what to do
with it, if anybody does. His men will have melted it into bullets by
now, and may be shooting it at the British, for all I know.”
He turned again to Mr. Gerry. “Ah, sir, ‘_Dulce decorum_,’ as all men
know or must learn. Let us go inside, and send someone to lead my horse
away, for he is as spent as I.”
Tom walked thoughtfully back to where his comrades would still be
asleep in the empty cart. ‘_Dulce decorum_’! He knew what the Latin
meant, for President Langdon had translated it yesterday afternoon.
“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” But was it, he
wondered. The sun felt gloriously warm on his back, and made his blood
tingle. The birds were singing in the elm trees round the Common. Kitty
was a pretty girl, and there were other pretty girls. Sweet to die?
That sounded like a thing old men would think of, tired old men who
never had to go out and fight, who would die in bed at ninety-three or
so. Still, if you had to do it, you had to do it, and he guessed he was
as ready as he’d ever be.
Over towards Charlestown he heard the boom of a heavy gun.
_Chapter Thirteen_
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
Gerry Malory was back in Devonshire at daybreak on that hot June
morning, only it did not seem to him to be morning, or any special time
of day. He stood in a low valley opening toward the sea, and there were
little farms all around him with hedgerows in between them, and here
and there a church spire reaching toward the sky. He was not alone,
for a man stood beside him, a man he had never seen before, about his
father’s age, dressed in quaint old-fashioned clothes, and carrying an
ancient gun. The gun looked like the one that belonged to the Yankee
that had taken him prisoner in the tavern by Ipswich Green. The man was
shaking his head and scowling. He seemed to be angry about something.
Gerry was ready to protest that he hadn’t done anything wrong, when
suddenly he thought that maybe he had. Maybe he’d been poaching again.
Just then the man spoke. “It’s the coming country, lad,” he said.
“Don’t make the mistake I did in my time.”
“What mistake?” Gerry murmured, but he thought he knew. His words were
drowned out by the deep boom of thunder. Again and again the thunder
sounded, and the echoes rolled over valley and hill and sea.
His body shook like an aspen in a storm wind; his eyelids snapped wide
apart. He was in the warehouse behind the stables near Long Wharf in
Boston, Massachusetts, and Sergeant Higgs had him by the shoulder. The
thunder still boomed in his ears, but the Devon landscape had gone back
into his memory, where it probably came from. He was lying on his own
blanket on a heap of straw, with the regiment’s goat tethered nearby.
“Wake up, lad! Don’t you hear the guns?” Higgs was saying.
Gerry pulled himself erect. He found it hard to come out of the dream
that had seemed so real to him.
“Yes, I hear them,” he said. “Whose guns are they?”
“Whose would they be?” scoffed the sergeant. “Do you think the Yankees
have guns like that?”
“No--no.” He was wide awake now, wider awake than he wanted to be,
he thought, for the cannonading sounded ominous and near. “What’s
happening, Jack? Are we marching against them? Have we attacked--or
they?”
“Can’t tell yet,” said Sergeant Higgs. “All we know is, we hear
gunfire. Lieutenant Apthorp has gone to headquarters to find out. You
better get some breakfast. It’s best we be ready for anything.”
In the cobbled square outside, the men of the Twenty-third had built
their usual cookfire, just as they did every morning, and gathered
round it, salt pork spitted on bayonets and stale bread handed round by
the mess sergeant. Lieutenant Apthorp did not come back, and Lieutenant
Julian went to see what was keeping him. The cannonading went on. It
was coming from the ships in the river beyond the North End, most of
the men agreed. Maybe the Yankees had got together some sort of raft
and were moving by water against Boston. The Twenty-third seemed more
amused than frightened at this suggestion.
And then, without any official announcement being made, the word was
passed from mouth to mouth, and everybody knew.
The Yankees had taken the hills above Charlestown in the night, and
built some sort of entrenchment there. They were being fired at from
three sides by the British men-o’-war, but it began to seem as if this
would not be enough to dislodge them, as if a force would have to go
out and drive them from the hill.
In the town behind him Gerry could hear the rattle of artillery
carriages, the thud of horses’ hoofs as the dragoons galloped here and
there. General Gage had called for his officers to meet at the Province
House, and some of the men went off to hover about that grim, narrow
structure and get the word as soon as it was handed down.
Gerry did not go to the Province House. He went to the edge of the
wharf and sat there, dangling his legs over the side. The sun was
getting higher and hotter, and he looked up at the sun, and then down
at the thick grayish water lapping silently round the piers below. He
thought about his dream, and he thought about the girl called Kitty,
who was not so distractingly fair as Sally Rose, and wondered if she
had got safe away. He thought about Captain Blakeslee lying dead under
the locust tree. True, he had never wanted to be a soldier, but once he
became one, he’d expected to bear his part well. Once he’d have been
eager to march out when he heard firing, but he was none so eager now.
Maybe he was afraid. Maybe that was a bad omen. He’d heard around the
campfire that men who were going into their last battle often felt that
way. If only he could forget the dream....
The sounds of confusion in the town behind him seemed to increase and
grow. Now that he thought of it, none of the usual daily noises could
be heard: not the tapping of the carpenters’ hammers, nor the thumping
of handlooms, nor the creak of wooden machinery. The little Negro
boys were nowhere about with their cries of “Sweep oh! Sweep oh!” He
suspected that the town of Boston would do no work this day. Everywhere
men were shouting and bells were ringing: Christ’s Church with its
royal peal, the North Church with its sour note, and half a dozen more.
Just as usual, the breeze that blew over Long Wharf smelled of fish and
whale oil and the nearby stables, of tar, and spice, and wood smoke,
but now, or did he imagine it, it had an acrid brimstone tang.
At eleven the men came trooping back, and the word was out. Every man
knew what was to be the order of his day.
At half past eleven the men of Gerry’s company paraded on the Common,
splendid in scarlet and white and brass, equipped with full kit,
blankets, and three days’ rations, and drawn up beside them were
fifteen hundred more. The ships’ guns still roared away, and every now
and then a terrible blast let go from the battery on Copp’s Hill.
“They say it’s only a handful of farmers,” muttered Jack Higgs. “I’d
not think they could stand such punishment for long.”
Gerry looked at Boston Common, the rambling field that had become so
familiar to him in the past year: the crooked cowpaths, and the little
pond, and the thick clumps of juniper and steeplebush, so handy to come
upon when you were walking in the moonlight with a girl; the gravel
strip where the officers still raced their horses, in spite of all the
town fathers could do. He looked at the gabled mansions and quaint,
crooked houses round, as if he never expected to see them any more.
“The Yankees’ll take more punishment than you’d think for,” he said.
Once on the water, the barges from Long Wharf joined with the barges
from the North Battery, twenty-eight of them moving in two long
parallel lines, filled with scarlet-coated men. In the leading boats
were two polished brass field pieces, and the noonday sun struck
everywhere on colorful banners and gleaming arms. For the Tories in
Boston, it must have been a splendid sight, but Gerry turned his eyes
toward the Charlestown peninsula as the troops were rowed across the
blue bay.
Smoke and flame and awful sound kept pouring forth from the great guns
of the fleet--the _Somerset_, the _Falcon_, the _Lively_. Dimly through
the barrage he could see the little village where he had gone drinking
at the Bay and Beagle and courting in the graveyard under the spring
moon. On the hill above it, grown up overnight like a mushroom, stood
a small square earthworks, silent, except for one erratic cannon that
spoke now and then. Black dots of men moved about the earthworks, but
no columns issued forth drawn up in battle array, no reinforcements
poured in from any side.
Gerry’s spirits rose and he cleared his throat. “Is that,” he asked the
sergeant, “the great fortification we’re all ordered out to tear down?”
The sergeant laughed grimly. “Don’t look very fearsome, does it?” he
agreed. “But after the way they run us back through Lexington, I don’t
trust them devils.”
“And I thought it was Bunker Hill instead of Breed’s they’d be likely
to fortify,” went on Gerry. “That’s how we would have chosen. But
that’s Bunker Hill, standing up behind there, bare as a plate. The
little dugout is on Breed’s Hill, below.”
“Breed’s or Bunker makes no difference now,” said Sergeant Higgs. “Keep
your cartridges dry in the landing. We’re headed in towards shore.”
A few minutes later they were all drawn up in a low-lying field where
Charlestown peninsula extended, pear-shaped, into the sea. Gerry found
himself in the front line, far to the right, with the light infantry of
the Twenty-third and the King’s Own. To the left stood the grenadiers,
and behind him the Fifty-second and the Fifth. He was feeling cheerful
and brave now, and as safe as London Tower. It reassured him even more
when the order came to break ranks and dine on the rations in their
knapsacks before going farther along.
Sprawled in the hot sun, chewing his beef and biscuit, he eyed the
landscape round him: the green, sloping fields, some cocked hay, and
some standing grass; the swamp and brick kilns to the left; Breed’s
Hill above, where the black dots still crawled around the tiny redoubt.
He talked with the other men.
All the young lads, he found, were in their glory that the attack was
to be made straight on, that this detachment of the British Army would
pound forward full force and set the Americans running, or beat them
down into their native clay. But the old wise sergeants shook their
heads and said it was a pity Gage hadn’t ordered them to land at the
Neck. They could have bottled up the Yankees in Charlestown then, and
starved them out, and not had to fire a shot.
No, somebody else said, for to do that would have meant sending a force
between two wings of its enemy, and that was a tactic frowned upon long
before Caesar marched through Gaul. In the end they all agreed that
they were well enough satisfied with the way things had fallen out.
They’d march up that hill in double-quick time, drive the cowardly
Yankees out of their burrow, and be back drinking beer in Boston before
the sun went down.
They were beginning to take out packs of dog-eared playing cards when
the word passed among them that reinforcements were disembarking on the
fields to the left; that Howe had sent for the reinforcements because
the Americans were bringing in more troops, the earthworks had been
extended far to the left, and he didn’t like the looks of things at all.
Gerry began to put his uneaten food away in his knapsack. There wasn’t
as much room in it as there should have been, because at the last
moment he had decided to stuff in the rough shirt and breeches he wore
when he went about the Yankee countryside. He smiled now, as he saw
them there. Didn’t think he’d have a need for them, but you never know.
Just then the bugles sounded and the officers called them to attention.
Like one man the assembled army was on its feet. Gerry could see the
newly landed troops drawn up away to the left, facing the redoubt.
General Howe, dark, florid and heavily built, stood forth and spoke to
his men.
“Gentlemen, I am very happy to have the honor of commanding so fine
a body.... I do not doubt that you will behave like Englishmen and
as becometh good soldiers. If the enemy will not come from their
entrenchments, we must drive them out, otherwise the town of Boston
will be set on fire by them.... I shall not desire one of you to go a
step further than where I go at your head. Remember, gentlemen, we have
no recourse, if we lose Boston, but to go on board our ships ... which
will be very disagreeable to us all.”
General Howe stepped a little aside and stood smiling proudly round
him, his hand on his sword. The troops stood tensely, bayonets in hand,
waiting the order to move ahead. The cannonading from the ships was
so steady that they did not hear it any more, but the guns of Boston
now set up an iron clamor that seemed fit to shake the earth. Now the
artillery rolled toward the redoubt.
Gerry looked up at the serene blue sky, at a cluster of apple trees a
little way ahead. There were trees like that on his father’s farm in
Devon, and he wondered if he’d ever again see them growing there. He
looked at the hill where spouts of dust shot upward as heavy balls hit
the turf of the redoubt. Suppose they did have to board their ships
and sail away? Maybe he wouldn’t sail away, maybe he’d go and find
blue-eyed Kitty. Maybe he would....
The artillery seemed to have slowed and faltered, bogged down in the
miry earth at the swamp edge, crushing the blue flag lilies as it moved
forward again. At last came the order the scarlet host had been waiting
for.
Gerry gripped his bayonet and stepped out as he had been trained to do.
A rippling field of buttercups and daisies lay ahead, and beyond it a
rail fence, but he saw no likely danger there. He glanced toward the
redoubt where General Pigot was to lead the attack. Howe would march on
the rail fence that joined a stone wall running to the waterside. Then
Howe’s regiments and the light infantry would shatter the Yankees’ left
and sweep across it, swinging inland to overwhelm the earthworks from
behind. It seemed like an unbeatable plan.
The light infantry, men from the Welsh Fusileers and the King’s Own
forged steadily ahead--but not easily. The day was growing hotter. What
with ammunition, food, blankets, and firelocks, they were weighted
down a hundred pounds to a man. Gerry felt the sweat burst out on his
face. He wished he had a drink. He wished he could run his finger under
the stiff leather stock that gripped his throat. He wished he could
rip off his beaver hat. Clouds of black smoke with white under-edges
were billowing up to the west of Breed’s Hill. Looked like Charlestown
Village was afire. Well, Admiral Graves had wanted to burn it long ago.
He waded through the thick grass, almost to his knees, then out on a
muddy strip of beach littered with driftwood and small dead creatures
of the sea. Here they halted briefly to re-form.
Grouped now in columns of fours, the Welsh Fusileers in the lead, the
light infantry advanced along the narrow strip of shore. They drew
close to the rough fieldstone wall. That it had been hastily thrown up,
Gerry could see now. Undoubtably there would be Yankees behind it. He
half lifted his bayonet. They drew nearer and nearer. They were ready
to deploy and charge, when the blast came.
The low stone wall seemed to leap forth at them in a searing torrent of
fire. Like corn before the scythe, the men on both sides of him went
down. More from shock than anything else. Gerry fell on his knees, but
he lifted his gun and fired once from there. Where the bullet went, he
never knew. Crouched in the foul-smelling mud, he tried to load again.
Wounded men lay all around him. His own company seemed to be cut to
pieces, but the King’s Own tried to form a charge and went streaming
through. Again the tide of flame leaped forward. The scarlet line,
broken in many places, reeled back. Again the officers rallied what was
left of them, and again the charge came on. The whole world seemed to
be dissolved in blood and fire, the cries of the wounded, the shouts of
the officers, and the steady roar of the guns upon the hill.
He tried to pull himself upright, but just then he felt a terrible
blow against his head. His ears rang. Stars and circles swam before
his eyes, orange, green, and rainbow-hued. He seemed to be no longer a
living thing, only one huge dull pain sinking into darkness.
He did not know how long it was before the darkness streamed past him
and away, and he saw the stone wall abristle with smoking gun barrels.
He lifted his head from the mud and gazed in the other direction.
To his horror he saw the scarlet backs of his comrades fleeing
helter-skelter toward the barges by the shore. He lay all alone, in the
midst of the dying and the dead. One man was calling for a drink of
water, and another man gasped out a prayer. Shattered muskets, ripped
knapsacks, and the discarded wigs of the officers littered the beach
about him.
His head throbbed and seemed to be swelling larger every minute, big as
the sun itself, the sun that still glared down from the pitiless blue
sky. He couldn’t think clear, and he knew he’d have to think clear, if
he ever got out of this alive.
Finally he lifted up his head and saw a steepening of the river bank
just ahead of him that made a sort of bluff he could try to crawl
under. Inch by inch, painfully, he dragged himself among the fallen
men. Most of them lay quiet now and were not troubled by his passage
through. They would never be troubled by anything any more. They had
not beaten the Americans, but they would never board the ships and sail
away.
Once under the safety of the bluff, he lay there and sipped a little of
the brackish water which he scooped up in his hands. There was blood on
his uniform, and blood was trickling down from somewhere over his left
ear, but he did not put his hand up. He did not want to know how badly
he was hurt--not right now.
And yet, his own wound wasn’t the worst of it. The worst of it was the
sight of the British Army running away. Running to the barges, fleeing
back to Boston, beaten almost to destruction by a mob of American
farmers at a stone wall and an earthworks on a hill! What was that old
tune the band played sometimes on parade? _The World Turned Upside
Down!_
What would happen to him, he wondered, when the Yankees found him lying
here? They didn’t have bayonets, most of them, so they couldn’t run him
through, but there were other ways to kill a man.
But maybe they wouldn’t, all of them, kill a wounded man, any more than
he would. He’d gone among them, traveled through their towns, and found
there men no worse than he. And at that he remembered the knapsack and
the clothing in it. He reached down; yes, it still hung at his side.
Painfully, haltingly, he pulled off the ruined uniform, the muddy
scarlet and blood-stained white. Then he lay there naked in the mud a
little while, under the bluff of sun-baked clay, till he had gathered
strength enough to pull on the country clothes, the garb of most of the
men behind the American line.
“Maybe--if they find me--they’ll think I’m one of theirs,” he muttered,
“take me in with their own wounded and bind my head up--and never
know.” He managed a weak smile. The last prank he’d ever play on the
Yankees, he guessed, but it was worth a try.
Somehow he managed to crawl up the bank and out on the bloody grass. He
lifted his eyes toward the redoubt. Could he believe what he saw? It
had redcoats swarming all over it, their bayonets drawn, struggling on
the parapet with the Americans, leaping down on those below.
“So the lads have come back,” he whispered faintly. “We aren’t beaten
after all. I should have known it couldn’t be--not Howe and Pigot! Not
the Fusileers and the King’s Own.”
He tried to get to his feet, but he couldn’t because his head was too
big and heavy. His head was as big as the whole world. His head was
drifting away on a tide of darkness that swept by.
_Chapter Fourteen_
THE YOUNG MAY DIE
Kitty did not know what time it was or how long she had been asleep.
She only knew that she was wide awake now, somewhere in the empty black
middle of the night, and she could hear Gran’s voice from the taproom
below.
“You may be an officer, young man,” Gran was saying, “furthermore,
you may have come all the way up here from Connecticut, but I’m not
impressed with that. I’m not one of your soldiery, nor obliged to take
your orders. This is my son-in-law’s house, and the taxes upon it paid.
I mean to stay here till he orders me from it.”
Kitty leaped out of bed and ran to the head of the stairs where she
could hear better.
“It’s only for your own safety, Ma’am,” a harassed young voice was
explaining. “There’s going to be all hell to pay here tomorrow morning.”
“So you’ve been telling me,” went on Gran calmly, “and in that case,
I’d better get some sleep to be ready for it. Good night, young man.”
Kitty heard the slamming of the front door. She crept downstairs.
Gran was methodically taking all the best silverware out of the chest
and wrapping each piece separately in flannel.
“What’s the matter, Gran?” asked Kitty. She drew her flimsy nightrail
around her and stood there shivering.
Gran went on sorting out porringers and teaspoons. “There’s going to be
trouble, child,” she said. “The town’s full of soldiers, and there’s
more soldiers digging some sort of burrow above us on the hill. They
say by daylight we can expect shooting.”
“Are they British soldiers?” asked Kitty. After all, Gerry Malory had
warned her, and she had passed the message on, telling Gran it was
something she had heard in the street. Gran had scoffed at the idea,
refused to be driven away.
“British! No! They be still drinking and gambling in Boston, and like
to stay there till the blast of Gabriel’s horn, if you ask me. These
soldiers are our own lads, and they sent the word about that since
they’ve entrenched themselves on a hill the British wanted, they look
for a battle.”
“If--if there is a battle, what will we do?” asked Kitty.
“We’ll do what is needed,” said Gran shortly. “Right now I want you to
wake Sally Rose. Put on your oldest dresses and good stout shoes. No
flounces and toothpick heels, mind. Pick up whatever valuables you have
and bring them to me.”
Sally Rose, still sleepy-eyed, was enchanted at the prospect of
adventure. She brought a whole little chest full of trinkets when they
returned to the kitchen. Kitty had only her mother’s cameo brooch, and
she pinned that inside her bodice. Gran held out a willow basket full
of the carefully wrapped silver.
“You girls take this down to the graveyard and bury it,” she ordered.
“If the British come pouring in here tomorrow morning, looking for
what they can find, new-turned earth in a graveyard will occasion no
comment.” Across the lid of the basket she laid a wooden shovel.
Carrying the basket between them, the girls picked their way through
the town in the warm, dim starlight. Here and there they passed by
little groups of men who seemed to be patrolling the streets, who
looked at them curiously but uttered no challenge. Lights were burning
across the river in Boston and on the masts of the _Somerset_ lying
at anchor in mid-channel. Cries of “All’s Well!” sounded faintly at
intervals from its decks and from the sentries in the town beyond it.
There were no lights or sentries apparent on Bunker Hill, nor yet on
Breed’s, when they looked that way, but both hillsides seemed to be
alive with moving masses of shadow; a low hum rose above them like the
swarming of many hives of bees. Now and then there was a tiny flash of
light, or a clang as a shovel hit against stone.
Kitty dug a shallow pit under the flowering quince tree where she had
talked with Gerry Malory, and Sally Rose helped to cover it over, once
the silver and her own treasures lay safe inside. Then they hurried
back to the Bay and Beagle. Gran was trotting about the kitchen,
setting many pans of bread to rise, pulling down hams from the rafters,
heating the bake ovens red hot.
“Get to work, girls,” she said as they came in, handing Kitty a carving
knife and Sally Rose a wooden spoon. “Can’t tell how many men we may
have to feed tomorrow.”
When they finished the preparations she considered necessary, they sank
down exhausted on benches drawn to the oak table. Kitty noticed that
the hands of the tall old clock pointed to a quarter past three.
“My soul and body,” said Gran, “I thought I’d learned to do without it,
but a cup of tea would certainly taste good to me right now.”
Sally Rose smiled and her eyes sparkled in the candlelight. “I can
get you tea, Gran,” she said. “Father has some hidden away. He says
he keeps it for times of need among womenfolk. ’Twas bought long ago
before tea-tax time. Put the kettle on, Kitty.”
She went flying into the taproom to the secret cache behind the bar. A
little later they sat down again with steaming cups before them.
But Gran’s face was sober, and she spoke more gently than was her wont
to do. “I hope that whatever happens tomorrow,” she said, holding her
teacup in her hand, not tasting the fragrant liquid, “you girls will
behave in a fitting manner, though it may not be easy. There is bound
to be much danger about in a battle, and many horrible sights to be
seen. When the soldiers came here first and warned us to go away, I
thought I would do as they advised me. And then I remembered an old
great-grandmother of mine. She lived in a lonely garrison and when the
Indians attacked her home, she did not run away.”
“What did she do?” asked Sally Rose, her eyes wide.
“She poured boiling water out of an upstairs window and scalded the
varmints,” snapped Gran, with all her usual severity. “And if she could
do that, it came to me that I could stay here and do whatever it was
needful I should do.”
“Do you think to pour hot water on the British, Gran?” asked Kitty,
trying to suppress a giggle.
“Times change,” said Gran, her eyes fixed on the dwindling darkness
outside, on the tall hollyhock stems becoming visible in the garden,
“and that’s not what will be expected of us, most likely. Only--it
comes to me--that sometime, a good many years from now, all of us, yes,
even you, Sally Rose, will be great-grandmothers, too.”
“With gray hair?” asked Sally Rose plaintively.
“With gray hair--or no hair at all,” continued Gran. “And then, at that
time, we wouldn’t want the young folk of our blood to say we were
afraid and ran away when the time of danger came.”
She looked challengingly at the girls.
“No,” said Kitty soberly. “We wouldn’t want that. But what will we do,
Gran?”
“Can’t tell for certain. But the way I see it, we keep a victualling
house, and when there’s a lull in the fight, if a fight there be, the
men will want food and drink. We’ll be here to provide it for them. All
we have to do is the thing we do every day--”
A low boom like thunder, and yet sharper and more explosive than
thunder, rolled and echoed in the direction of Morton’s Point. A moment
later the windows rattled and the tavern shook.
Gran covered her ears and closed her eyes. “Merciful heavens, it’s
begun! I’ll have to eat my fine words now! Under the table, Kitty,
Sally Rose!”
In a moment they were huddled together on the floor, with the spreading
trestles round them and the stout oak planks above. The blast was
followed by a silence, and in the silence they heard a derisive
shouting from the crest of Breed’s Hill.
“Sounds like the lads up there had suffered no harm from it,” murmured
Gran, her voice a little steadier now. “That was a cannon shot, I
think; most likely from one of their ships. I really doubt they’ll come
ashore. Perhaps it would be safe--”
The cannon boomed again. Now another cannon spoke out, a little to the
left. Then another. There were no silences any more, only the steady
booming, and with every fourth or fifth boom, the tavern shook. One
after another the windowpanes began to shatter. Once they heard a great
crash in the street.
They did not speak to each other, for no human voice could penetrate
the din. Kitty watched a streak of sunlight slowly widen and move
across the floor. It told her that time was passing, and that this was
a clear, bright day.
After awhile a lull did come, and the cannonading died out into
silence. The silence was broken by a heavy knocking on the street door.
Gran’s eyes snapped and her face hardened. “’Pon my soul, no stranger
is going to catch me hiding under a table, cannon or no cannon--nor my
granddaughters, either. Kitty, go and see what’s wanted.”
She got to her feet and smoothed her apron. Sally Rose followed her and
stood still, her eyes wide with fright, her lips trembling. Kitty went
to open the door.
A gnarled old man stood there, holding a wooden bucket in each hand.
He pointed to the tavern sign and then opened his mouth in a toothless
grin.
“Lass,” he inquired, “are ye doing business today?”
“Yes,” said Kitty steadily. “I guess we are.”
“Good. Will ye fill these pails with water for me. The lads has need of
it on the Hill.”
“Come in,” said Kitty. She took the two pails through the kitchen to
the garden well. When she returned with them, there were half a dozen
other men waiting, and they wanted water, too.
The guns began again with a new fury. Gran and Sally Rose had stepped
into the garden, and when Kitty returned there after the men had gone,
she found them staring up the hill.
A small, square earthworks stood on the green crest that had been bare
at twilight. Small figures of men were working all around it, digging
up turf, building it higher, stringing a wooden fence in front. Other
men passed to and fro over Bunker Hill and the highroad that led to
the Neck. Every now and then a column of dust shot skyward as a cannon
ball plowed into the earth. But the men who were busy about the
earthworks paid no attention to the cannon balls.
Now and then there would be a moment’s pause in the firing, and that
gave Gran and the girls a chance to speak to one another.
“What’s going on up there, and where are the British?” demanded Gran.
“Did those water boys bring you any news, Kitty?”
“It’s just as you thought,” said Kitty hurriedly, knowing that the guns
might interrupt her at any moment. “The ships are firing at us from all
three sides. The lookouts say there’s a commotion in Boston, but it’s
too early to tell yet what they mean to do. They say there are about
a hundred people left here in the town, but there’s such heavy firing
across the Neck they doubt that we can get away.”
Just then there came a hail from the kitchen doorway, where a man stood
with two empty water buckets. Gran went to talk with him herself, this
time. When he had gone, she spoke her mind to the girls.
“Nobody up there’s got time to be hungry, it seems, and they’ve plenty
of strong drink amongst them, but two of their great hogsheads have
been shot open, and the need’s for water. Sally Rose, you stay by the
windlass and keep turning. Kitty, you carry the pails to the taproom to
save the men the journey out here. Fill every tub and bucket and keep
them full. I’m going to the roof to see for myself whatever there is to
be seen.”
It seemed to the two girls that the morning would last forever, as the
sun toiled upward toward noon. Sally Rose ground at the windlass and
swung the heavy buckets over the stone curb where Kitty’s hand received
them and carried them inside. Round and round, back and forth, round
and round, less like women of flesh and blood than like two parts of
some wooden machine. They did not talk much together. They had not the
breath for it, nor very much to say. Now and then Kitty looked up the
hill to the earthworks, the tiny, gallant redoubt. The men were still
toiling to reinforce it, and a man in a blue coat strolled fearlessly
along the parapet as if he were telling them what to do.
It was about noon by the kitchen clock when Gran came down stairs. Her
face was grim. “Girls,” she said tensely, “leave your work and come
with me. I want you to see a shameful sight. I want you to see the
King’s soldiers coming out with guns against the King’s loyal people.”
The Bay and Beagle was a square-built house of red brick, three stories
tall, with a white railing about its flat roof. Gran led the girls to
the side facing Boston, half a mile away. Kitty gripped the rail with
both hands, though she would have liked to put them in her ears, the
cannonading had become so much louder, the spaces between the blasts
so brief and few. Sunlight sparkled on the blue river and on the three
great ships pouring forth constant broadsides of fire. Flames leaped
forth from Copp’s Hill, from floating batteries in the ferry way, and
over all hung a mist of grayish white smoke.
“Look there,” hissed Gran during a quiet interval, quiet except for
the jangling bells of Boston that were doing their best to make their
steeples rock.
Kitty and Sally Rose let their glances follow her pointing finger,
to the docks that lined the opposite shore. Two lines of barges were
moving out on the full tide, one from Long Wharf, and one from the
North Battery. They rode low in the water, being full to the gunwhales
with soldiers clad in white and vivid scarlet. The sunlight gleamed on
the steel of bayonets, on the brass mountings of the great black guns.
It was a gorgeous and yet a terrible sight.
All Boston seemed to go mad with the frantic clamor of bells. Shouts
and cheers rose from its crooked streets that wandered up hill and
down, and somewhere a band was playing. Its rooftops were black with
tiny figures who had climbed there to watch the King’s troops move
against the King’s people who felt they had always been loyal to
him--so far.
When the two rows of barges reached midstream they drew near to each
other and then moved forward in two long lines, side by side, like
pairs of marching men. They seemed to be headed for Moulton’s Point.
Kitty watched them till they passed out of sight around a curve of the
shore. Then she turned to face Gran and Sally Rose.
“Do--do you think they’re going to land?” she asked.
“Sakes alive, child,” answered Gran, “I don’t know what they mean to
do, but we’ll go back downstairs and see if we can find out. There are
sure to be more men coming after water.” She glanced up the hill toward
the redoubt. Only a few figures moved about it now, but clouds of dust
rose everywhere, thrown up by the impact of cannon balls, and the smoke
from the guns themselves drifted that way. At that moment a handful of
men appeared on the top of Bunker Hill, coming from the direction of
the Neck. More men followed them, and still more. In orderly fashion
they marched toward the redoubt where they were greeted with a faint
cheering.
“Looks like more of our lads had come to help,” said Gran, as she led
them down the narrow stairs and into the taproom. Just as she had
suspected, three water carriers waited there, and all the pails and
tubs were empty.
“Gran,” whispered Sally Rose, “I--I just don’t think I can turn that
windlass any more.”
Gran looked at her keenly. “It makes the arms ache, I know,” she said
with surprising sympathy. “Kitty, you go to the well for a while, and
let Sally Rose carry the buckets.”
And thus their morning chores began all over again, though it was
already early afternoon.
At the end of her third trip between well and taproom, Sally Rose
stopped to talk to Kitty in one of the rare intervals when no gun was
going off.
“Kit,” she said wanly, “I--I’m frightened, Kit. Do you think Gerry’s
coming in one of those barges? Do you think he’ll have to shoot at our
lads on the Hill? Do you think he might shoot at me?”
Kitty had been wondering almost the same thing, but she would not tell
her cousin so.
“If you’re going to think about a lad at a time like this,” she said,
“why don’t you think of Johnny? You’ve gone about with Johnny for a
long time, Sally Rose, and Johnny’s on our side. Don’t you wonder if
maybe he isn’t up there--in that earthworks on the Hill? Right there in
the thick of the cannon balls?”
“Well, I do wonder about Johnny,” she answered plaintively, “and about
Dick, even about that New Hampshire boy with no manners--Tom what’s his
name.”
Kitty, too, had wondered about Tom, but not too much. There was a cold
certainty in her heart that Tom Trask would be in the thick of whatever
fighting there was to come. She knew that as well as if she could see
him there.
“Girls!” called Gran’s voice from the kitchen door. “Girls! come here
to me!”
Kitty let go the windlass suddenly, and the handle spun creaking round.
Sally Rose set down her pail.
Just then there was a loud whine somewhere overhead, and then a whoosh,
a shower of splinters about them, and a roaring wind that flung them
hard against the turf. For a moment they lay there, not daring to move.
The smell of burning powder filled the air. Then another roaring wind
went by, but not so close, and higher overhead.
Kitty sat up. A cannon ball was bouncing across the grassy yard of the
house next door. It had passed through the garden and shattered the
pointed roof of the well-house where they stood. She reached out and
grasped Sally Rose by the shoulder.
“Quick,” she gasped. “Let’s get inside. They’re firing into the town,
not just at the earthworks any more.”
Racing into the taproom, they found Gran in talk with a tall man who
wore an officer’s coat and three-cornered hat and did not carry a pail.
“Girls,” said Gran, her voice frighteningly calm, “the British have
landed, and ’tis plain they mean to charge the Hill. Whether they can
take it or not, we don’t know. But they’re shooting straight into
Charlestown now, iron balls and iron cases full of burning trash. The
town’ll soon be in flames over our heads. ’Tis time to leave. There’s
nothing more we can do.”
A moment later they were in the street outside, trailing along after
a sorry-looking group of men and women, poor folk, mostly, who had
stayed in town in spite of all the warnings of danger, because they had
nowhere else to go.
“I’m glad,” murmured Gran as they plodded over the cobblestones, their
eyelids smarting and their throats choked with the thick smokiness that
seemed to be flooding over the whole world, “I’m glad we sent Timothy
to Cambridge, two days back--Timothy and that poor horse, too. At
least, we’re leaving no living thing behind to burn.”
Kitty thought of all the living things who were left to their fate in
that tiny fortress on the Hill.
Iron shot blasted the roofs about them, and balls of living flame burst
in the street. All along their way the old wooden houses were beginning
to catch fire. Just as they passed out of town and into the green
country at the rear of Bunker Hill, Kitty looked back. Clouds of black
smoke billowed upward from the docks, the warehouses, the dwellings,
the shops in the market square. The church steeple lifted up one
soaring pyramid of fire.
Her eyes hurt suddenly with tears that did not come from the smoke.
“Come away, child,” said Gran, putting her arm about the girl’s
shoulders, using her other hand to guide the half-blinded Sally Rose.
How far they had gone before the little procession came to a halt, she
did not know, but she did know they toiled a long way down the dusty
road, constantly shelled by the heavy guns of the ships.
When they did stop, it was in the front dooryard of a little tavern,
The Sign of the Sun. The raggle-taggle company scattered themselves
about on the grass, but Gran led the girls inside.
“They say the firing’s too heavy for us to cross the Neck and flee
inland,” she explained, “but ’tis to this place they are bringing the
wounded men. Perhaps we can help here.”
The taproom they entered was not unlike the taproom at the Bay and
Beagle, but tables and benches had been moved back to clear the floor.
Some dozen men in tattered shirts and bloody breeches were lying on the
wide pine boards. Some moaned, and some lay very still. Three women
worked among them, and a man in a buff coat, a doctor, most like, knelt
by one soldier probing a wounded knee.
Gran looked around her. “There’s water and bandages on the counter over
there,” she said. “Get to work, Kitty, Sally Rose.”
If the morning had seemed long, it seemed that that afternoon at the
Sign of the Sun would never go. Kitty knelt and swabbed and tied
bandages and held whiskey to men’s lips to ease their pain when Dr.
Eustis’ probe went deep. Sally Rose and Gran were doing the same thing,
too.
Then the men came in so fast there was no room for them in the tavern,
so they were laid in the yard, and all about the garden reaching up
the hill. The air was full of booming sound and smoke, and over all
burned the hot, hot sun.
The British had charged the Hill and been driven back, she heard from
the men she tended. The British had gathered themselves together and
were about to charge again.
She and Gran and Sally Rose were working over two men with shoulder
wounds, trying to staunch the flow of blood, when Gran suddenly stood
up and put her hand to her forehead. A strange look came across her
face. Then she smiled, and the light in her eyes paled out and dimmed
away.
“The young may die,” she murmured, “but the old must.”
She tottered and fell beside the soldiers on the bloody grass.
“Dead. Stone dead,” muttered Dr. Eustis, kneeling above her a few
moments later. “Her heart failed from the shock and strain of this day,
I do believe. But she died with her hand to the plow. She died like a
good soldier.”
Sally Rose crouched on the steps of the tavern, put her head in her
lap, and burst into uncontrollable weeping. She never moved from there
the rest of the afternoon. After Gran’s body was carried to a chamber
over the taproom, Kitty looked desolately about her for a few moments.
Then she went back to tending the wounded men. She would do what it was
needful for her to do.
Word came down the hill that the British were driving on the redoubt,
that powder horns were getting low.
Sometime after that--she never knew how long--Kitty knelt beside the
newest soldier to arrive. His head was bloody, and he wore a rough
shirt and breeches like all the rest, but on his feet were the fine
polished boots worn by the men in the British Army. When she washed the
blood away, she found she was bending over Gerry Malory.
_Chapter Fifteen_
A TERRIBLE BLACK DAY
“We be going down this hill now,” said Colonel John Stark, “to fortify
and hold the rail fence there.”
He stood out boldly on the bold bare top of Bunker Hill, his new blue
and buff coat unfastened at the neck, his musket held lightly but
warily in his hand. His New Hampshire troops were drawn up before him,
farmers and woodsmen for the most part, and dressed as befitted their
callings. They wore homespun shirts and breeches dyed in the sober
colors of late autumn, after the red and gold are gone. They carried a
variety of weapons: here a fowling piece made by a village blacksmith;
there an ancient queen’s arm left over from the Siege of Louisburg
thirty years ago; there a blunderbuss older than Plymouth Colony.
Tom Trask, who carried the blunderbuss, looked past his colonel at
the whole of Charlestown peninsula spread out before him in the early
afternoon sun. Below, on Breed’s Hill, that Prescott’s engineers had
made the surprise decision to fortify, stood the redoubt. He could look
down into it, just as if he were standing in the top of a tree. The
men had built wooden platforms to fire from, and they were massed and
waiting behind their guns. Farther down, on the point of land between
the sparkling blue rivers, the scarlet pride of the British Army
sprawled on the grass eating its dinner.
Stark went on, his voice low but piercing, a tenseness in it that made
a man’s blood run hot with courage, rather than cold with fear. He
gestured toward the shores of the Mystic, the side of the field away
from Boston.
“To the left of the redoubt, lads, you can see a rail fence, and
Knowlton’s men have banked it with cut hay. But past the rail fence
there’s an open stretch along the river, wide enough to drive a team of
horses through. We’ll go down there now and build a stone wall across
it. Isn’t a man among you don’t know how to build a stone wall.”
He paused and looked proudly around him. “And when it’s built, we’ll
take our stand there, there and along the fence, and fight. If there’s
a man among you don’t know how to do that, he can go home.”
The road back to the safety of Medford lay broad and smooth behind
them, but nobody turned toward that road. They started to cheer, but
the colonel held up his hand.
“Wait till you got something to cheer for, boys,” he said. “But
remember this--all! Don’t shoot till they be within fifty yards. Pick
out the officers. Fire low, and aim at the crossing of their belts. Hit
for the handsome coats and the commanders.”
He lifted his head and stepped back. Tom stood close enough to see his
burning eyes and the unflinching line of his mouth. “I don’t know how
the rest o’ you feel,” Stark went on, “but for myself, I’ll fight to
the last drop o’ blood in me. By the great Jehovah, I mean to live free
or die!”
“Fall in!” he shouted. He held up his arm and made a swooping motion
toward the rail fence. The New Hampshire regiments followed him down
the hill.
Once on the narrow strip of muddy beach beyond the fence, they worked
desperately to rear a wall across it before the British should come
on. Some fetched stones from other walls that divided the pastures on
the hillside. Others toiled to heap them in a bulwark straight to the
water’s edge. Tom was with those who carried boulders flung from the
bank and piled them ready to the builder’s hand. Once he climbed up the
ledge himself to take a look at the field above.
“Hey, Caleb,” he called eagerly, as he noticed a young man standing
where the rail fence ended, a musket in his hand.
Colonel Stark’s first-born son, sixteen-year-old Caleb, turned around
and a grin broke over his lean face as he recognized his old hunting
companion. He stepped forward.
“Tom!” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you since you left for Newburyport
with the log raft, back sometime in the spring.”
“No, I ain’t had a chance to get home. Ever since Concord Fight I been
in camp. Where you been?”
“Round home mostly. Just got here this morning. Word’s gone all around
the countryside that the British be about to attack. Figured my dad
could use another man. Say, Tom, Jean’s been asking about you--”
Fife and drum music burst forth from the red-coated ranks below the
hill, and the bugles uttered an urgent cry.
“Here they come!” yelled Tom. He leaped down the bank and ran to where
he had left his blunderbuss, in the center of the stone wall.
Crouched behind it, he watched the British come on. He could not see
the field above him that sloped upward to the redoubt, and ’twas likely
the heaviest charge would be there. But there were plenty of red coats
and white breeches moving toward the New Hampshire line. Once the
attackers stopped and reformed in groups of four. Then on they came.
Just to his right a musket spoke, though they had received no order
to fire. Tom lifted his own blunderbuss, but before he could pull the
trigger Colonel Stark strode fearlessly between the opposing armies. He
had a tree branch in his hand. With a sharp stab he thrust it into the
earth.
“Don’t another man fire till they pass this stake. Whoever does, I’ll
knock him down,” he said.
He looked around him to make sure his words were understood. Then he
walked back to his own line as calmly as if he were going down to his
sawmill on any summer afternoon. Behind him the advancing British fixed
their bayonets. He leaped down into the shelter of the wall.
When the word came, Tom was ready, and his blunderbuss spoke punctually
as the British passed the stake. He could not tell how many times he
fired, and he did not stop to see what damage he had done. Aim, fire,
load. Aim, fire, load. He kept relentlessly on, scarce conscious that
all around him other men were doing the same. He knew that the ground
in front of the stone wall was covered with wounded and dying redcoats,
but their line kept still coming on, and so long as it did, he would do
nothing but fire, load, aim.
As he had been told, he aimed at the handsome coats and the commanders.
Once when he lifted his eyes to choose the next target, he saw,
to his utter amazement, a man he knew. Captain Gerald Malory was
advancing toward him, bayonet in hand. As he looked, his amazement
turned to contempt. “Polecat!” he muttered. “Said he was captain.
Done it to dazzle the girls, I’ll warrant.” Gerald Malory wore a
private’s uniform. Turning away deliberately, Tom leveled his gun on a
resplendent major. When he looked back again, his one-time prisoner was
gone.
The British line wavered and fell back. He could hear the shouts of the
officers trying to rally their men. They lifted their guns and fired a
volley, and Tom heard the shots whistle high above.
“Gunning for hen hawks, maybe,” he told himself with a grin. “Won’t hit
nothing else that high in air.”
Now the red-coated line was drawing back, retreating down the beach
toward the point from whence they had come. Now there were no redcoats
within firing range any more.
“Whew!” said Tom. He put down the blunderbuss and mopped his forehead.
Now he took time to look around him.
All along the New Hampshire line men were standing up to stretch,
drinking water out of leather bottles, and beginning to move about and
talk together. He did not know the grizzled oldsters on either side of
him, but he soon learned they were veterans of the Indian War, and no
strangers to powder and shot.
“Think they’ll be back?” he asked, waving his thumb in the direction of
the retreating British.
His companions nodded. They were starting already to reload.
Down at the open end beside the water lay a confused heap of wounded.
Those who could still stand up and walk were helping to carry their
less fortunate fellows away. The word went round that a hospital had
been set up at The Sign of the Sun, a tavern on the back side of Bunker
Hill.
There came a hail from the bank above. Tom turned that way and
recognized the shaggy gray head and sturdy figure of Old Put. The
general was mounted on a horse, and had several other blue-coated
officers with him. Colonel Stark and three of his captains strode over
to the bank, and the two commanders talked for a long time. Then Stark
walked resolutely back to the stone wall, with his head lifted, his
gaze fixed straight before him. Old Put’s party rode off toward the
redoubt.
A bugle sounded far down on Morton’s Point. Once again the British
must be coming on. Tom crouched and leveled the blunderbuss. Just then
the man on his left leaned over and spoke.
“Word’s gone down the line,” he muttered through a thick wad of
tobacco, “that Johnny Stark’s lost his boy.”
“Caleb? How?” gasped Tom.
“Stopped a British ball somewheres up by the fence, they say.” The man
spat brown juice on the trampled mud. “Don’t like the look o’ things,
lad. My powder horn’s getting low.”
“So’s mine,” said Tom numbly. He looked between the stones at the
oncoming scarlet line. He knew the depth of quiet love that lay between
that father and son. “When they told Stark--what did he say?”
“Said he had no time now to talk o’ private affairs,” answered the
veteran. “Look there, in the front ranks of ’em! That’s General Howe. I
fought under him at Quebec in ’59. I’d know him anywhere.”
Tom looked where the other pointed, but he did not see the proud
pompous figure of the British general leading on his men. He saw
instead a New Hampshire mountainside in the fall, young Caleb Stark
walking under the golden beech leaves, with his head up, laughing
in the crisp air. He saw Caleb skating on Dorr’s Pond in the winter
moonlight; pitching hay on a summer afternoon. And now at the rail
fence Caleb lay dead. By Jehovah, he’d fix the British for doing that
to his friend.
“Here they come, lad,” warned the man at his side.
“I’m ready,” said Tom. He gripped the blunderbuss, and all his rage and
vengeance sounded in the roar of it as it spoke.
The British were not so easily beaten back this time. Stepping over
their fallen comrades they marched up to the wall, staggered back at
the withering blast of fire, and came on again. But at last their
officers could no longer urge them forward. Once more Tom found
himself staring at the redcoats fleeing away.
It was a long time before they formed again, and the whole American
line was jubilant. It began to seem as if a handful of farmers with
nothing but courage and gunpowder had turned back the British Army. Tom
climbed up the bank in the interval and took a look at the redoubt.
It was untaken, and there were still, red-clad forms lying all over
the slope before it, and the gleaming brass of abandoned artillery. In
front of his own line the dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.
“We ought to send for more powder,” he muttered, as he went back to his
place and loaded the blunderbuss. “More men, maybe.”
“Prescott already sent for more men,” growled his neighbor. “Been
sending for ’em all day. Ward keeps ’em all close to Cambridge because
he thinks they’re in danger there. As for powder, there was only ’leven
barrels in the whole camp this morning. Bet there’s powerful little of
it left by now.”
“I got three more loadings,” said Tom. “I’ll give ’em that. Then I’ll
have to bash their skulls if I bring ’em down.”
“Bash their skulls then,” said the older man. “That’s as good a way as
any for the varmints to go.”
When the British made their third charge, they sent only a token force
against the rail fence. Their main attack was directed at the redoubt.
Tom fired his last charge of powder and then flung himself over the
bank to the field above. Many other New Hampshire men were doing the
same, their powder likewise being gone.
At his side he saw Hugh Watts, who had driven with him to Cambridge
after the lead.
“Bad news for the colonel,” said Watts.
“Aye. Bad news for everyone who knew young Caleb,” answered Tom with a
gulp. “He was a friend of mine.”
“Hope they got enough powder up there on the Hill,” the Londonderry
man went on. “Don’t seem as if they’re firing as lively as they should.”
Tom looked again at the redoubt. Black smoke was pouring up the sky
from over Charlestown way. The main force of the British was driving
toward the little fortress, coming dangerously near. Now they passed
the wooden fence. Now a handful of them began to swarm up a locust tree
that stood in one corner of the earthen wall.
“Great Jehovah!” gasped Hugh Watts. “They’re going in!”
It was true. A last frantic burst of firing came from the redoubt, and
then its guns were still. The British poured over the low walls in a
triumphant scarlet wave.
“No more powder. Or they’re all dead,” said Tom grimly.
“Out, lads!” he heard Captain Moore calling behind him. “Spread over
the field from Bunker Hill to the river and cover the retreat!”
* * * * *
Tramping back across Charlestown Neck in the sunset with the last
straggling ranks of the Great American Army, Tom Trask slowly began
to realize that he was not the same Tom Trask who had marched out
so confidently to Bunker Hill. He had seen and heard too much that
afternoon to remain the same. He had seen the King’s troops firing at
him, and he had fired back, and he wanted no more of England and the
King.
When the bells began to ring in Newburyport last April and he heard
the news of Concord Fight, he had gone to camp because all the other
men were going. Only a cripple or a coward would stay at home. But
he hadn’t thought much about it, much about why there had been this
Concord Fight.
He’d learned a little more from the talk around the campfire at Winter
Hill, but nobody seemed to be sure whether they were fighting to make
the King treat them better, or to get the country away from the King.
Well, for himself, he was sure now. He knew when he heard John Stark
say, “I mean to live free or die.” For that was the way he meant to
live. He knew it for sure when he heard the news that Caleb had been
shot.
And he had good hopes that the time would come when he could live that
way. Hadn’t he seen the British Army turn and run--turn and run away
twice?
“We’ll fight them from now till Judgment,” he muttered to himself. “But
we’re going to be free.”
A little group of his dusty, tattered fellows came toiling up and
overtook him where he plodded along, trailing the empty blunderbuss.
One of them hailed him, and he saw that it was Johnny Pettengall.
“Hey, Tom! We almost licked ’em, didn’t we?” he called. “If our
powder’d lasted one more time.... Where was you?”
“At the rail fence and along the wall,” said Tom.
“I was in the redoubt.”
“We got slaughtered there,” said Tom.
“Aye, many slaughtered,” agreed Johnny, falling into step beside him.
“We was bayoneted like so many cattle. This’ll be remembered forever in
New England as a terrible black day.”
“I guess it will,” Tom said.
“I saw them shoot Dr. Warren,” continued Johnny. “Shot him in the head
just as he was leaving the redoubt.”
“I seen him once in Cambridge,” muttered Tom. “He was a good man, I
guess. It’s worse for me that we lost young Caleb Stark.”
“The Colonel’s son?” asked Johnny, and his face brightened. “Oh no!
That was a false report, Tom. I heard Putnam himself telling Prescott
that. Said he was sorry the boy’s father ever got the word--but it
didn’t make no difference in the way he led his men. He said Stark’s
a soldier all the way through. Likely you and Caleb will be drinking
beer together tonight on Winter Hill.”
Tom drew a long breath. He looked out at the blue hills to the west,
with the red hot ball of the setting sun behind them. He was glad that
his friend was alive, but the good news hadn’t changed his mind about
one thing. He still wanted to live free.
_Chapter Sixteen_
HANGING AND WIVING
“Do you feel afraid now we’re really here?” asked Kitty. She put her
hand to Gerald Malory’s sleeve with a light, possessive touch and
looked up into his face anxiously. Gerry smiled down at her.
He still wore his country clothes and a bandage round his head, but the
healthy color was coming back into his face now. She had tended him for
a week at the field hospital below Medford Bridge, and for a week after
that he had been able to go walking with her in the sunshine every
afternoon. She and Sally Rose slept at the house of Mrs. Fulton who
directed the hospital. But Sally Rose was making new friends, and spent
less and less time among the wounded men, even though Gerry himself was
there.
“Not half so afraid as I was that night we went back to Charlestown to
dig up the silver,” Gerry said.
They stood in the highroad in front of the old Royall House where
Colonel Stark had his headquarters. In a few moments they would go
in. Gerry would confess that he was not a New Hampshire man who had
got knocked on the head at the rail fence and couldn’t remember what
company he came from. He would admit that he was Gerald Malory of the
Twenty-third. But they would not go in just yet. It was a soft summer
night with the fragrance of garden flowers in the air. He drew her down
beside him on the low brick wall.
“What were you afraid of that night?” she asked him. “When we went to
The Sign of the Sun to get a pass from the British major so we could go
into town, I thought he seemed like a very kind man.”
Gerry grinned down at her. “He was kind to you, certainly. From the
look in his eye, he’d have given you Boston Common and Long Wharf too,
if you’d asked for them. You’ve a way with us menfolk, Kitty.”
Kitty let her long lashes fall across her cheek, then she looked up at
him suddenly and smiled. “Do you know, it’s the strangest thing, I do
seem to have a way with them lately. But before I knew you, I never had
any way with them at all.”
He cleared his throat and looked away from her. “Yes, you’re blooming
out, my girl,” he said.
Kitty sighed happily. “Oh I do hope so! For so many years nobody
noticed me at all beside Sally Rose.”
“Ah, Sally Rose!” he muttered. “Honestly, I feel guilty there. How am
I ever going to tell her that I--that I--have taken a fancy to you,
Kitty?”
“Is a fancy all you’ve taken?”
“A deep down kind of fancy.”
“Oh!” She was silent for a moment, and then she said, “If you feel
guilty about Sally Rose, how do you think I feel about Tom Trask, the
New Hampshire boy? How am I going to tell him I’ve taken a fancy to
you?”
He did not answer, and after a moment she repeated her earlier
question. “What were you afraid of when we went to Charlestown that
night? It was sad, really, but I didn’t see any reason to be afraid.”
She remembered the forlorn look of the town, its cellar holes still
smoking, only a few old houses left near the millpond, the moss on the
gravestones scorched away. But they had found and brought back the
silverware.
“I was afraid I might be recognized and sent to rejoin my regiment. You
know I don’t want that to happen to me, Kitty.”
Kitty slipped out of his encircling arm and jumped to her feet.
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I coaxed you to come and tell the
whole thing to Colonel Stark. If he says you can stay here and be an
American, then you’ll have no more cause to be afraid.”
“Suppose he says I’m a deserter and an enemy, and ought to be hanged on
Cambridge Common? He may even think I’m a spy, Kitty.”
He stood up and held out both his hands. “I don’t think he’ll do that,”
said Kitty slowly. “Colonel Stark ought to understand any man who wants
to be an American. You can’t go on pretending always--always being
afraid.”
They heard a throat cleared sharply on the other side of the low wall.
“Don’t you young folks have any other place to do your courting?” asked
Colonel Stark.
Gerry turned quickly round, and Kitty drew a deep breath.
“We--we were on our way to consult you, Colonel--about a small matter.”
Colonel Stark inclined his head. “Come inside then,” he ordered. “I
trust the young woman has no complaint against you.”
“Oh no!” cried Kitty in embarrassment and alarm.
The three of them walked together up the broad graveled path between
the boxwood hedges, and in at the wide front door. Kitty had heard much
about Isaac Royall, the owner of the house, a rich Tory who had fled to
Boston, but she was not prepared for the carved elegance and panelled
wainscot of the great hall. She had never before seen a room like the
white and gold parlor where Colonel Stark seated them. It reassured
her a little to see his somewhat battered musket leaning against the
rosewood desk, a cartridge box flung down on a brocade chair.
“O’erlook the disorder if you will,” he said, picking up the cartridge
box. “I been at Cambridge all day, and Molly’s housemaids are forbidden
to meddle with my field equipment. Well, lad,” and he turned to Gerry,
his mouth severe, but a twinkle in his cold blue eye. “You say you come
here to see me about some matter.”
“Yes sir,” said Gerry, clenching his fists and leaning forward.
“Colonel Stark, sir, I been abed in your field hospital ever since the
battle at Charlestown. I said to all that I came from New Hampshire,
but since I was wounded I couldn’t remember my town or the name of my
captain. I told a lie, sir. I am Gerald Malory of the Twenty-third.”
“I know it,” said Stark quietly. The twinkle in his eye deepened.
“You--you know it? How?”
“Haven’t forgotten you was our prisoner after the Ipswich Fright, have
you? I won’t question you about the Fright too much. That’s water under
the bridge. Might have enjoyed it myself, when I was a lad.”
Gerry hung his head, and the Colonel went on. “You was recognized by
more’n a dozen men when we carted you back from the Hill.”
“Then--why?”
“Why didn’t we clap you back in gaol again? Well, maybe we should have.
I decided instead to have you watched. I wanted to find out your game.”
“I haven’t any game,” said Gerry miserably.
“So it was beginning to seem,” agreed Stark. “What are you? Tired of
fighting? A deserter?”
“I--I suppose so,” said Gerry. “I never meant to be a soldier. But
after I got in trouble at home, it seemed the best way.”
Stark cleared his throat. “You got a father?” he asked.
“A father? Yes, sir.”
“At home in England?”
“Yes.”
“How do you think he’d feel if he knew you was behaving so?”
“I don’t believe he’d care,” said Gerry. “After my mother died, he took
a young wife and has other sons. New one every year. ’Twas getting so
there was no room at home for me.”
Gradually, under the Colonel’s shrewd questioning, Gerry Malory’s whole
story came clear. Kitty had heard much of it before, but not all. He
told about his mother, the strolling player; how after her death he had
left grammar school, and ranged with a wild group of friends about the
farms and the town. Then he was taken up for poaching in the squire’s
woodland--caught the first unlucky time he set a bit of a rabbit snare.
And the recruiting sergeant came by in the thick of the trouble, and
there you were. No, he wasn’t a captain and never had been. He never
thought pretending to be one was a dishonest trick, since he never
gained thereby. He thought it was like taking a part in a play, and
better to choose a leading part. He wasn’t even twenty years old, as he
had said; wouldn’t be eighteen till next December came.
Stark pondered. “All that I can see,” he murmured. “I been a lad
myself, though, thank God, none such a foolhardy one. But after the
battle--what did you do with the boots you wore when they brought you
in, the boots that went with your British uniform?”
“My boots?” asked Gerry. He looked down at his feet. He was wearing
a pair of cowhide shoes Kitty had bought for him at a shop in Medford
Square. “Why, I don’t know what became of my boots.”
“I hid them,” said Kitty defiantly. “I was afraid--if the doctors
thought he was British--they’d just let him die. I pulled them off, and
took them outside, and threw them down the well.”
Colonel Stark slapped his knee and laughed with a quiet, wry kind of
mirth. “So I suppose from now on the water at The Sign of the Sun will
taste o’ British leather,” he said. Then he turned to Gerry. “Well, a
spirited lass is none so bad to have for a wife. I got one myself. Do
you mean to marry her for her kindness to you--if you don’t have to
hang, of course?”
“Not for her kindness,” said Gerry Malory firmly, his eyes lighting. “I
mean to marry her--well, because I mean to marry her.”
“Well enough said,” agreed the colonel. “But I mentioned the other, the
hanging matter. Can you think of any reason against it?”
A tragic look came over Gerry’s face, and his voice took on a deep
vibrant note of pleading. It seemed to Kitty that she could see and
hear his actress mother there.
“You wouldn’t hang a man for a mistake, would you, Colonel? A mistake
that was made a hundred and fifty years ago?” He paused and shut his
eyes dramatically.
Colonel Stark gave Kitty a slow, solemn wink, and she knew that he was
thinking of the actress mother, too.
“What was the mistake, lad,” he demanded, “and who made it? You weren’t
making mistakes a hundred and fifty years ago. Yours were all ahead of
you then.”
“It was an old ancestor of mine, sir, who went down to the docks in
Plymouth and thought to sail with the folk who came here to found your
own Plymouth Colony. He thought he would come with them and be an
American, but he changed his mind and went back to Barnstaple, and the
family’s been there ever since. That was the mistake he made. If it
hadn’t been for him--I might ha’ been fighting on your side in this
war.”
Colonel Stark gazed sharply at the young man and saw what Kitty hoped
he would see: that for all the pretentious manner, the words were true.
Then he turned away for a moment and stared through the window where
the moonlight was turning white flowered stalks to silver in the garden.
“My folks didn’t make that mistake,” he said abruptly. “They come here
on a ship, like all the rest of us, except those who be Injun bred.
Come out o’ Scotland, my folks. Had five young ones die on the voyage,
and raised another five to replace ’em. Yes, your ancestor made a
mistake, lad. But how do you think to right it? Peace time, you could
come here like other Englishmen always did, and settle down and be one
of us. But not now, now that we be at war.”
“Couldn’t I, Colonel? That was what I was hoping for. It’s not that I’m
afraid of fighting. But I don’t want to fight against you. And I can’t
fight against my own.”
“And what would you do, Private Malory, if I said, ‘Go to! Clear out of
my camp and make your way as best you can?’”
Gerry’s face lit up, and there was no play-acting about him this time.
“Why, I’d thought about that, Colonel. Do you know what I’d do? I
sailed from Plymouth myself, for my regiment took ship there, so for
old times’ sake, I’d take the highroad and go down to your Plymouth in
Massachusetts, and see if I could make my way there and settle in, and
become a Plymouth man.”
“We got a Plymouth in New Hampshire,” said Stark thoughtfully. “I don’t
know whether all the land be taken there or no.” Then the lines in his
face hardened.
“I got the power tonight to send you on your way,” he said. “Tomorrow,
I may be plain Johnny Stark, headed back to the sawmill again. We got
a new commander coming up from the South to take over the whole army.
Name o’ Washington. A Virginia man. Can’t tell what he’ll do.”
On that July night the name of Washington meant nothing to Kitty
Greenleaf and Gerald Malory.
“Then let me go, Colonel Stark. Let me go tonight,” Gerry pleaded.
The colonel looked down at the rich woven rug on the floor. His eyes
seemed to be tracing the scrollwork pattern. Then he turned to Gerry
again. “There’s only one thing still bothers me, Private Malory,”
he said. “I believe you when you say you’d like to be an American,
and settle down in America and make your way there, and do no harm
to anyone. I commend you for it. But how do you feel toward your own
people? Don’t you believe in Parliament and the King?”
“I believe in them--over there,” said Gerry slowly. “But not over here.
They rule fine in England, it seems to me. But in America--the way I’ve
come to see America--they don’t know what they’re doing at all.”
Stark’s grin told Kitty that he had heard the answer he wanted to hear,
but he had one more word of caution. “Remember, you been knocked in the
head, lad. Are you sure you know what you’re about? That you won’t wake
up in a daze some morning and wish you was back with the Twenty-third?”
“No,” said Gerry. “I won’t wish myself back.”
Stark got to his feet. “Might happen,” he said mildly, “if you was to
slip out of camp long about midnight, sentry would be looking the other
way.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Gerry fervently.
“Thank me in ten years,” said Stark, “if you still want to then. It’s a
crazy venture, and we can’t tell how it’ll turn out. But if it’s what
you want, get on with it. They say hanging and wiving goes by destiny.
And I guess you’re lucky in both o’ them matters, lad.”
He led them toward the front door, and as they passed by a small parlor
opening off the hall, Kitty caught sight of a couple inside it. They
sat on a peacock-colored sofa, locked in a deep embrace. Startled at
the sound of footsteps, they drew apart. Stark shot a quick look in
their direction and grinned widely. “No harm in it,” he said, “they’re
a betrothed pair.” He would have kept on down the hall, but Kitty stood
still, gasping.
The man on the blue sofa was Tom Trask, and the girl was a stranger
to her; small and delicately formed, with a beautiful cameo face and
shining red hair. Under their scrutiny Tom stood up. Some men would
have been embarrassed, but not he. He scooped the girl to her feet and
led her forward.
“Well,” he greeted them, “so it’s Kit herself, and _Private_ Malory.
I’d like you to meet Jeanie Morrison.” He looked down at the red-haired
girl, and there was a tender merriment in his eye.
“I kissed with all the girls some,” he continued. “But I always knew
I’d marry Jean.”
“Listen to the man!” trilled Jeanie. She gave him an enchanting smile
that showed a dimple in her cheek.
“Jeanie come down from Derryfield with my wife a few days back,”
explained the colonel, sensing some tension in the air he could not
understand. “She came to see Tom and bring him his gun. A Brown Bess,
British made, one of the best guns in the army.”
“Aye,” said Tom mockingly. “I got my own gun. You can have your
blunderbuss back, Kitty. I’ll bring it to the hospital tomorrow.”
“Don’t bother,” said Kitty, but Gerry’s eyes lighted.
“Is there any way we could get it tonight?” he asked.
Kitty knew what he was thinking, and she saw the rightness of it. He
meant to go to Plymouth, armed with the Plymouth blunderbuss.
Tom shrugged, “If you want it that bad,” he said. “As a matter of fact,
I brought it with me. You’ll find it standing among the lilacs to the
right of the front door.”
After they had retrieved the old weapon and taken their leave of
Colonel Stark, they walked quietly through the streets of Medford hand
in hand.
Kitty should have been relieved that she would have no painful scene
with Tom, but she could not help feeling rueful at the knowledge that
he had preferred red-haired Jeanie all the time.
“You’re lucky,” Gerry assured her. “I wish--I wish I could get out of
it so easy with Sally Rose.”
He kissed her on the steps of the Fulton house.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back, Kitty,” he said. “It may take me a
long time to make my own way. And you--now your grandmother’s dead,
where will you go?”
“I think I’ll go back to her old house and wait till you come for me.
You’ve never been to Newburyport, but you can find the way. You’ll be
gone tomorrow, and I’m going to Cambridge and get old Timothy and take
him home.”
“Will Sally Rose go with you?” he asked.
“What do you think?” said Kitty. “Look there!” She pointed to the
parlor window just to the left of the front door.
Sally Rose was standing inside the parlor. She was smiling up into
the eyes of a tall young captain who wore the blue and white of the
Connecticut line. She let her lashes veil her eyes and opened her
pretty lips. “We’ve none such handsome lads in Massachusetts--” she
said.
Gerry Malory swallowed. Then he began to laugh. “Where, oh where,” he
exclaimed, “have I heard those words before?”
After he had left her, Kitty slipped into the house and up to the
little chamber that she shared with Sally Rose. She went to the window
and stood there, looking at the still town, and the moonlit river, the
campfires on Winter Hill, the lights of the warships far down the dim
bay.
Less than three months back, it was, that they had all played
hide-and-seek in Newburyport, but they would never play hide-and-seek
again. Never again would they be that young.
Even she and Sally Rose, Gran had said, would be great-grandmothers
some day. How glad she was that Gran had had that last cup of tea.
She turned from the window and began to undress, laughing as she
remembered the struggle to get Sally Rose out of the stays. Never
again, she thought, would they be as young as that.
She was just climbing into bed when Sally Rose opened the chamber door.
“Kitty,” she said, “there’s going to be handsome men in uniform about
for ages. Captain Davenport was just telling me that he expects a long
war. He says that since Bunker Hill, the word’s been in everybody’s
mouth that we’re going to live free or die--and that will take a long
time.”
“Live free or die? What does that mean?” asked Kitty, bewildered.
“Well, I don’t understand it myself,” said Sally Rose, taking the
ribbon out of her curls, “but I have an idea of one man who might know.
I think you’ll be likely to find out if you go and speak to Tom Trask.”
Kitty lay in the wide bed and watched her cousin slip out of her dainty
garments and fling them carelessly across a chair. Yes, she thought,
there was, after all, some sort of unconscious wisdom about the pretty
featherbrain. Hanging and wiving goes by destiny, Colonel Stark had
said, and she had known that Gerry was her destiny, almost from the
day she had seen him first from the door of the Bay and Beagle as
he marched past with the prisoners’ cart. And she would not have it
otherwise, for she loved Gerry. He would be as good an American as most
others, some day. He had many virtues, and she would rejoice and be
proud of them all her life, most likely. But when it came to a matter
of living free, Sally Rose was right. Tom Trask was the man who would
know.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
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