by Ron Carter
“I watched them cross the Back Bay at Boston.”
“You seen Warren?”
“He sent me.”
“What message?”
“Get ready, but don’t start a fight. Protect the town if they start something, but do not provoke them. Under any circumstance, do not fire a shot unless they fire first. Send word on up to Bedford.”
“I will. When will the regulars get here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe an hour, maybe later in the morning. Depends on what trouble they’ve had.”
“Do you know how they’re armed?”
“Grenadiers and marines with muskets. Maybe a few cannon.”
“I’ll be ready!” Parker exclaimed.
“Are Adams and Hancock still up at Clarke’s?”
“Yes.”
Revere nodded and turned the weary mare and once more raised her to a lope. He made his way up the Bedford Road, and reined the horse into the yard of the Reverend Jonas Clarke and dismounted. He patted the mare’s hot neck. “Good girl,” he said to her quietly. He tied her by the front door and banged with his fist. Lights came on inside the house and he waited and knocked again. Cautiously the front door opened and the voice of Sergeant William Munroe spoke through the crack.
“Who’s there?”
“Paul Revere.”
Munroe threw the door open. “Come on in!”
Revere stared at him. “What are you doing here?” He squinted about the room while his eyes adjusted to the sudden light, and he counted eight more armed men.
“I heard the regulars were moving and we came to guard Adams and Hancock if they intended coming here.”
“They’re behind me, but they’re coming. We’ve got to get Adams and Hancock out of here.”
From the back section of the house came Hancock’s booming voice. “Revere, is that you? Come on back here. We’re not afraid of you.”
Dorothy Quincy, Hancock’s fiancée, led Revere back to the kitchen, where Adams and Hancock rose from the table to greet him.
“How far behind?”
“I don’t know. More than an hour, at least.”
Hancock paced and ran his fingers through his hair. “By the Eternal, I’m going to fight. I’m going with the militia. I’ll get my musket.”
“No such thing,” Adams cut in. “That’s exactly what Gage hopes you’ll do.”
“Forget Gage! Those devils think they’re going to come in the night, terrorizing the countryside, taking what they want! No, I’ll fight.”
Revere interrupted. “Warren wants you and Adams to let the militia do the fighting. Anyone can carry a musket. We have only one John Hancock and one Sam Adams.”
Hancock glanced at Revere with hot eyes. “We’ll see about that.”
Adams suddenly raised his hand to quiet everyone, and in the silence they heard the roll of distant drums. “That’s Parker’s drummers calling the militia,” Adams said.
“I told him on the way here,” Revere answered.
Again Adams raised a hand and the sound of a running horse became louder and stopped at the front door, and in an instant came incessant banging.
Munroe quickly opened the door a crack and challenged the intruder. “Dawes!” he exclaimed and opened the door.
Dawes walked in, breathing heavy from his run. He stopped short at the sight of the room filled with men and then he saw Revere. “You made it!”
Revere’s shoulders slumped with relief. “I see you did too.”
Dawes looked at the armed men. “Who are these men?”
“Militia here to protect Adams and Hancock.”
“Good.” Dawes looked at Adams. “Are you ready to leave?”
“Yes, but Hancock’s being stubborn.”
Dawes took a step towards Hancock. “Sir, we need you. You better move on out farther into the country.”
“I don’t think so.” Hancock shook his head and would say no more.
Dawes shrugged and turned back to Revere. “Parker’s gathering his militia down on the Green. We better go on down and talk to them.”
Revere looked at Adams. “We’ve got to get on to Concord. Persuade Hancock, and leave before the regulars come.”
Remounted in the dooryard, Revere and Dawes stopped for a moment to look at the gathering that stood in the large, irregular rectangle of light that shined through the door onto the ground. They raised their hands to a salute, and Adams and Hancock, the militiamen, and Dorothy Quincy raised their hands to wave them off. They turned their horses and loped them south back down the Bedford road towards the lights that were shining in Lexington.
On the Green, west of the big meetinghouse, Parker had 130 of his men in rank and file, muskets over their shoulders, waiting, when Revere and Dawes rode up and dismounted.
“We’re ready,” Parker growled. “Where are the regulars?”
“They’ll be here. Maybe late.”
Impatient, Parker shook his head. “We can’t wait all night.”
“We’ve got to move on to Concord,” Revere responded.
“I’m going to send out a patrol and see if they’re coming,” Parker said.
“Stay alert. Remember Warren’s orders. Get word to Bedford.”
“It’s on the way.”
“Good luck.”
Revere and Dawes rode back to the road and again turned west, towards Concord.
“Any trouble?” Dawes queried as they rode side by side.
“I left one British officer in the clay pits. Someone shot at me near Mystic.”
“Militia or regulars?”
“Don’t know. I only saw the gun flash and heard the ball come past. How about you?”
“I was stopped at the barricade. They let me pass.”
“A lot of them are out tonight. I expect we’ll yet meet some of them.”
His words were barely spoken when suddenly Revere reined in his mare and Dawes stopped, eyes darting, searching for what Revere had seen. Revere spun the mare and stood in the stirrups, peering back towards Lexington. Dawes started to speak and Revere stopped him and cocked an ear and concentrated. His arm jerked up and he pointed.
One hundred yards back Dawes saw the dark shape of a rider coming, and then he heard the hoofbeats and Revere pointed to the side of the road and they split, Revere going east, Dawes west, to hide and wait. At twenty yards they saw the three-cornered hat, and Revere spurred the mare back onto the road and the rider pulled his winded horse to a stop.
“Who are you and what’s your business?” Revere called.
“Doctor Samuel Prescott. I was in Lexington visiting my fiancée. I’m going home to Concord. Who are you?”
“Paul Revere and William Dawes of Boston. Have you seen any regulars tonight?”
“No, but I saw the militia on the Green in Lexington. A British patrol came through earlier. They’re somewhere ahead.”
“Are you loyal to the Crown?”
“No. Massachusetts. I’m returning home to get ready for the regulars.”
“Do you know the road and the people?”
“Yes. Well.”
“We’re headed for Concord to give the alarm. Will you ride with us?”
“Yes.”
The three of them continued west, and Revere reined off the road to a farmhouse, where he banged on the door and gave the alarm before he returned to the road and caught up with the others.
“Huddleston lives there,” Prescott said, pointing, and rode to the house to give the alarm.
They continued west, Prescott pointing out the homes and calling out the names. “Fiske lives there, Whittemore there, Mansfield on up there,” he said, pointing to opposite sides of the road. Prescott reined left, Dawes right, to dark homes, and Revere loped on up the road towards the next one.
It happened fast. Revere saw two riders coming straight at him at a full gallop and knew his mare had little left to give. He stood in the stirrups and shouted, “Come on, Lexington men, here are two we can take!” He spurre
d forward, playing out his bluff, but it was not to be. Within two seconds two more appeared, and then two more, and Revere twisted in his saddle to shout a warning to Dawes and Prescott to escape, but they were coming at a run and in three seconds pulled to a stop in a cloud of dust beside him.
The six British officers surrounded them with cocked pistols. For a moment the three sat working the reins to hold their nervous horses, groping to understand they had been captured.
One officer pointed his pistol to the side of the road. “Get over those bars, out into that field.” The top three rails of a split-rail fence had been thrown down, leaving but the lowest one. Two officers led, followed by Prescott, then Dawes, and Revere last, their horses stepping over the low rail and out into the field. The other four soldiers followed, and ten yards into the field they all stopped.
The officer who had given the orders again started to speak. “Who—”
He got no further.
Prescott shouted, “Break for it!” and instantly jerked his horse to the left and drove his spurs home, and the horse leaped to a stampede gait in two jumps. Revere jerked his mare to the right and drove hard for a thicket of trees one hundred yards ahead. Dawes spun his horse completely around and the gelding cleared the low bar at the edge of the field, and Dawes headed back for Lexington at a full-out gallop.
The British soldiers split, two following each man as hard as their horses would run.
Prescott slowed his horse only long enough to drop into a dry creekbed known to him but not the two hot behind him, and angled west up the creekbed for Concord. The two behind him overran the creekbed and had to turn back. They jumped their frightened mounts into it and spurred after Prescott, shouting, “Halt!” Prescott held his horse at a run until he approached a bridge that was high enough to allow a horse beneath it but not a rider, and he slowed, spurred the horse up the bank, around the bridge, and headed on, away from the creekbed, beside a stone fence, and through an orchard, and then hauled the winded horse to a stop. He tied the horse to a tree and ran back ten yards and hunched low to listen.
Behind him the two soldiers had run their horses pell-mell up the creekbed, but not knowing the bridge lay ahead, they had seen it too late in the dark. They jerked back too hard on their reins, and the horses reared and threw both before they stampeded on beneath the bridge, riderless.
There was no pursuit. Prescott remounted and galloped to the door of the orchard owner, Samuel Hartwell, a sergeant in the Lincoln minutemen, under Captain Smith. Hartwell’s cousin John lived at the next farm.
“The regulars are on the way. Get word to Lincoln. I’m going on to Concord.”
While Prescott rode on to Concord, Hartwell left his barn, mounted on his own sorrel gelding, headed for Lincoln.
Behind Prescott, on the road back to Lexington, Dawes felt his horse begin to labor, and then the rhythm of the driving hooves began to break and Dawes knew he had a horse ready to drop. He twisted to look, and the two soldiers were less than one hundred yards behind, pistols drawn, closing on him rapidly. Fifty yards ahead was the Huddleston home they had aroused but twenty minutes earlier. He spurred his horse forward and at the last instant reined the jaded animal into the yard, with the soldiers less than sixty yards behind.
He hauled back hard and brought the horse to a sliding stop and leaped from the saddle, stumbling, falling, rolling back onto his feet. At the top of his lungs he shouted, “I’ve got two of them, boys, surround them!”
The house lights were on. There was a light in the barn. The two soldiers took one look, and whatever they thought, whatever they believed, they instantly spun their horses and ripped out of the dooryard back onto the road and headed back towards Concord at a high run, never looking back.
Huddleston opened his front door and looked. He saw a sweating, jaded horse with a man standing beside it. Then the man slowly sat down in the dust of the yard, and Huddleston saw his shoulders start to shake and then he heard the chuckle and then the laugh.
Back to the west, in the field where the three messengers had made their break for freedom, Revere held his horse at a gallop, headed for the black skyline of a gentle rise covered with oak and maple where he intended turning the horse loose and hiding on foot. He had no way of knowing he was running straight for the one place where six more officers lay in ambush. Twenty yards from the woods they charged towards him, and before he could stop or turn they had his bridle reins and two of them had cocked pistols four feet from his head.
“Dismount!” one of them ordered. “We’ll teach another rebel a lesson!”
“Traitors!” another exclaimed. “All of them! Let’s shoot this bloody traitor here and now and be done with it!”
They dismounted and jerked Revere roughly from his horse.
“What’s your name, g’vnor, so we’ll get it right on your tombstone.”
One grabbed his coat and jerked it open, searching for weapons. “’E’s got no pistol.”
“Didja see a knife? These bloody colonials are no better than Indians.”
Revere remained silent and did not raise a hand in his own defense.
“Easy, gentlemen,” another officer interrupted. “We don’t yet know why this man was on the road. Perhaps he’s harmless.” He faced Revere. “We’re out here under orders to look for some deserters from the Twenty-third Regiment. We’ve been surprised at the traffic on this road. What is your name, sir?”
Revere looked at him, and at the others, and made his decision. “Paul Revere.”
“I’ve heard the name. From Boston?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re with the colonials?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“What’s your business on this road at night?”
Revere took a deep breath. “I know full well what you and your soldiers are doing on this road tonight, and it doesn’t concern deserters. It concerns Colonel Francis Smith and eight hundred of your grenadiers and marines marching to Concord. You’re out here to intercept anyone carrying the news, and that, sir, is what I was doing. I’ve already put out the word to every town within thirty miles of Lexington.”
The officer’s mouth dropped open and they all fell into a stunned silence.
Revere waited for a response but they could make none.
“And that isn’t all of it, sir,” Revere continued, his voice firm. “I have—”
At that moment, to the east, on the Lexington Green, Captain John Parker shook his head in impatient disgust and he bellowed his orders to his militiamen, who had been standing in rank and file with loaded muskets for more than an hour, waiting for the red-coated army which had not appeared.
“The regulars are nowhere near,” Parker shouted. “All of you, go on home and wait. I’ll sound recall when they get here. Dismissed. Go on home.”
“Our muskets are loaded, sir,” Sergeant Fowler responded. “Shall we discharge them?” It was close to impossible to dig the ball out of a musket barrel, once it was seated on a patch, and none of the men fancied carrying loaded muskets about on the Green through the night.
“Yes,” Parker answered, “fire your muskets into the ground to unload them.”
One hundred thirty men pointed their long-barreled muskets into the ground and pulled the triggers, and the muskets blasted like thunder in the night. The sound rolled out from the Green and carried for miles, and it reached the woods where Revere was facing his captors. Every man among them recognized the sound of a musket volley.
Revere continued. “I have five hundred men within two miles of here, riding this way to meet your regulars when they get to Concord. They’ll be here within minutes. You have two choices. Run, or be captured.”
The officer snapped his gaping mouth shut. “Get Major Mitchell.”
A second officer sprinted away, and returned in a moment with Major Edward Mitchell.
“Sir, this man says he has spread the word about Colonel Smith to every militiaman within fifty miles of here. Did you hear
the volley just a moment ago?”
“I did.”
“He says six or seven hundred of the militia are headed this way at this moment.”
“Who is this man?” Mitchell walked to Revere. “What’s your name?”
“Paul Revere, of Boston.”
“Revere! You caught Revere?” He stared at the captain in the moonlight, then turned back to Revere. “You’ve been out gathering the militia?”
“I have, sir.”
“You say several hundred are headed this way now?”
“They are. I expect that volley we just heard was their first, at a British patrol like yours.”
Mitchell’s mouth became a straight line as he considered the implications.
“And that’s not all, sir,” Revere continued. “I should also tell you that twenty-one of your longboats ran aground in the Lechmere marshes before they ever got your grenadiers ashore. I have no knowledge as to how many of your men were lost, or how much of your supplies are at the bottom of the bog right now.” He held a stone face, waiting to see if his bluff would work.
Mitchell turned to two lieutenants. “Keep your pistols on this man. If he moves, shoot him.” He gathered the other officers around, ten yards away, and they huddled.
“That volley—it couldn’t have been our troops,” he said quietly. “It was less than two miles from here. It had to be theirs. Maybe he’s telling the truth. If he is, we had better not be caught here with Paul Revere as a prisoner.”
“Agreed.”
Mitchell walked back to Revere and gave orders. “Sergeant, trade horses with this man, and get the other prisoners and cut the saddle girths and bridles and stirrup leathers on all their horses and turn them loose, including Revere. Release all the prisoners and get the patrol mounted. We’re leaving.”
Four more prisoners were led from the trees, and Revere stared, unaware they had even been there. He recognized only one of them, Solomon Brown, who had been sent earlier by Hancock to scout the road. Revere watched as the sergeant hastily cut the saddle cinch and the stirrup leaders and bridles on the five horses, and then mounted Revere’s big bay mare. Three minutes later the hoofbeats of the British patrol faded to the east, and Revere and the four prisoners were left alone in the silence with horses they could not ride.