A shot cut him short; his horse gave a great bound, backed, lashed out with both hind feet, then reared in agony.
“My God! they’ve shot his horse!” cried Foxcroft.
“’Tis his own men, then,” broke in Mount; “I marked the smoke.”
“Disperse!” bellowed the maddened officer, dragging his horse to a stand-still— “disperse, ye rebels!”
Behind a stone wall a farmer rose and presented his firelock, 482 but the piece flashed in the pan. A shot rang out, but I could not see who fired.
Far down the Boston Road the solid front of a second British column appeared.
Already some of the Minute Men were quitting the single, disordered rank on the green which still wavered, facing the regulars; but their captain continued in front of his men, and the drummer still drummed his hoarse challenge.
Then a British officer fired his pistol from the saddle, and, before any one could move or lift a finger, a bright sheet of flame girdled the British front, and the deafening roar of musketry shook the earth.
Through the low rushing billows of smoke that gushed out over the ground like foam, I saw the British major rise in his stirrups, and, reversing his sword, drive it downward as signal to cease firing. Other officers rode up through the smoke, shouting orders which were lost in the dropping shots from the militia, now retreating on a run past us up the Bedford Road.
“Look at Harrington,” cried Mount; “he’s down under that smoke!”
But Harrington rose, and reeled away towards his own house. I saw his wife at the door; the wounded man also saw her, and feebly stretched out his hands as though calling for aid, then he pitched forward on his face and lay still, one hand clutching his own door-step.
“Halt!” shouted the British major, plunging about on his wounded horse through the smoke. “Stop that firing! D’ye hear what I say? Stop it! Stop it!” And again and again he reversed his sword in frantic signals which no one heeded.
An officer cantered up, calling out: “Major Pitcairn! Major Pitcairn! Are you hit, sir?”
A volley from the British Tenth Foot drowned his voice, and the red-coated soldiers came bursting through the smoke on a double-quick, shouting and hoisting their mitre-caps on the points of their bayonets. Behind them the grenadiers rushed forward, cheering.
A soldier of the light infantry in front of the Meeting-house flung up his musket and fired at an old man who was 483 hobbling across the street; shots came quicker and quicker; I saw my acquaintance, Monroe, attempt to traverse the road towards the tavern; he was rolling in the mud ere he had taken two steps. A grenadier ran after a lank farmer and caught him by the collar; the farmer tripped up the redcoat and started to run, but they brought him to his knees in the road, and then shot him to death under their very feet.
I galloped to the chaise and jerked the horses back, then wheeled them westward towards Bedford, where the remnants of the militia were sullenly falling back, firing across at the British, now marching on past the Meeting-house up the Concord Road.
“No! No!” cried Foxcroft, “we cannot risk it! Stay where you are!”
“We cannot risk being butchered here!” I replied. Silver Heels was standing straight up in the chaise, one hand holding to the leather curtain. Her face had grown very white.
“They’ve killed a poor young man behind that barn!” she whispered, as I leaned from my saddle and motioned her to crouch low. “They shot him twice, and struck him with their muskets!”
I glanced hastily towards the barn and saw a dark heap lying in the grass behind it. Three red-coated soldiers stood near, loading their muskets and laughing.
“Look at the Weasel!” muttered Mount, jerking my arm as my horse ranged up beside his.
The Weasel was hastily climbing out of his saddle, rifle in hand. His face, which a few moments before had been haggard and vacant, had grown flushed and eager, his eyes snapped with intelligence, his head was erect, and his movements quick as a forest-cat’s.
“Cade!” quavered Mount. “Cade, old friend, what are you doing?”
“Come!” cried the Weasel, briskly; “can’t you see the redskins?”
“Redcoats! Redcoats!” cried Mount, anxiously. “Where are you going, Cade? Come back! Come back! They can’t hit us here! Redcoats, Cade, not redskins!”
“They be all one to me!” replied the Weasel, briskly, scuttling away to cover under a tuft of hazel.
“Don’t shoot, Cade!” bawled Mount. “Wait till we can gather our people! Wait! Hell and damnation! don’t fire!”
“Bang!” went the Weasel’s long brown rifle; a red-coated soldier on the Concord Road dropped.
“He’s done it! God help us!” groaned Foxcroft.
“Hold those horses!” said Mount, desperately. I seized the leaders, Mount slipped from his saddle to the ground, and ran out to the long, dead grass behind the Meeting-house. I could see him catch the Weasel by the arm and attempt to drag him back by force, but the mad little creature clung obstinately to his patch of hazel.
“He won’t come!” shouted Mount, turning towards me.
As he turned, I saw the entire British column marching swiftly up the Concord Road, a small flanking party thrown out on the right. The Weasel also saw the troops and made haste to level his rifle again, but Mount fell upon him and dragged him down into the marsh-grass.
From the Bedford Road our militia fired slowly across at the fast vanishing troops on the Concord Road; the British flanking party returned the fire, but the main column paid no heed to the shots, and pressed on in silence, without music, without banners, without a drum-tap to mark their rapid march. No British soldiers came our way; they appeared to disdain the groups of militia retreating along the Bedford Road; their rear-guard fired a few scattering shots into “Buckman’s Tavern” at long range, then ran on to keep in touch with the main body.
Both the Weasel and Mount were now deliberately firing at the British flanking party, which had halted on a bit of ploughed ground, and seemed to be undecided whether to continue their march or return and punish the two foolhardy riflemen whose bullets had already knocked one big soldier flat on his back across the fresh furrows.
All at once six red-coated soldiers started running towards Jack Mount and the Weasel. I shouted to warn the infatuated men. Silver Heels caught my arm.
“I cannot leave them there!” I stammered; “I must go to them!”
“Foxcroft will guard me!” she murmured. “Go to them, dearest!”
“Foxcroft! Hold these horses!” I cried, flinging Warlock’s bridle to him, and slipping out of my saddle.
Rifle a-trail, I ran across the road, leaped the fence, and plunged into the low bushes. Jack Mount turned a cool, amused eye on me as I came up.
“The Weasel is right,” he said, triumphantly; “we’ll catch a half-dozen red-birds now. Be ready when I draw their fire, lad; then drop and run forward through the swamp! You know how the Senecas fight. We’ll catch them alive!”
Over the tops of the low bushes I could see the soldiers coming towards us, muskets half raised, scanning the cover for the game they meant to bag, thrusting their bayonets into bushes, beating the long grass with their gunstocks to flush the skulking quarry for a snap-shot.
Without warning, Mount rose, then sank to the ground as a volley rattled out; and instantly we three ran forward, bent double. In a moment more I sprang up from the swamp-grass beside a soldier and knocked him flat with a blow from my rifle-stock. Mount shot at another and missed him, but the fellow promptly threw down his musket, yelling lustily for quarter.
The four remaining soldiers attempted to load, but the Weasel tripped up one, with a cartridge half bitten in his mouth, and the other three were chased and caught by some Acton militia, who came leaping across the swampy covert from the Bedford Road.
When the Acton men returned with their prisoners, the soldier whom I had struck was sitting up in the swamp-grass, rubbing his powdered head and staring wildly at his sweating a
nd anxious comrades.
“That’s the fellow who murdered Harrington!” said one of the militia, and drew up his rifle with a jerk.
“Use these prisoners well, or I’ll knock your head off!” roared Mount, striking up the rifle.
An officer of Minute Men came up; his eyes were red as though he had been weeping.
“They butchered his brother behind the red barn yonder,” 486 whispered a lean yokel beside me. “He’ll hang ‘em, that’s what he’ll do.”
“That’s it! Hang ‘em!” bawled out a red-headed lout, flourishing a pitchfork. “Hang the damn — !”
“Put that fool under arrest,” said the officer, sharply. Some Acton Minute Men seized the lout and hustled him off; others formed a guard and conducted the big, perspiring, red-coated soldiers towards “Buckman’s Tavern.”
“You will treat them humanely?” I asked, as the officer passed me.
He gave me a blank glance; the tears again had filled his eyes.
“Certainly,” he said, shortly; “I am not a butcher.”
I gave him the officer’s salute; he returned it absently, and walked on, with drawn sword and head sunk on his tarnished brass gorget.
A restless, silent crowd had gathered at “Buckman’s Tavern,” where two dead Minute Men lay on the porch, stiffening in their blood.
The sun had not yet risen, but all the east was turning yellow; great clouds of red-winged blackbirds rose and settled in the swampy meadows, and filled the air with their dry chirking; robins sang ecstatically.
Back along the muddy Bedford Road trudged the remnants of the scattered Lexington company of militia; the little barelegged drummer posted himself in front of the Meeting-house once more, and drummed the assembly. Men seemed to spring from the soil; every bramble-patch was swarming now; they came hurrying across the distant fields singly, in twos and threes, in scores.
Far away in the vague dawn bells rang out in distant villages, and I heard the faint sound of guns and the throbbing of drums. I passed the Lexington company re-forming on the trodden village green. Their captain, Parker, called out to me: “Forest-runner! We need your rifle! Will you fight with us?”
“I cannot,” I said, and ran towards the post-chaise, rifle on shoulder.
The women and children of Lexington were gathered around it. I saw at a glance that Silver Heels had given 487 her seat to a frightened old woman, and that other women were thrusting their children into the vehicle, imploring Mount and Foxcroft to save them from the British.
“Michael,” said Silver Heels, looking up with cool gray eyes, “the British are firing at women in the farm-houses on the Concord Road above here. We must get the children away.”
“And you?” I asked, sharply. She lifted a barefooted urchin into the chaise without answering.
A yoke of dusty, anxious oxen, drawing a hay-cart, came clattering up, the poor beasts running heavily, while their driver followed on a trot beside them, using his cruel goad without mercy.
“Haw! Haw! Gee! Gee! Haw!” he bellowed, guiding his bumping wagon into the Bedford Road.
“The children here!” called out Silver Heels, in her clear voice, and caught up another wailing infant, to soothe it and lift it into the broad ox-wagon.
In a moment the wagon was full of old women and frantic children; a young girl, carrying a baby, ran alongside, begging piteously for a place, but already other vehicles were rattling up behind gaunt, rusty horses, and places were found for the frightened little ones in the confusion.
Some boys drove a flock of sheep into the Bedford Road; a herd of young cattle broke and ran, scattering the sheep. Mount and I sprang in front of Silver Heels, driving the cattle aside with clubbed rifles. Then there came a heavy pounding of horses’ hoofs in the mud, a rush, a cry, and a hatless, coatless rider drew up in a cloud of scattering gravel.
“More troops coming from Boston!” he shouted in his saddle. “Lord Percy is at Roxbury with three regiments, marines, and cannon! Paul Revere was taken at one o’clock this morning!” And away he galloped, head bent low, reeking spurs clinging to his horse’s gaunt flanks.
Silver Heels, standing beside me in the hanging morning mist, laid her hand on my arm.
“If the British are at Roxbury,” she said, “we are quite cut off, are we not?”
I did not answer. Mount turned a grave, intelligent eye 488 on me; Foxcroft came up, wiping the mud and sweat from his eyes.
At that moment the drum and fife sounded from the green; the Lexington company, arms trailing, came marching into the Bedford Road, Indian file, Captain Parker leading.
Beside him, joyous, alert, transfigured, trotted the Weasel. “We’ve got them now!” he called out to Mount. “We’ll catch the redskins with our hands at Charlestown Neck!”
The little barelegged drummer nodded seriously; the old Louisburg drum rumbled out the route-march.
Into “Buckman’s Tavern” filed the Lexington men and fell to slamming and bolting the wooden shutters, piercing the doors and walls for rifle-fire, piling tables and chairs and bedding along the veranda for a rough breastwork.
“You must come with the convoy,” I said, taking Silver Heels by the hand.
Her grave, gray eyes met mine in perfect composure.
“We must stay,” she said.
“They are bringing cannon — can you not understand?” I repeated, harshly.
“I will not go,” she said. “Every rifle is required here. I cannot take you from these men in their dire need. Dear heart, can you not understand me?”
“Am I to sacrifice you?” I asked, angrily. “No!” I cried. “We have suffered enough—”
Tears sprang to her eyes; she laid her hand on my rifle.
“Other women have sent their dearest ones. Am I less brave than that woman whose husband died yonder on his own door-sill? Am I a useless, passionless clod, that my blood stirs at naught but pleasure? Look at those dead men on the tavern steps! Look at our people’s blood on the grass yonder! Would you wed with a pink-and-white thing whose veins run water? I saw them kill that poor boy behind his own barn! — these redcoat ruffians who come across an ocean to slay us in our own land. Do you forget I am a soldier’s child?”
A loud voice bellowing from the tavern: “Women here for the bullet-moulds! Get your women to the tavern!”
She caught my hand. “You see a maid may not stand idle in Lexington!” she said, with a breathless smile.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Silver Heels stood in the tap-room of “Buckman’s Tavern” casting bullets; the barefoot drummer watched the white-hot crucible and baled out the glittering molten metal or fed it with lumps of lead stripped from the gate-post of Hooper’s house in Danvers.
Near the window sat some Woburn Minute Men, cross-legged on the worn floor, rolling cartridges. From time to time the parson of Woburn, who had come to pray and shoot, took away the pile of empty powder-horns and brought back others to be emptied.
The tavern was dim and damp; through freshly bored loopholes in the shutters sunlight fell, illuminating the dark interior.
In their shirts, barearmed and bare of throat to the breast-bone, a score of Lexington Minute Men stood along the line of loopholes, their long rifles thrust out. They had no bayonets, but each man had driven his hunting-knife into the wall beside him.
Jack Mount and the Weasel lay, curled up like giant cats, at the door, blinking peacefully out through the cracks into the early sunshine. I could hear their low-voiced conversation from where I stood at my post, close to Silver Heels:
“Redcoats, Cade, not redskins,” corrected Mount. “British lobster-backs — eh, Cade? You remember how we drubbed them there in Pittsburg, belt and buckle and ramrod — eh, Cade?”
“That was long ago, friend.”
“Call me Jack! Why don’t you call me Jack any more?” urged Mount. “You know me now, don’t you, Cade?”
“Ay, but I forget much. Do you know how I came here?”
“From Johnst
own, Cade — from Johnstown, lad!”
“I cannot remember Johnstown.”
Presently the Weasel peered around at Silver Heels.
“Who is that young lady?” he asked, mildly.
Silver Heels heard and smiled at the old man. The faintest quiver curved her mouth; there was a shadow of pain in her eyes.
The fire from the crucible tinted her cheeks; she raised both bared arms to push back her clustering hair. Hazel gray, her brave eyes met mine across the witch-vapour curling from the melting-pot.
“Do you recall how the ferret, Vix, did bite Peter’s tight breeches, Michael?”
“Ay,” said I, striving to smile.
“And — and the jack-knife made by Barlow?”
“Ay.”
She flushed to the temples and looked at my left hand. The scar was there. I raised my hand and kissed the blessed mark.
“Dear, dear Michael,” she whispered, “truly you were ever the dearest and noblest and best of all!”
“Unfit to kiss thy shoon’s latchet, sweet—”
“Yet hast untied the latchets of my heart.”
A stillness fell on the old tavern; the Minute Men stood silently at the loopholes, the barefoot drummer sat on his drum, hands folded, watching with solemn, childish eyes the nuggets of lead sink, bubble, and melt.
A militiaman came down-stairs for a bag of bullets.
“They be piping hot yet,” said the drummer-boy, “and not close pared.”
But the soldier carelessly gathered heaping handfuls in his calloused palms, and went up the bare, creaking stairs again to his post among the pigeons.
The heat of the brazier had started the perspiration on Silver Heels’s face and neck; tiny drops glistened like fresh dew on a blossom. She stood, dreamily brushing with the back of her hand the soft hair from her brow. Her dark-fringed eyes on me; under her loosened kerchief I saw the calm breathing stir her neck and bosom gently as a white flower stirs at a breath of June.
“The scent of the sweet-fern,” she murmured; “do you savour it from the pastures?”
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 133