Part 9

“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.