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.