Cardigan Part 109

Silver Heels, absorbed in her task, hummed a little tune under her breath.

"The smoke follows the road," said the Minute Man.

The firing became audible in the room. Silver Heels raised her head with a grave glance at me. I went and knelt beside her.

"It is coming at last, little sweetheart," I said. "Will you go, now?

Foxcroft will take you across the fields to some safe farm."

"You know Sir William would not have endured to see me leave at such a time," she said.

"Yes, dear heart, but you cannot carry a rifle."

"But I can make bullets and bandages."

"The British fire at women; you must go!" I said, aloud.

"I will not go."

"I command."

"No." She bent her fair, childish head and the tears fell on the cloth in her lap.

"Look! Look at the redcoats!" called out the Minute Man at the attic window.

As I rose I heard plainly the long, resounding crash of musket firing, and the rattle of rifles followed like a hundred echoes.

"Look yonder!" he cried.

Suddenly the Concord Road was choked with scarlet-clad soldiers.

Mapped out below us the country stretched, and over it, like a blood-red monster worm, wound the British column--nay, like to a dragon it came on, with flanking lines thrust out east and west for its thin red wings, and head and tail wreathed with smoke.

And now we could see feathery puffs of smoke from the road-side bushes, from distant hills, from thickets, from ploughed fields, from the long, undulating stone walls which crossed the plain. Faster and faster came the musket volleys, but faster yet rang out the shots from our yeomanry, gathering thicker and thicker along the British route, swarming in from distant towns and hamlets and lonely farms.

The old tavern was ringing with voices now--commands of officers, calls from those who were posted above, clattering steps on the porch as the Acton men ran out to their posts behind the tufted willows in the swamp.

He who had been placed in charge at the tavern, a young officer of the Woburn Alarm Men, shouted for silence and attention, and ordered us not to fire unless fired upon, as our position would be hopeless if cannon were brought against us. Then he commanded all women to leave the tavern and seek shelter at Sloc.u.m's farm across the meadows.

"No, no!" murmured Silver Heels, obstinately, as I took her hand and started for the stairs, "I will not go,--I cannot--I cannot! Let me stay, Michael; for G.o.d's sake, let me stay!" And she fell on her knees and caught at my hands.

"To your posts!" roared the Woburn officer, drawing his sword and coming up the stairs two at a jump. He stopped short when he saw Silver Heels, and glanced blankly at me; but there was no time now for flight, for, as he stepped to the window beside me, pell-mell into the village green rushed the British light infantry, dusty, exhausted, enraged. In brutal disorder they surged on, here a squad huddled together, there a company, bullied, threatened, and harangued by its officers with pistols and drawn swords; now a group staggering past, bearing dead or wounded comrades, now a heavy cart loaded with knapsacks and muskets, driven by hatless soldiers.

Close on their heels tramped the grenadiers. Soldier after soldier staggered and fell from the ranks, utterly exhausted, unable to rise from the gra.s.s.

The lull in the firing was broken by a loud discharge of musketry from Fiske's Hill, and presently more redcoats came rushing into the village, while at their very heels the Bedford Alarm Men shot at them, and chased them. Everywhere our militia came swarming--from Sudbury, Westford, Lincoln, Acton; Minute Men from Medford, from Stowe, from Beverly, and from Lynn--and their ancient firelocks blazed from every stone wall, and their long rifles banged from the distant ridges.

Below me in the street I saw the British officers striving desperately to reform their men, kicking the exhausted creatures to their feet again, striking laggards, shoving the bewildered and tired grenadiers into line, while thicker and thicker pelted the bullets from the Minute Men and militia.

They were brave men, these British officers; I saw a young ensign of the Tenth Foot fall with a ball through his stomach, yet rise and face the storm until shot to death by a dozen Alarm Men on the Bedford Road.

It was dreadful; it was doubly dreadful when a company of grenadiers suddenly faced about and poured a volley into our tavern, for, ere the crashing and splintered wood had ceased, the tavern fairly vomited flame into the square, and the British went down in heaps. Through the smoke I saw an officer struggling to disengage himself from his fallen and dying horse; I saw the ma.s.sed infantry reel off through the village, firing frenziedly right and left, pouring volleys into farm-houses, where women ran screaming out into the barns, and frantic watch-dogs barked, tugging at their chains.

It was not a retreat, not a flight; it was a riot, a horrible saturnalia of smoke and fire and awful sound. As a maddened panther, wounded, rushes forth to deal death right and left, even tearing its own flesh with tooth and claw, the British column burst south across the land, crazed with wounds, famished, athirst, blood-mad, dealing death and ruin to all that lay before it.

Terrible was the vengeance that followed it, hovered on its gasping flanks, scourged its dwindling ranks, which withered under the searching fire from every tuft of bushes, every rock, every tree-trunk.

Already the ghastly pageant had rushed past us, leaving a crimson trail in its wake; already the old tavern door was flung wide, and our Minute Men were running down the Boston Road and along the ridges on either side, firing as they came on.

I, with Mount and the Weasel, hung to their left flank till two o'clock, when, about half a mile from Lexington Meeting-house, we heard cannon, and understood that the relief troops from Boston had come up.

Then, knowing that there were guns enough and to spare without ours, we shouldered our hot rifles and trudged back to "Buckman's Tavern,"

through the dust, behind a straw-covered wain which was driving slowly under the heat of an almost vertical sun.

Mount, parched with thirst, hailed the driver of the wain, asking him if he carried cider.

"Only a wounded man," he said, "most dead o' the red dragoons."

I stepped to the slowly moving wagon and looked over the tail-board down into the straw.

"Shemuel!" I cried.

"Shemuel!" roared Mount.

The little Jew opened his sick eyes under his bandage. The Weasel climbed nimbly over the tail-board and settled down beside the wounded man, taking his blood-smeared hand.

"Shemuel! Shemuel! We saw them split your head!" stammered Mount, in his astonishment and joy.

"Under my hat I did haff a capful of shillings," replied Shemuel, weakly; "I--I go back--two days' time to find me my money by dot Lechemere swamp--eh, Jack?"

"G.o.d bless you, old nosey!" cried Mount; "we'll get your money, lad!

Won't we, Cardigan?"

The little Jew turned his heavy eyes on me.

"You haff found Miss Warren?" he gasped. "Ach, so iss all well. I go back--two days' time--find me my money." He smiled and closed his eyes.

So we re-entered Lexington, Jack Mount, the Weasel, Saul Shemuel, and I; and on the tavern steps Silver Heels stood, her tired, colourless face lighted up, her outstretched hands falling on my shoulders; and I to take her in my arms, for she had fallen a-weeping. Above us the splendid blue of the sky spread its eternal tent, our only shelter, our only home on the long trail through the world; our lamp was the sun, our fireplace a continent, and the four winds our walls, and our estates were bounded by two oceans, washing the sh.o.r.es of a land where the free, at last, might dwell.

In the south the thunder of the British cannon muttered, distant and more distant; the storm had pa.s.sed.

Had the storm pa.s.sed? The smoke hung in the north where Concord town was burning, yet around us birds sang.

And now came Jack Mount, riding postilion on the horses which drew the post-chaise; behind him trotted the Weasel, leading out Warlock.

Silver Heels saw them and stood up, smiling through her tears.

"Truly, we stayed and did our duty, did we not, dear heart?"

"With your help, sweet."

"And deserted not our own!"