Chapter FifteenA TERRIBLE BLACK DAY
“We begoing down this hill now,” said Colonel John Stark, “to fortify and hold the rail fence there.”
He stood out boldly on the bold bare top of Bunker Hill, his new blue and buff coat unfastened at the neck, his musket held lightly but warily in his hand. His New Hampshire troops were drawn up before him, farmers and woodsmen for the most part, and dressed as befitted their callings. They wore homespun shirts and breeches dyed in the sober colors of late autumn, after the red and gold are gone. They carried a variety of weapons: here a fowling piece made by a village blacksmith; there an ancient queen’s arm left over from the Siege of Louisburg thirty years ago; there a blunderbuss older than Plymouth Colony.
Tom Trask, who carried the blunderbuss, looked past his colonel at the whole of Charlestown peninsula spread out before him in the early afternoon sun. Below, on Breed’s Hill, that Prescott’s engineers had made the surprise decision to fortify, stood the redoubt. He could look down into it, just as if he were standing in the top of a tree. The men had built wooden platforms to fire from, and they weremassed and waiting behind their guns. Farther down, on the point of land between the sparkling blue rivers, the scarlet pride of the British Army sprawled on the grass eating its dinner.
Stark went on, his voice low but piercing, a tenseness in it that made a man’s blood run hot with courage, rather than cold with fear. He gestured toward the shores of the Mystic, the side of the field away from Boston.
“To the left of the redoubt, lads, you can see a rail fence, and Knowlton’s men have banked it with cut hay. But past the rail fence there’s an open stretch along the river, wide enough to drive a team of horses through. We’ll go down there now and build a stone wall across it. Isn’t a man among you don’t know how to build a stone wall.”
He paused and looked proudly around him. “And when it’s built, we’ll take our stand there, there and along the fence, and fight. If there’s a man among you don’t know how to do that, he can go home.”
The road back to the safety of Medford lay broad and smooth behind them, but nobody turned toward that road. They started to cheer, but the colonel held up his hand.
“Wait till you got something to cheer for, boys,” he said. “But remember this—all! Don’t shoot till they be within fifty yards. Pick out the officers. Fire low, and aim at the crossing of their belts. Hit for the handsome coats and the commanders.”
He lifted his head and stepped back. Tom stood close enough to see his burning eyes and the unflinching line of his mouth. “I don’t know how the rest o’ you feel,” Stark went on, “but for myself, I’ll fight to the last drop o’ blood in me. By the great Jehovah, I mean to live free or die!”
“Fall in!” he shouted. He held up his arm and made a swooping motion toward the rail fence. The New Hampshire regiments followed him down the hill.
Once on the narrow strip of muddy beach beyond the fence, they worked desperately to rear a wall across it before the British should come on. Some fetched stones from other walls that divided the pastures on the hillside. Others toiled to heap them in a bulwark straight to the water’s edge. Tom was with those who carried boulders flung from the bank and piled them ready to the builder’s hand. Once he climbed up the ledge himself to take a look at the field above.
“Hey, Caleb,” he called eagerly, as he noticed a young man standing where the rail fence ended, a musket in his hand.
Colonel Stark’s first-born son, sixteen-year-old Caleb, turned around and a grin broke over his lean face as he recognized his old hunting companion. He stepped forward.
“Tom!” he exclaimed. “Haven’t seen you since you left for Newburyport with the log raft, back sometime in the spring.”
“No, I ain’t had a chance to get home. Ever since Concord Fight I been in camp. Where you been?”
“Round home mostly. Just got here this morning. Word’s gone all around the countryside that the British be about to attack. Figured my dad could use another man. Say, Tom, Jean’s been asking about you—”
Fife and drum music burst forth from the red-coated ranks below the hill, and the bugles uttered an urgent cry.
“Here they come!” yelled Tom. He leaped down the bank and ran to where he had left his blunderbuss, in the center of the stone wall.
Crouched behind it, he watched the British come on. He could not see the field above him that sloped upward to the redoubt, and ’twas likely the heaviest charge would be there. But there were plenty of red coats and white breeches moving toward the New Hampshire line. Once the attackers stopped and reformed in groups of four. Then on they came.
Just to his right a musket spoke, though they had received no order to fire. Tom lifted his own blunderbuss, but before he could pull the trigger Colonel Stark strode fearlessly between the opposing armies. He had a tree branch in his hand. With a sharp stab he thrust it into the earth.
“Don’t another man fire till they pass this stake. Whoever does, I’ll knock him down,” he said.
He looked around him to make sure his words were understood. Then he walked back to his own line as calmly as if he were going down to his sawmill on any summer afternoon. Behind him the advancing British fixed their bayonets. He leaped down into the shelter of the wall.
When the word came, Tom was ready, and his blunderbuss spoke punctually as the British passed the stake. He could not tell how many times he fired, and he did not stop to see what damage he had done. Aim, fire, load. Aim, fire, load. He kept relentlessly on, scarce conscious that all around him other men were doing the same. He knew that the ground in front of the stone wall was covered with wounded and dying redcoats, but their line kept still coming on, and so long as it did, he would do nothing but fire, load, aim.
As he had been told, he aimed at the handsome coats and the commanders. Once when he lifted his eyes to choose the next target, he saw, to his utter amazement, a man he knew. Captain Gerald Malory was advancing toward him, bayonet in hand. As he looked, his amazement turned to contempt. “Polecat!” he muttered. “Said he was captain. Done it to dazzle the girls, I’ll warrant.” Gerald Malory wore a private’s uniform. Turning away deliberately, Tom leveled his gun on a resplendent major. When he looked back again, his one-time prisoner was gone.
The British line wavered and fell back. He could hear the shouts of the officers trying to rally their men. They liftedtheir guns and fired a volley, and Tom heard the shots whistle high above.
“Gunning for hen hawks, maybe,” he told himself with a grin. “Won’t hit nothing else that high in air.”
Now the red-coated line was drawing back, retreating down the beach toward the point from whence they had come. Now there were no redcoats within firing range any more.
“Whew!” said Tom. He put down the blunderbuss and mopped his forehead. Now he took time to look around him.
All along the New Hampshire line men were standing up to stretch, drinking water out of leather bottles, and beginning to move about and talk together. He did not know the grizzled oldsters on either side of him, but he soon learned they were veterans of the Indian War, and no strangers to powder and shot.
“Think they’ll be back?” he asked, waving his thumb in the direction of the retreating British.
His companions nodded. They were starting already to reload.
Down at the open end beside the water lay a confused heap of wounded. Those who could still stand up and walk were helping to carry their less fortunate fellows away. The word went round that a hospital had been set up at The Sign of the Sun, a tavern on the back side of Bunker Hill.
There came a hail from the bank above. Tom turned that way and recognized the shaggy gray head and sturdy figure of Old Put. The general was mounted on a horse, and had several other blue-coated officers with him. Colonel Stark and three of his captains strode over to the bank, and the two commanders talked for a long time. Then Stark walked resolutely back to the stone wall, with his head lifted, his gaze fixed straight before him. Old Put’s party rode off toward the redoubt.
A bugle sounded far down on Morton’s Point. Once againthe British must be coming on. Tom crouched and leveled the blunderbuss. Just then the man on his left leaned over and spoke.
“Word’s gone down the line,” he muttered through a thick wad of tobacco, “that Johnny Stark’s lost his boy.”
“Caleb? How?” gasped Tom.
“Stopped a British ball somewheres up by the fence, they say.” The man spat brown juice on the trampled mud. “Don’t like the look o’ things, lad. My powder horn’s getting low.”
“So’s mine,” said Tom numbly. He looked between the stones at the oncoming scarlet line. He knew the depth of quiet love that lay between that father and son. “When they told Stark—what did he say?”
“Said he had no time now to talk o’ private affairs,” answered the veteran. “Look there, in the front ranks of ’em! That’s General Howe. I fought under him at Quebec in ’59. I’d know him anywhere.”
Tom looked where the other pointed, but he did not see the proud pompous figure of the British general leading on his men. He saw instead a New Hampshire mountainside in the fall, young Caleb Stark walking under the golden beech leaves, with his head up, laughing in the crisp air. He saw Caleb skating on Dorr’s Pond in the winter moonlight; pitching hay on a summer afternoon. And now at the rail fence Caleb lay dead. By Jehovah, he’d fix the British for doing that to his friend.
“Here they come, lad,” warned the man at his side.
“I’m ready,” said Tom. He gripped the blunderbuss, and all his rage and vengeance sounded in the roar of it as it spoke.
The British were not so easily beaten back this time. Stepping over their fallen comrades they marched up to the wall, staggered back at the withering blast of fire, and came on again. But at last their officers could no longer urge them forward.Once more Tom found himself staring at the redcoats fleeing away.
It was a long time before they formed again, and the whole American line was jubilant. It began to seem as if a handful of farmers with nothing but courage and gunpowder had turned back the British Army. Tom climbed up the bank in the interval and took a look at the redoubt. It was untaken, and there were still, red-clad forms lying all over the slope before it, and the gleaming brass of abandoned artillery. In front of his own line the dead lay as thick as sheep in a fold.
“We ought to send for more powder,” he muttered, as he went back to his place and loaded the blunderbuss. “More men, maybe.”
“Prescott already sent for more men,” growled his neighbor. “Been sending for ’em all day. Ward keeps ’em all close to Cambridge because he thinks they’re in danger there. As for powder, there was only ’leven barrels in the whole camp this morning. Bet there’s powerful little of it left by now.”
“I got three more loadings,” said Tom. “I’ll give ’em that. Then I’ll have to bash their skulls if I bring ’em down.”
“Bash their skulls then,” said the older man. “That’s as good a way as any for the varmints to go.”
When the British made their third charge, they sent only a token force against the rail fence. Their main attack was directed at the redoubt. Tom fired his last charge of powder and then flung himself over the bank to the field above. Many other New Hampshire men were doing the same, their powder likewise being gone.
At his side he saw Hugh Watts, who had driven with him to Cambridge after the lead.
“Bad news for the colonel,” said Watts.
“Aye. Bad news for everyone who knew young Caleb,” answered Tom with a gulp. “He was a friend of mine.”
“Hope they got enough powder up there on the Hill,”the Londonderry man went on. “Don’t seem as if they’re firing as lively as they should.”
Tom looked again at the redoubt. Black smoke was pouring up the sky from over Charlestown way. The main force of the British was driving toward the little fortress, coming dangerously near. Now they passed the wooden fence. Now a handful of them began to swarm up a locust tree that stood in one corner of the earthen wall.
“Great Jehovah!” gasped Hugh Watts. “They’re going in!”
It was true. A last frantic burst of firing came from the redoubt, and then its guns were still. The British poured over the low walls in a triumphant scarlet wave.
“No more powder. Or they’re all dead,” said Tom grimly.
“Out, lads!” he heard Captain Moore calling behind him. “Spread over the field from Bunker Hill to the river and cover the retreat!”
Tramping back across Charlestown Neck in the sunset with the last straggling ranks of the Great American Army, Tom Trask slowly began to realize that he was not the same Tom Trask who had marched out so confidently to Bunker Hill. He had seen and heard too much that afternoon to remain the same. He had seen the King’s troops firing at him, and he had fired back, and he wanted no more of England and the King.
When the bells began to ring in Newburyport last April and he heard the news of Concord Fight, he had gone to camp because all the other men were going. Only a cripple or a coward would stay at home. But he hadn’t thought much about it, much about why there had been this Concord Fight.
He’d learned a little more from the talk around the campfire at Winter Hill, but nobody seemed to be sure whether they were fighting to make the King treat them better, or toget the country away from the King. Well, for himself, he was sure now. He knew when he heard John Stark say, “I mean to live free or die.” For that was the way he meant to live. He knew it for sure when he heard the news that Caleb had been shot.
And he had good hopes that the time would come when he could live that way. Hadn’t he seen the British Army turn and run—turn and run away twice?
“We’ll fight them from now till Judgment,” he muttered to himself. “But we’re going to be free.”
A little group of his dusty, tattered fellows came toiling up and overtook him where he plodded along, trailing the empty blunderbuss. One of them hailed him, and he saw that it was Johnny Pettengall.
“Hey, Tom! We almost licked ’em, didn’t we?” he called. “If our powder’d lasted one more time.... Where was you?”
“At the rail fence and along the wall,” said Tom.
“I was in the redoubt.”
“We got slaughtered there,” said Tom.
“Aye, many slaughtered,” agreed Johnny, falling into step beside him. “We was bayoneted like so many cattle. This’ll be remembered forever in New England as a terrible black day.”
“I guess it will,” Tom said.
“I saw them shoot Dr. Warren,” continued Johnny. “Shot him in the head just as he was leaving the redoubt.”
“I seen him once in Cambridge,” muttered Tom. “He was a good man, I guess. It’s worse for me that we lost young Caleb Stark.”
“The Colonel’s son?” asked Johnny, and his face brightened. “Oh no! That was a false report, Tom. I heard Putnam himself telling Prescott that. Said he was sorry the boy’s father ever got the word—but it didn’t make no difference in the way he led his men. He said Stark’s a soldier all the waythrough. Likely you and Caleb will be drinking beer together tonight on Winter Hill.”
Tom drew a long breath. He looked out at the blue hills to the west, with the red hot ball of the setting sun behind them. He was glad that his friend was alive, but the good news hadn’t changed his mind about one thing. He still wanted to live free.