Chapter TwelveTHUNDER IN THE AIR
Thebells 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. “Borrowedhim 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 thatredcoat 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 velvetjackets 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 pipesin 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.
“When the Committee of Safety advised me this afternoon,” he began, “that it was deemed best for us to fortify Bunker Hill—”
Just then a sentry tapped Tom on the shoulder with a gun barrel. “What are ye lurking about for?” he growled in a rough voice.
Tom turned around sharply. The sentry was an oldish man, unshaven, with shaggy hair and beard.
“I got business here,” he said. “I come to get ColonelStark’s lead, and by the great Jehovah, I mean to do the same.”
The sentry spat. “Maybe ye’re honest,” he said. “Ye look to be. But General Ward’s a-talking to some important men from the Congress o’ Massachusetts right now. Couldn’t let ye in there if ye was King George himself, with the Queen tagging along.”
“I’ll wait here till they’re through then,” insisted Tom. “I’ll wait right here.”
The sentry shrugged. “Guess there’s no harm in that,” he muttered, and ambled off.
Tom sat down on the grass with his back against a poplar tree and looked up at the stars. They were just as bright as they had been when he crossed Breed’s Hill a few nights ago. He wondered if tomorrow he’d be going back there, lugging Kitty’s old blunderbuss with him. Suddenly he realized that he was sleepy. The tension had eased out of him, even though there was still thunder in the air, the thunder of war about to break. A man could only keep himself keyed up for so long. But it wouldn’t do—now—to go—to sleep. He ought to get up and walk—get—up—and—walk—
He opened his eyes and shook himself. How did it get to be like that—early morning, the light as broad as day? The sky was red and golden over eastward where the sea must lie. The grass around him was wet with dew. Smoke was curling upward from the chimneys round about, and in somebody’s barnyard he could hear a rooster crow. Lord forgive him, he’d slept all night. They’d drum him out of camp or at least give him forty lashes, and he deserved it, too.
He stood up just as a horse and rider came spurring to the gate. The rider dismounted hastily and approached the front door. He was a trim, neat man with fair hair, but he looked feverish and ill. Almost immediately a pint-sized man came out to let him in. The two shook hands.
“Ah, Elbridge, Elbridge Gerry, my good friend,” murmured the newcomer. “It is folly to try to seize and hold Charlestown. Yet, I must go.”
“Ah no, Dr. Warren,” pleaded the smaller man. “You are too well known. You stayed in Boston too long, and the British know too well what a great pillar of strength you have been to our colonial cause. As surely as you go up Bunker Hill, you will be slain.”
“I know,” answered the doctor tensely. “I told the friends with whom I dined last night that I would go up the Hill today and never come off again. I slept wretchedly, and my head aches, but after an hour or two—”
“Sirs,” interrupted Tom politely, “I am sorry to bother you when you’re about such weighty business, but I been here since six o’clock last night, trying to get some lead for Colonel Stark.”
Elbridge Gerry gave a snort of impatience, but Dr. Warren turned and smiled at the boy.
“I am sorry you had the long delay, lad. I myself saw that the lead was dispatched to Stark late yesterday afternoon. He’ll know what to do with it, if anybody does. His men will have melted it into bullets by now, and may be shooting it at the British, for all I know.”
He turned again to Mr. Gerry. “Ah, sir, ‘Dulce decorum,’ as all men know or must learn. Let us go inside, and send someone to lead my horse away, for he is as spent as I.”
Tom walked thoughtfully back to where his comrades would still be asleep in the empty cart. ‘Dulce decorum’! He knew what the Latin meant, for President Langdon had translated it yesterday afternoon. “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” But was it, he wondered. The sun felt gloriously warm on his back, and made his blood tingle. The birds were singing in the elm trees round the Common. Kitty was a pretty girl, and there were other pretty girls.Sweet to die? That sounded like a thing old men would think of, tired old men who never had to go out and fight, who would die in bed at ninety-three or so. Still, if you had to do it, you had to do it, and he guessed he was as ready as he’d ever be.
Over towards Charlestown he heard the boom of a heavy gun.