Cardigan

"Don't shoot, Cade!" bawled Mount. "Wait till we can gather our people! Wait! Hell and damnation! don't fire!"

"Bang!" went the Weasel's long brown rifle; a red-coated soldier on the Concord Road dropped.

"He's done it! God help us!" groaned Foxcroft.

"Hold those horses!" said Mount, desperately. I seized the leaders, Mount slipped from his saddle to the ground, and ran out to the long, dead grass behind the Meeting-house. I could see him catch the Weasel by the arm and attempt to drag him back by force, but the mad little creature clung obstinately to his patch of hazel.

"He won't come!" shouted Mount, turning towards me.

As he turned, I saw the entire British column marching swiftly up the Concord Road, a small flanking party thrown out on the right. The Weasel also saw the troops and made haste to level his rifle again, but Mount fell upon him and dragged him down into the marsh-grass.

From the Bedford Road our militia fired slowly across at the fast vanishing troops on the Concord Road; the British flanking party returned the fire, but the main column paid no heed to the shots, and pressed on in silence, without music, without banners, without a drum-tap to mark their rapid march. No British soldiers came our way; they appeared to disdain the groups of militia retreating along the Bedford Road; their rear-guard fired a few scattering shots into "Buckman's Tavern" at long range, then ran on to keep in touch with the main body.

Both the Weasel and Mount were now deliberately firing at the British flanking party, which had halted on a bit of ploughed ground, and seemed to be undecided whether to continue their march or return and punish the two foolhardy riflemen whose bullets had already knocked one big soldier flat on his back across the fresh furrows.

All at once six red-coated soldiers started running towards Jack Mount and the Weasel. I shouted to warn the infatuated men. Silver Heels caught my arm.

"I cannot leave them there!" I stammered; "I must go to them!"

"Foxcroft will guard me!" she murmured. "Go to them, dearest!"

"Foxcroft! Hold these horses!" I cried, flinging Warlock's bridle to him, and slipping out of my saddle.

Rifle a-trail, I ran across the road, leaped the fence, and plunged into the low bushes. Jack Mount turned a cool, amused eye on me as I came up.

"The Weasel is right," he said, triumphantly; "we'll catch a half-dozen red-birds now. Be ready when I draw their fire, lad; then drop and run forward through the swamp! You know how the Senecas fight. We'll catch them alive!"

Over the tops of the low bushes I could see the soldiers coming towards us, muskets half raised, scanning the cover for the game they meant to bag, thrusting their bayonets into bushes, beating the long grass with their gunstocks to flush the skulking quarry for a snap-shot.

Without warning, Mount rose, then sank to the ground as a volley rattled out; and instantly we three ran forward, bent double. In a moment more I sprang up from the swamp-grass beside a soldier and knocked him flat with a blow from my rifle-stock. Mount shot at another and missed him, but the fellow promptly threw down his musket, yelling lustily for quarter.

The four remaining soldiers attempted to load, but the Weasel tripped up one, with a cartridge half bitten in his mouth, and the other three were chased and caught by some Acton militia, who came leaping across the swampy covert from the Bedford Road.

When the Acton men returned with their prisoners, the soldier whom I had struck was sitting up in the swamp-grass, rubbing his powdered head and staring wildly at his sweating and anxious comrades.

"That's the fellow who murdered Harrington!" said one of the militia, and drew up his rifle with a jerk.

"Use these prisoners well, or I'll knock your head off!" roared Mount, striking up the rifle.

An officer of Minute Men came up; his eyes were red as though he had been weeping.

"They butchered his brother behind the red barn yonder," whispered a lean yokel beside me. "He'll hang 'em, that's what he'll do."

"That's it! Hang 'em!" bawled out a red-headed lout, flourishing a pitchfork. "Hang the damn – !"

"Put that fool under arrest," said the officer, sharply. Some Acton Minute Men seized the lout and hustled him off; others formed a guard and conducted the big, perspiring, red-coated soldiers towards "Buckman's Tavern."

"You will treat them humanely?" I asked, as the officer passed me.

He gave me a blank glance; the tears again had filled his eyes.

"Certainly," he said, shortly; "I am not a butcher."

I gave him the officer's salute; he returned it absently, and walked on, with drawn sword and head sunk on his tarnished brass gorget.

A restless, silent crowd had gathered at "Buckman's Tavern," where two dead Minute Men lay on the porch, stiffening in their blood.

The sun had not yet risen, but all the east was turning yellow; great clouds of red-winged blackbirds rose and settled in the swampy meadows, and filled the air with their dry chirking; robins sang ecstatically.

Back along the muddy Bedford Road trudged the remnants of the scattered Lexington company of militia; the little barelegged drummer posted himself in front of the Meeting-house once more, and drummed the assembly. Men seemed to spring from the soil; every bramble-patch was swarming now; they came hurrying across the distant fields singly, in twos and threes, in scores.

Far away in the vague dawn bells rang out in distant villages, and I heard the faint sound of guns and the throbbing of drums. I passed the Lexington company re-forming on the trodden village green. Their captain, Parker, called out to me: "Forest-runner! We need your rifle! Will you fight with us?"

"I cannot," I said, and ran towards the post-chaise, rifle on shoulder.

The women and children of Lexington were gathered around it. I saw at a glance that Silver Heels had given her seat to a frightened old woman, and that other women were thrusting their children into the vehicle, imploring Mount and Foxcroft to save them from the British.

"Michael," said Silver Heels, looking up with cool gray eyes, "the British are firing at women in the farm-houses on the Concord Road above here. We must get the children away."

"And you?" I asked, sharply. She lifted a barefooted urchin into the chaise without answering.

A yoke of dusty, anxious oxen, drawing a hay-cart, came clattering up, the poor beasts running heavily, while their driver followed on a trot beside them, using his cruel goad without mercy.

"Haw! Haw! Gee! Gee! Haw!" he bellowed, guiding his bumping wagon into the Bedford Road.

"The children here!" called out Silver Heels, in her clear voice, and caught up another wailing infant, to soothe it and lift it into the broad ox-wagon.

In a moment the wagon was full of old women and frantic children; a young girl, carrying a baby, ran alongside, begging piteously for a place, but already other vehicles were rattling up behind gaunt, rusty horses, and places were found for the frightened little ones in the confusion.

Some boys drove a flock of sheep into the Bedford Road; a herd of young cattle broke and ran, scattering the sheep. Mount and I sprang in front of Silver Heels, driving the cattle aside with clubbed rifles. Then there came a heavy pounding of horses' hoofs in the mud, a rush, a cry, and a hatless, coatless rider drew up in a cloud of scattering gravel.

"More troops coming from Boston!" he shouted in his saddle. "Lord Percy is at Roxbury with three regiments, marines, and cannon! Paul Revere was taken at one o'clock this morning!" And away he galloped, head bent low, reeking spurs clinging to his horse's gaunt flanks.

Silver Heels, standing beside me in the hanging morning mist, laid her hand on my arm.

"If the British are at Roxbury," she said, "we are quite cut off, are we not?"

I did not answer. Mount turned a grave, intelligent eye on me; Foxcroft came up, wiping the mud and sweat from his eyes.

At that moment the drum and fife sounded from the green; the Lexington company, arms trailing, came marching into the Bedford Road, Indian file, Captain Parker leading.

Beside him, joyous, alert, transfigured, trotted the Weasel. "We've got them now!" he called out to Mount. "We'll catch the redskins with our hands at Charlestown Neck!"

The little barelegged drummer nodded seriously; the old Louisburg drum rumbled out the route-march.

Into "Buckman's Tavern" filed the Lexington men and fell to slamming and bolting the wooden shutters, piercing the doors and walls for rifle-fire, piling tables and chairs and bedding along the veranda for a rough breastwork.

"You must come with the convoy," I said, taking Silver Heels by the hand.