both knew they were talking about death.
Nat was on a roan liberally sprinkled with gray pepper. Billy had a horse so coal-black it would probably shine purple-blue in the sun. The two mounts went plok-plok nonchalantly down the road to Boston Neck. Billy kept standing in his stirrups to peer ahead into the gloom. As impulsively inclined as he was for action and excitement, he was, on the other hand, not foolhardy. He knew when to bide his time.
A platoon of soldiers was slowly filing over the Neck some distance ahead of them. Nat saw Billy’s teeth flash in the dark.
“Turn your hat, Nat,” he said, doing so to his own. “Cock it like an officer’s lid. You’re an actor, ain’t you? Well, now’s the time to strut your stuff. We’re going to mingle with those soldiers like we were officers. God willing, we’ll elude the guard at the blockhouse and cross over with the redcoats.”
The big thing in their favor was the pitchy darkness of the spring night. Nat reset his hat on his head at an aggressive angle and spurred the roan into the lead.
He was a pretty good mime for his time, and he’d had two months in which to study the mannerisms and affectations of British officers. He put the roan to a canter and came loping in among the platoon of foot soldiers, heedless of their safety, shouting:
“Gad’s life! Whose ragamuffin squad is this? Don’t you dolts know enough to clear the road for a general officer? I say, you there, Leftenant! Plague take it, man, I mean you! Cawn’t you move your beastly guttersnipes aside? Cawn’t you recognize Lord Percy when you see him? Deuced stupid of you, if I do say so!”
All in a dither, the luckless lieutenant and the Neck guards shouting at them, the foot soldiers tumbled frantically aside into a general disorder in the dark, as Billy Dawes—his hat cocked, his right hand akimbo on his hip, disdainfully tall and ramrod-straight in his saddle—came jinglety-bump, jinglety-bump through the tumult; out-Percying Percy for all he was worth.
“Majaw!” he snapped at Nat’s silhouette, “get that leftenant’s name. Put the blightaw on report, what?”
But Nat, bigheartedly, elected to give the bamboozled lieutenant a break and merely called back: “Carry on, Leftenant. A trifle more alertness and respect the next time, what?”
And then the two of them were pounding down the road one after the other, the eight hoofs of the horses going thup-thuppity-thup!
Nat pulled alongside Billy to shout: “Which way is Revere going?”
“The short way! Across the Charlestown Neck!”
“Hope he has the luck we just had!”
Billy’s grin flashed in the moony night.
“If he ever gets started! He has to go through no end of nonsense about hanging lanterns in the North Church steeple!”
“What for?”
“Beats the nathun out of me! That’s Paul’s way. He’s afraid he won’t be able to get across the Charles River, and the lanterns will warn a Colonel Conant in Charlestown that he and his pals had better take off for Concord in Paul’s place!”
The moon was successfully breaking through the cloud-strung April night as Billy and Nat came pounding into Roxbury, and Billy—grinning as usual—looked back and called: “Let’s really rouse ’em, Nat-o! Let’s get these fat farmers out of their warm beds and into their fields with something besides plows and spades for a change!”
“All right, let’s go, old boy!” Nat yelled.
And so they came banging down the main street whooping like demented Shawnees on a dawn attack. “HEEE-YAH-YAH-YAH-Yaaaah!”
“UP! Every fat farmer’s son of you—UP! Turn out! Turn out! Grab your firelocks! You rabbly rebels! The regulars are coming out!
“EEEE-YU-YU-YU-Yuuuu!”
The night flowed by them, ghostly with the grotesque stark attitude of the leafless trees. The wind of their own headlong passage blew chill upon their faces, knifing through their jackets and shirts and trembling their blood. The pale road wound on ahead of them, through the damp salt swamps, moist and cold and moon-struck.
Then they were galloping through Brookline and scalp-yelling again and waving their hats and spurring the horses on on and on.
“The regulars are coming out! On to Lexington and Concord!”
They saw lights light up, small bright squares set in the large black squares of the looming houses. Windows and shutters were shot aside and nightcapped heads appeared; and once, fleetingly, Nat saw a woman step back behind her husband leaning at the window and put her hands to her face. And he thought: They know. The women always seem to know when it’s going to be bad. Because it was probably something in them, in their nature or blood—a hangover from their cave-dwelling ancestors, when their menfolk had gone out with a club in their mighty fists to face a savage enemy, and had never returned.
He looked at Billy Dawes humping and hunched and flying before him and thought: Billy—good luck to you, old boy, tomorrow.
Then they were going pam-a-pam-a-pamma across the Charles River bridge and slicing a noisy passage through sleeping Cambridge.
“EEEE-Yuuuu! Up! Up! Everybody up! The regulars are coming out!”
The coming-to-life town fell in their pulsating wake, and now they were going pell-mell down the lonely road to Menotomy and the road was so hard under those sure-flying hoofs that Nat could feel the slam of it all the way up his backbone and he exulted in the jarring, rhythmic sensation of inexorable motion. As yet they hadn’t encountered a single patrol, and it looked as though their luck was in.
There was activity in Menotomy. Lights were ablaze in the homes and there was a bustle of movement around the dooryards.
“Eee-YAH!” Billy cried. “The regulars are coming out!”
A tousled head popped through an upper window and an irate voice shouted: “We know it! How many times you gonna tell us?”
Billy looked back at Nat. “Guess Paul’s already been through here!”
Or someone, Nat thought. Because by now Colonel Conant and others were spreading the alarm far and wide across eastern Massachusetts. At Lynn and Billerica and Acton, at Woburn and Reading and Danvers, at Tewksbury and Andover and Pepperell and Worcester, farmers were tumbling out of their beds to reach for muskets issued in King George’s War thirty years before or for fowling pieces or blunderbusses—any excuse for a gun that would fire any excuse for ammunition.
It was half past midnight when Nat and Billy galloped into Lexington. The town had been aroused, and Parson Clarke’s home bore the festive aspect of a public house. They dismounted and went by a well-lathered horse to the door, where an excited militiaman on guard greeted them.
“Heard the news?” he asked, only too eager to tell them.
“No,” Billy said. “What?”
“The regulars are coming out!”
