Rabble on a Hill. Robert Edmond Alter

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!”

      Billy dropped his jaw and clasped his hands, turning to Nat with a look of horror. “Did you hear that? The regulars are coming out!”

      “Do tell,” Nat said, and they went by the bewildered guard, laughing.

      Paul was toasting his feet at the fireplace. His face was a polished rose with firelight and sweat. He beamed at his two friends.

      “Hello, Billy! Hi, Nat. You boys have any trouble? Let me tell you what happened to me at Medford. Got jumped by a British patrol! Yessir! Two of ’em, mounted and waiting for me in the middle of the road. So I had to miss Cambridge and double back to Medford like I had the devil on my tail! Did you get Cambridge, Billy?”

      “Yeah. Where’s Adams and Hancock?”

      Paul jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Packing up their papers. They’re going to spend the night in the swamp. I been waiting here for you for half an hour.”

      Nat was going to ask him why he hadn’t gone on to warn Concord, but just then a bluff-faced man somewhere in his fifties, entered from another room with his wig awry and with papers clutched in both hands. He gave Billy a harassed smile and glanced curiously at Nat.

      “This is Nat Towne, Sam. One of my boys. He rode with Billy tonight,” Paul said.

      Sam Adams transferred the papers in his right hand to his left and offered his right to Nat. “Are you going on to Concord tonight?”

      “Yes, sir,” Nat said. “Quick as we can.”

      Adams nodded, a look of abstract dissatisfaction on his bluff face.

      “I’ve waited years for this moment—and now when it’s finally come, John and I have to run and hide in some stinking swamp like cravens.”

      Nat supposed that Adams was referring to the well-known fact that General Gage had been quite willing to extend amnesty to all the Patriots except Adams and Hancock. Those two firebrands he had sworn to conduct to England in chains. That was the trouble with being the figurehead of any revolutionary attempt: you were always the target.

      “Well,” Paul said, clumping for the door, “we’d best get along.”

      Nat looked back at Sam Adams. Was he a great man, or was he a rogue and a thief who talked other men into fighting for him? Nat had no way of knowing, and it didn’t really matter. The thing had started now, and Adams had become a symbol of the snowballing; for that he deserved respect.

      “Goodby, sir,” Nat said.

      Adams, looking at them soberly, nodded. “Good luck, gentlemen.”

      The three riders started down the road, Revere now in the lead. All at once Billy called: “Hi! Hold up, Paul. Somebody’s coming!”

      Nat reined in and put a hand on the cantel to turn back in his saddle. He could hear the thuppity-thup of hoofs chopping the road.

      “Think it’s a patrol?” Paul asked anxiously.

      Billy shook his head. “No. Just one man. I can see him now.”

      A solitary rider materialized out of the gloom and made a smooth transition from canter to walk with his mount. In the moonlight they could see that he was a young gentleman dressed to the nines in his Sunday best. He halted before them, touching his hatbrim jauntily with one finger.

      “Good evening, gentlemen! I understand the regulars are coming out. I’m Doctor Samuel Prescott from Concord. I’m just now returning home from a—uh call I made in Lexington.”

      Billy grinned at the young doctor. “By draggit, Doc, it’s a heck of an hour to have to tend a patient.”

      Dr. Prescott coughed decorously behind his hand. “Well uh—to tell the truth it wasn’t quite a patient I was calling upon.”

      Paul chuckled. “Don’t stop now, Doc. This is just getting good!”

      The doctor laughed good-naturedly. “I confess you’ve caught me out. I was visiting my fiancée. A Mistress Millikan—a very proper young lady, I might add, even though the hour is now quite late.”

      “Care to join us, Doctor?” Nat offered. “We’re on our way to rouse Concord.”

      The doctor, it seemed, was young enough to still be romantically restless. “A capital suggestion!” he said. “It sounds exhilarating. My Concord patients are forever getting me up at all hours of the night, and now I have the opportunity of paying them back! Onward, gentlemen!”

      Paul and the doctor in the lead, the four-man troop went bumpity-bump, bumpity-bump down the shadow-flickering road, down to a turn-off where the Hartwell farm sat crouching back from the road.

      Right out of nowhere two British officers sprang before them with a flash of swords.

      “Halt, you rebels, or we’ll blow the bally lot of you to Kingdom come!” And one of them went ta-wee—ta-wee on a whistle, and instantly two more redcoats emerged from a field bordering the road.

      “Go it, Nat-o!” Billy cried, and he wheeled his horse into a sharp oblique and booted home the spurs.

      “YAH!” Nat roared, and he humped over and went booting after Billy, sweeping by Prescott’s off side—and the doctor must have been mounted on the horse of horses, because it took off from practically a dead halt and caught up to Nat within three bounds.

      Now the two regulars in the field were smack before them, and Nat caught the long brittle-bright glint of their raised bayonets. He swerved right, nearly colliding with Billy’s near side, and shot a look across his shoulder to see Prescott lashing his way through the scrambling, shouting soldiers with his whip. Then he looked ahead and saw the black ragged line of a stone wall rushing to meet him and heard Billy yell: “All together now!”

      Then he felt the bunch and gather of the roan’s barrel between his legs and the sudden gut-grabbing lift as he went up up into the star-streaming night . . . but something was wrong, very wrong, because when Billy said “all together,” he hadn’t meant all on top of each other. But they were, or nearly so, and that’s the way they tried to go over that blame wall: Nat’s right stirrup hooking with Billy’s left, and Billy himself tilting over against Nat’s shoulder as the blackness of the sod field sprang up at them.

      And then an absolute nothing for a suspended moment: no pain, no shock, no realization of what had happened to them—spilling together, and striking the solid black loam so hard that they saw only stars that didn’t belong to the night but only existed behind their knocked-silly eyes.

      Nat rolled over, hearing a multitude of hoofbeats pounding everywhere at once, and pawed at his eyes to rake the swirling stars from them. He felt Billy grip his right arm.

      “Hi! Nat-o! Lookit old Doc go! Cannon balls couldn’t catch him!”

      Straight across the moony field, the hoofs kicking back black clods, the doctor was hunkered down and winging on like a hurricane, the horse (undoubtedly the horse of horses) reaching, throwing, going, getting out of there.

      That was the ride. And not one of those who had started out from Boston ever reached Concord. History had decided to brush its shoulder with a pretty young miss called Millikan, and