The Winter Hero Read online

  The next question was whether Major Mattoon would try to take the oxen again. Peter didn’t think he would, at least not right away. “He won’t try anything yet,” he said. “He’ll wait until we’re beaten, and then he’ll come after them. He won’t forget, don’t you worry.”

  And so we settled down to wait for the war we knew was coming. Neither side was giving in. The General Court passed a few laws which were supposed to help us, but they didn’t really do very much. “Just a sop,” Molly said. “Just throwing us a bone. They haven’t given us anything.” On our side, we went on closing the courts. Leastwise, Peter and the rest did. Peter still wouldn’t let me get in on the fighting.

  On November 21st a group of Regulators closed the court in Worcester. The next week they weren’t so lucky. They tried to close the court at Concord, but at the last minute some of the Regulators backed out and the whole thing fell apart, and the court met and did its business. Worse, some of the leaders of that bunch of Regulators were caught by government troops and arrested. Peter got the story from Captain Shays and told it to us.

  “They came out from Boston with a posse, maybe a hundred men, under Colonel Ben Hichborn and Colonel Henry Wood of the militia. They brought a sheriff with them, with writs for the arrest of some of the Regulator officers. They took them by surprise in a house they were staying at, and they captured Oliver Parker and Benjamin Page. But the most important of our fellows, Job Shattuck, got away. He cleared out of the house as the posse came in. It was getting to be night and freezing cold, and starting to snow. Shattuck went back down to Groton, where he lived, in the snowstorm and hid out in his own house.

  The posse followed him down there. By the time they got there somebody had warned Shattuck that they were coming, and he cleared out of the house and made for a patch of woods that was nearby. When Colonel Wood saw that Shattuck was gone, he figured he might be in the woods, so he threw his troops all around it and began to close in. Well, Shattuck backed off and backed off until he came up against a creek that flowed through there. Cold as it was, there wasn’t any use for him to swim it—he’d have frozen to death halfway across. Wood’s men closed in. All Shattuck had was an old broadsword. He drew it, and when the posse came up to him he didn’t surrender, but began to fight. Wood’s men would close on him and take a jab at him with their swords, and he’d slash back with his. It was ten against one, and when two or three of them came in on him at once, he was hard pressed to stave them off. He suffered a nick and then another more serious wound and finally one of Wood’s men charged in and whacked him across the knee with his sword and cut through the knee cap and the ligaments, and down he went. They trussed him up and carried him off to jail in Boston and there he lies, and may be dead of his wounds already for all we know out here.”

  It was getting closer to a real war. On December 5th the court was to meet in Worcester again. Captain Shays—actually they were calling him General Shays now, because that was his rank in the Regulators—went down there with a force of men two or three days before the court was to meet. They stopped the court, but there was a raging blizzard that day, with sixteen inches of snow. It went on snowing for five more days—more snow than anybody had seen around here since the great snow of 1717, they said. And bitter cold, too. Lots of people who marched out with General Shays were frostbitten going home, and a man named William Hartley froze to death in the road in Northampton. The cold went on, and so did the court closings. On December 26th, General Shays went into Springfield once more with a small group of Regulators and closed the court there.

  It kept looking more and more like a real war—another Revolution, only this time not against the British, but against our own Massachusetts government. There hadn’t been any real battles yet, but the government had warrants out for the arrest of a lot of people, and government troops were going around trying to find them. They tracked some down and put them in jail. The sheriffs were still jailing people for debt, too. Right in Pelham the sheriff came and put a widow named Mrs. MacIntire out of her house and she had to go and live with the MacKenzies down the road. She was sick, too. You can guess how everybody felt about that. If they were going to put sick widows off their land, what would they do to the rest of us?

  If there was going to be a war, I wanted to be in on it. I brought it up with Molly.

  “Why can’t I go?”

  “Because Peter doesn’t want you to, that’s why. I don’t want you to go, either. I’ve got enough to worry about that Peter might get hurt.”

  “What right has he got to order me around?” I said. “He’s not my father.”

  “He’s the head of the household and he can give any orders he wants.”

  “Why does that give him the right to order me around?” I said.

  “Peter is responsible for our safety and well-being, and it’s his job to see that things run right.”

  “Molly, you don’t let him order you around.”

  She thought about that. “Mostly I do what he says; I only argue with him if he gets hasty and does something foolish.”

  “You mean you don’t mind taking his orders?”

  “He’s my husband. I’m supposed to be a help to him.”

  “But you don’t have to,” I said.

  “You don’t understand, Just—I want to. You seem to forget that Peter is a good man. Everybody around Pelham admires him. He’s just hasty with his feelings. Sometimes he acts too quick. But he’s a better man than most. So don’t take it so hard if he tells you what to do. He thinks that so long as he’s the father here it’s his job to make things run right. Whoever is in charge has to be able to give orders so that everybody does his proper share of the work and gets his proper share of things out of it.”

  I thought of something. “Well, what about Governor Bowdoin, and Major Mattoon and the General Court? Do you think it’s right to tax away people’s oxen and flax that they grew and even their farms, just because they’re in charge?”

  “What do you think,” she said. “You know how I feel about the government.”

  “But they’re in charge. If Peter has a right to give orders because he’s in charge, why don’t they have the right, too?”

  “Because,” she said. “Because if you’re in charge you’re supposed to use your power for the good of everybody, not for the good of yourself. That’s the difference. The difference between Peter and Major Mattoon. Peter gives you orders, but he’s on your side, and trying to see that things go right for you. Major Mattoon gives orders just to get the best for himself. That’s wrong. The one who’s in charge ought to be looking out for everybody.”

  We were quiet for a minute. Then I said, “I still want to go.”

  She looked at me. “Want to be a hero, do you?”

  I blushed. “I want to do my share,” I said.

  She sat silent. “Well,” she said finally. “I’ll think about it.”

  So we waited—waited to see if General Lincoln was really coming out with an army. January and the new year, 1787, came. And then we heard that the army was coming.

  We talked about it over supper one night. The two little ones were sitting on a bench in front of the fireplace, staying warm and eating dried apples. We had pulled the table up close to the fire, too. The wind was driving the cold through the cracks around the windows, and outside the branches of the trees were thrashing about in the moonlight, which was bright on the snow. “They will be coming after us now,” Peter said. “They mean to put us down once and for all. They could get thousands of men from Boston out against us.”

  “Thousands?” I said.

  “According to the order, the Governor was to raise forty-four hundred troops, but we don’t know exactly how many he can actually get,” Peter said. “You can be sure that they won’t come out here with less than they think are needed to do the job.”

  “What is Daniel Shays planning?” Molly said.

  Peter shrugged. “My guess is that he’ll take us to Springfield again.
General Sheppard has called up the militia there and has taken over the Congress arsenal. He wouldn’t have done that on his own. Governor Bowdoin must have ordered it. Of course, they didn’t want us to get hold of the arms stored there. My guess is that Shays will try to take the arsenal. It’s the logical thing to do. There are cannons stored there and with cannons and plenty of powder and shot we might stand a chance against Sheppard.”

  “There’ll be fighting,” Molly said. “There’ll be killing.”

  Peter looked at her and then away. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. I know that Daniel Shays hasn’t much heart for fighting. He’ll do nearly anything to avoid a pitched battle. I think what he’s really hoping is that the militia will come over to us. If they did that, and we took the arsenal, chances are that anyone they send out from Boston would be willing to negotiate, and we might get what we want without fighting.”

  “That’s a lot of maybe’s,” Molly said. “When you have a lot of men standing around with muskets in their hands, sooner or later there’s going to be shooting.”

  “Not necessarily,” Peter said.

  “You’ll have to go, won’t you, Peter,” she said.

  “Of course,” he said, shoveling in a mouthful of cornmeal mush. “Everybody’s got to do their share. I couldn’t sit home and let the other fellows do my fighting for me.” He swallowed. “Besides, General Shays is counting on me. I’ve got a good horse, and he knows I don’t mind fighting.”

  I stared down at my plate, trying to think how to say it. I was scared of the idea of getting shot at, and scared of going against Peter anyway, but when else was I going to have a chance to do something brave? “I’m going, too,” I said.

  Nobody said anything. Then Peter said, “No, you’re not.”

  “Peter, I’ve got a right to—”

  He bashed his hand down on the table. “I said you’re not going.”

  “Peter—”

  Molly touched my arm. “Hush up, Just,” she said. She laid down her spoon. “Why can’t he go, Peter?”

  “Because I’d never forgive myself if I let him get killed.”

  “What’s the difference between my getting killed and your getting killed, Peter?” I said.

  “Men have to take their chances. Not boys.”

  “Peter,” Molly said, “he’s almost a man.”

  “Not yet he isn’t.”

  “All right,” Molly said. “He can stay here and look after the little ones. I’ll go.”

  Peter’s jaw began to jut out. “The hell you’re going,” he said. “I’m not having my wife parading about like a man.”

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t I go? I know how to shoot a musket.”

  “I don’t care if you know how to shoot a cannon. You’re not going.”

  “Yes, I am,” she said. “I’m going to put on men’s clothing and go. You can’t stop me. You won’t know it’s me.”

  He was getting in a rage and I knew that in a minute he was going to hit her. “Peter, calm down,” I said.

  He didn’t even hear me. “Just drop the subject, Molly,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said. “I’m going. I’m going to dress up in—”

  He reached across the table and smacked her across the face with the palm of his hand. It made a loud crack. I’d never seen him hit her before. We all sat deathly still, Peter and Molly staring at each other and me looking down at my plate. One of the little ones looked at Molly and began to whimper.

  Peter stood up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But the two of you would make a man insane.”

  Molly went on staring at him. “If I don’t go, will you let him go then?”

  He threw his arms up as if he were flinging an armful of leaves in the air. “All right, all right, if he wants to see what war is like, let him. Once he gets shot at the first time there won’t be so much talk about standing up for his rights.” He stalked out of the room.

  The next day I went down to Uncle Billy’s tavern and signed up. After that, I went over regularly with Peter to drill. Of course, I didn’t have a musket, but I had my father’s sword, and I took that. There wasn’t much glory in drilling—it was all marching and countermarching back and forth in the snow, with a bitter wind blowing about half the time. It was a hard winter, one of the worst for years. It’s a funny thing, but when you imagine war, you always think about it’s being in the summer. It’s hard to take an interest in it when your fingers and toes are about to freeze off.

  In the middle of January, companies of Regulators under their own officers began to gather in Pelham. They slept around in barns and at people’s houses wherever there was room. The whole town was on Shays’ side. When the weather wasn’t too bad, they drilled on the open field in front of Uncle Billy’s tavern.

  Peter and I spent our free time trying to get things in order for Molly, especially making sure that there was enough wood up. We cut the wood into four-foot logs and put them into stacks four feet high and eight feet long. That’s one cord of fuel wood, and that little farmhouse would use twenty-five cords in a normal winter for cooking and heating. It was an awful lot of chopping and sawing. “I figure it’ll all be over one way or another in a couple of days,” Peter said. “But you never can tell. We might not go at all. Shays is waiting until the last minute before he does anything.”

  “How long will he wait?”

  “He can’t wait much longer. The Governor has ordered out General Lincoln, and he’s already marching for Springfield. If we’re going to take the army we’ll have to do it before he arrives. General Sheppard’s only got a thousand or so militia at the arsenal now, but if he has Lincoln with him, too, we won’t stand a chance.”

  It worried me that we might not go at all. It seemed like it could all get called off. But finally General Shays gave the order, and on Monday, January 22, we marched out of Pelham. Our war against the government had begun.

  I wasn’t the only one without a musket. Some of the men had only swords, too, and some just clubs. Many of those with muskets didn’t have bayonets. As Peter said, it was the bayonets that counted. You’d fire off two or three volleys, but it was the bayonet charge afterward that got you the victory. And what kind of a charge could we make without bayonets? It scared me pretty good when I thought about it.

  The weather was still bad. There was three feet of snow on the fields and the roads were deep in frozen mud. It was like marching on heaps of jagged stones—your feet kept twisting and turning under you. The sky was cloudy and we knew it was going to snow before the day was over.

  How long it would take us to get to Springfield I didn’t know. Nobody was sure exactly what General Shays was planning. The men marching beside me had a lot of different ideas. It seemed that we were to march to Wilbraham, which was twenty-five miles from Pelham on the road from Boston. That way we could get between Lincoln’s army and Sheppard’s men at the arsenal. Other Regulators would march down the Connecticut River, and some others were on the other side at West Springfield. That way we would have the town nearly surrounded.

  From Wilbraham, our group would march to Springfield. Of course, there was an awful lot of guessing about what would happen when we got there—whether the militia would fire on us or join us, or what. “They won’t fire on us,” one man said. “Shays is counting on that. You can bet he won’t fight unless he has to. He’ll try to parlay with them as long as he can.”

  We marched on through Belchertown and Palmer and into Wilbraham. Here we found other men. It kept getting colder and colder. Our feet and fingers were numb, and the men were holding their hands over their faces to prevent their cheeks and noses from getting frostbitten.

  There were some towns around the western part of the state that weren’t with us—places where the people were against the Regulators and supported the government. But most places were with us. Wilbraham was one. We got there in the late afternoon, and the people there put us up in their houses and barns and fed us the best they could with corn bread
and smoked meat and whatever else they could spare. Our company was quartered in a barn. It wasn’t bad. The cattle helped to keep it warm, and if you snuggled down in the hay you could be pretty comfortable.

  Sometime after dusk Peter came around looking for me. He put his head in the door. “Are you in there, Justin?”

  I could see it was him from the moonlight, and I went to the door. “Well,” he said, “how do you like war so far?”

  “I’d like it better in the summertime,” I said.

  “Oh, the weather is going to get a lot worse than this,” he said. “This is nothing. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow.”

  “Where are you quartered?”

  He grinned. “I’m in a nice warm house. I’m attached to General Shays as an aide-de-camp.”

  “That’s pretty lucky,” I said.

  “It’s because of Brother. He wants a man with a good horse nearby for messages.”

  “Has General Shays said what we’re going to do in Springfield?”

  “I don’t think he knows any more than anybody else. We’ll probably march into Springfield on Wednesday. We expect to link up with Luke Day’s people.”

  “Will we fight?”

  “Don’t know. General Shays will try to negotiate if he can.”

  “I wish I had a gun,” I said.

  “You should have thought of that back in Pelham,” he said. “I’m going to get some sleep. See you in the morning.”

  We spent Tuesday in Wilbraham. It snowed in the morning and then it turned to rain in the afternoon. There wasn’t anything to do but sit around the barn. Some of the men in my company had fought in the Revolution and we sat around listening to them tell stories about it.

  We spent Tuesday night in the barn again and then around noon on Wednesday we formed up and began to march toward Springfield. It was cloudy and cold and likely to snow again. The snow in the field had a hard crust on it. The crust was sharp as a knife. It could cut you if you weren’t careful.

  But I wasn’t thinking about the snow, I was thinking about Springfield. In a few hours we would be there. Would we fight? Would I have to go hand-to-hand with my sword against a militiaman with a bayonet? What would it feel like to have a bayonet go through you? Would I run if someone came after me? I didn’t feel much like a hero: my mouth was dry and my innards cold as ice.