The Winter Hero Read online

  Chapter Eight

  ABOUT FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER WE GOT started, just as we were moving out of Wilbraham, the line came to a halt. There were horsemen at the front of the column, and the legs of the horses were getting scraped and cut by the frozen slush. An order came back for our company to send forward some men to break down the crust in front of the horses. I was picked, and went up to the front.

  There was a line of horse tracks and a trail of blood in them going down the road ahead of us, where somebody riding fast had passed along there. The blood had come from the horse’s legs where they had gotten scraped by the snow crust. We figured it was a messenger riding to General Sheppard to tell him we were coming. We linked arms to be as close together as possible and walked forward, tromping down the snow crust. I liked being in front of the whole army. It made me feel sort of proud. But I knew it would make me a pretty easy target if I were still up there at Springfield. It was slow going. We were setting the pace, and we couldn’t make much time tromping down the snow. Springfield was right on the Connecticut River. We were still in the hills above the river. When the wind blew through the hills it froze our faces. We walked on, and after about three hours we began to see smoke from the buildings in Springfield in the distance. I wondered which one was the arsenal. Then the road dipped downward and we lost sight of the river and the town. We marched on. Finally, we came to a long slope and the buildings came closer alongside the road. As we came along past the few farms on the outskirts of the town, there were people standing in doorways and peering out of windows to watch us. I wondered whose side they were on.

  We marched forward. We were on the Boston Road, which ran right into town. It was the biggest place I’d ever been to. There were lots of shops along the street we were marching on—an apothecary shop with jars of medicines in the window, a cooper who made barrels, and lots of taverns. We passed a big dry-goods store with a huge window in the front. I could see shelves of books and pewter mugs and dishes and bolts of cloth. Each store had its own colorful sign with some kind of a picture on it to tell you what kind of a store it was—a barrel for the cooper, a mortar and pestle for the apothecary, and so forth. It all seemed so pleasant. I wished I could stop in the stores and look around. I resolved that if we ended up not fighting I would take the time to visit the shops.

  Here, too, the people stood in doors and windows and watched us. They didn’t say anything, but just watched us march by. I wondered what they were thinking. I wondered if they hated us, or were afraid of us, or were glad that we were going to fight the militia.

  Now the Boston Road began to rise. Somewhere up there was the arsenal. There was a cry of “Halt,” and the line stopped. We looked ahead. The road curved so that we couldn’t see very far. As we watched, a horseman in military uniform appeared around the bend and stopped. I turned around to look back. General Shays, wearing his buff and blue uniform from the Revolution, was sitting on his white horse talking to some of his officers. Then he began to move forward. Those of us who had been up front breaking the snow crust stepped aside to let him through. He was coming right by me, and as he got to me he noticed me. “Justin,” he shouted, “Run along before my horse and stomp down that crust.” Actually, there wasn’t much snow crust here. Once we’d got in the town it had been pretty trampled already.

  I felt a thrill that he’d picked me, and proud that I was out there, just me and General Shays. I stomped along at high speed, tromping down the snow even though there wasn’t much need of it. Within a minute I was sweating and breathing hard, but I hardly noticed. Finally, I came up to the horseman and stepped aside.

  General Shays stopped his horse. “How are you, Buffington?” he said to the horseman. He was also wearing a Revolutionary War uniform. It seemed funny to have two enemies dressed the same. I figured that he and General Shays had known each other in the Revolution.

  Buffington looked at General Shays. “You see I am here in defense of that country you are endeavoring to destroy.”

  General Shays stared back. “If you are in defense of the country, we are both defending the same cause.”

  “I expect we shall take different parts before evening,” Buffington said.

  “The part I take will be the hill on which the arsenal stands.”

  “You will meet a very warm reception,” Buffington said.

  “Will you fire?” General Shays said.

  “Yes, undoubtedly.”

  “That’s all I want to know,” General Shays said. He wheeled his horse around, heading back to the column, and I ran back behind him through the crushed snow. My mind was all whirling. Buffington had said they would fire. Within a few minutes people would be shooting at me.

  Now we snow-crushers were ordered into our regular ranks. We dashed back and the line started to move forward again. The men around me were envious that I had had a chance to find out what was going on, and they kept asking me questions out of the sides of their mouths. We weren’t supposed to talk in ranks.

  “Buffington said they would fire on us,” I said.

  “I don’t believe it,” one man said.

  “Bluffington” another said. “Sheppard won’t dare order the militia to fire. Most of them will come right over to us if he does.”

  “Quiet in the ranks,” an officer shouted. We marched on. In a moment we came around the curve, and there ahead of us, on the top of the hill, was the arsenal. All along I had thought that the arsenal was one building, but actually it was several buildings. In front of them was a wooden palisade which looked to be new: I figured they’d put it up especially to defend the arsenal against us. And in front of the palisade was a line of militiamen. In the midst of the militia were some cannons. The cannons seemed to be staring straight down the hill at me, as if I was their main enemy.

  The column stopped. Two horsemen rode down the slope toward us, and two of our officers, also on horseback, went out to meet them. The four men stood together in the road for a minute, talking and gesturing. Then the meeting broke up and our men came back to us. We started marching again, moving step by step toward the arsenal. I couldn’t take my eyes off those cannons. We kept on marching. Were we going to march right into the line of militia? Would they fire?

  Then there was a great booming noise and a puff of smoke that rolled out of the blank eye of one of the cannons. The line sort of shuddered. Some men jumped to the side of the road or went flat. Quickly we realized that the cannon shot had been aimed above us. The men jeered and started marching again. In a moment there was another boom and another puff of smoke at the mouth of a cannon, But again the shot was aimed over us. “See, they won’t fire on us,” a man near me said.

  Then came a third boom and another puff of smoke, and after it a long shriek and some shouts and cries. The line stopped. Ahead there was confusion in the ranks. Some men had flung themselves flat, some had jumped to the side of the road, some had crouched down, their weapons at the ready, prepared to receive a charge. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew they were firing on us, and would probably fire again. I knelt down. Some of our men began to run toward me, going back down the hill. I looked forward. Now there were no men standing, and I could see all the way up. There was a body in the road. He was shuddering and jerking his arms and legs back and forth.

  Then there was another boom and this time a long, eerie shriek, which seemed to go on and on, and I knew that another man was dying. I fell flat, my hands over my head. All around me there was the sound of running feet. I raised up my head. Our troops were pouring back down the hill away from the arsenal. I heard a voice shout, “Boys, stand fast. We can gain the day yet. Stand fast.” There was the sound of a horse’s hooves. It was General Shays. I leaped to my feet and the next thing I knew I was running, too, a part of the mob fleeing back down the hill. General Shays had reined up his horse and was waving his sword over his head. “Stand fast, boys,” he shouted. Nobody paid him any attention. We just ran down the hill and began to spread out through the
streets of Springfield like a stream of water breaking into rivulets on a slope.

  I stopped, my breath coming hard in my lungs, and looked around. There was no more cannon fire and the militia didn’t seem to be chasing us. Back up the hill, General Shays and a couple of officers were still wheeling about on their horses, trying to reorganize the few men still remaining. A few were forming up again around them, maybe fifteen or twenty. I stood watching, feeling scared and ashamed of myself, about as ashamed as I’d ever been. I’d had my chance to be a hero and instead I’d run. I couldn’t have fought: nobody was about to fight. But I could have stayed at the top of the hill and tried to keep the others from running. Even if I’d just knelt in the road and stayed there, it would have been a sign that I was brave. But I’d run like the rest, just turned tail like a coward. I wondered if General Shays had noticed me.

  I stood there in the road trying to decide what to do. Up ahead, General Shays had got his little group of men together. They were crouched in the road, their muskets at the ready. I was too far down the hill now to see the arsenal. I wondered if the militia were going to fire on them. One cannon shot could wipe them all out. All of a sudden I couldn’t stand being a coward anymore. I didn’t care if I got killed. I started forward up the road, feeling scared to death. I hunched down as low as I could. But I had only gone a few paces when the little group up the road rose and began to jog down the road toward me. General Shays and the other horsemen were coming along with them. They had given up. I had missed my chance.

  Then I noticed that one of the horsemen was Peter. That made me feel even worse. I didn’t want him to see me. I jumped off the road and ran around behind a small house. Crouching, I could see the men go by, looking grim. Peter’s jaw was jutted forward, his face was smeared with mud and melting snow, and there was a long tear in his trousers. Then they were gone. I came out of hiding and went down after them. The question was where to go next. The militia might come after us at any minute. Then, too, General Lincoln’s troops would be along, probably in a few hours. There was no telling how close they were. The day was about over now and it was getting dark. It was cold and great heavy clouds drooped low over us. It was going to snow. I would have to find some shelter or risk freezing to death. Where was Ito go? I began to walk the rest of the way down the hill.

  There were still a good many of our men milling around. Some were standing in little groups talking, some had hidden behind houses and were coming out. I stopped at one little cluster. One man was saying, “The word is around that Shays is going to make a stand in Pelham. We’re supposed to go north up the river road toward Hadley and cut over from there.”

  “How do you know that?” somebody asked. I noticed he wasn’t much older than me.

  “Somebody I know got it from Shays. We’re supposed to clear out of Springfield before Lincoln shows up with his troops.”

  “That much makes sense, anyway,” the young fellow said. Everybody sort of nodded and in a minute we started walking through the streets of Springfield toward the river road. I knew we were in for a tough time. There would be snow and cold and we’d have difficulty finding a place to sleep.

  The young fellow had noticed me join the group and he dropped back to walk beside me. “You’re pretty young to be fighting,” he said.

  “I’m not much younger than you are,” I said.

  “I’m sixteen,” he said.

  “Well, I’m fifteen,” I lied.

  “You don’t look it,” he said. “Were you on the hill?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I guess you ran, too.”

  I didn’t like to answer that, but I had to. “Yes,” I said. “Did you?”

  “I wasn’t going to stay up there if nobody else was.”

  “Neither was I,” I said. To get off that subject I asked him where he was from, and we got to talking. His name was Levi Bullock and he was from Lanesboro, a village in the northwestern corner of the state. In that area most nearly everybody was on our side. We talked about that and walked along. There were little groups of men everywhere, some jogging along in a rush, others walking slowly. Most of them were heading for the river road to go north. Soon we reached the river and turned north. People kept joining our group and by the time we cleared Springfield there were fifty of us. By now it was dark and the cold was biting.

  “We can’t walk all night,’ somebody said. “We ought to start looking for a barn.”

  “I’d rather get well clear of Lincoln’s men before we stop,” Levi said. He reached into his coat pocket and took out a pipe and pouch of tobacco. “I wouldn’t want to get caught in a barn by them. They might decide to burn us out.” He stuffed some tobacco into his pipe with his thumb, and lit it with a couple of sparks from a flint. He looked pretty grand smoking the pipe. I envied him. I resolved I would try it the first chance I got.

  “Lincoln will probably spend the night in Springfield. He won’t march out tonight. We’d be safe in a barn.”

  But most people figured we’d better keep going, and we did. I was pretty tired. We’d marched all day and got shot at by cannons, and now we were walking again. I’d been on my feet for twelve hours. And I was hungry, too. I hadn’t had anything much to eat all day—a few bits of bread, some dried apples, and a little bit of meat I’d brought from home. I wondered what would happen if we went to a farmhouse and begged for something to eat. The trouble was that we didn’t know if the people around there were on our side or not.

  We went through a couple of villages and then we came to South Hadley. The houses began to draw together. “There’s a nice tavern up ahead,” somebody said. “Might be able to get a mug of rum to warm us up.”

  “Doubt it,” another said. “That’s Noah Goodman’s. He’s a government man. He’s not likely to do anything for us.”

  Nobody said anything further. We walked on. As we came into the village itself I noticed that some of the houses were shuttered up tight. I guessed that the people who lived in them were afraid of us—afraid of all the stragglers coming through their village. Men must have been coming along the road for a half an hour already, and they’d be coming the rest of the night. “They’ve shut up their houses,” I said.

  “They’re worried,” Levi said. “They don’t know what to expect from us.”

  “I thought most of these towns were with us.”

  “Most of them are, but there’s still a lot of people who are against us.”

  Just at that moment there was the sound of a gunshot somewhere up ahead of us. We ducked off to the side of the road and crouched low. There was no further sound.

  “We ought to send a couple of scouts on ahead to reconnoiter,” somebody said. It was sort of funny being in an army without leaders, where everything had to be talked over before we could do anything.

  “Who wants to go?”

  I was scared. It could be a party of Lincoln’s men up there. But I was tired of being a coward. I started to say something, but it came out a rough squeak.

  “I’ll go,” Levi Bullock said.

  I cleared my throat.

  “I’ll go, too,” came another voice in the dark. “That’ll be enough, then. The rest of us will cover the road. If we don’t hear anything of you in fifteen minutes, we’ll come up.”

  Levi trotted off into the darkness. I’d missed my chance again. Why had I let myself stand there thinking about it instead of just blurting out that I’d go, the way Levi had? Why hadn’t I just burst out with it? Would I never get over being a coward? Would I be a coward all my life? The other men crouched down by the side of the road, and I crouched down with them, feeling miserable.

  We waited. We heard another gunshot, but that was all—no shouting or shrieking. In about two minutes we heard somebody running toward us. It was Levi. “There’s a couple of government men up there in Goodman’s tavern. They’re shooting at anybody they see along the road.”

  “All right,” somebody said. “Let’s split into two groups. About ha
lf of you swing off the road and circle around back. The rest of us will go straight up the road and give them a couple of balls through the windows. When you fellows around back hear the shots, break in from the rear and take the place. There’ll be rum in there and a hot fire, and maybe some food as well.”

  That sounded cheerful enough. I decided that the bravest thing was to go with the men around back, because we might have to fight the men inside hand to hand. I lifted my sword in the scabbard to make sure it wasn’t stuck. We cut off the road through the snow, which wasn’t much fun, cold and deep as it was, and the crust likely to cut you to the bone. We got well out into the middle of the field which ran along the road and turned parallel to the road. Dark as the sky was, it was difficult to see very much at all, but a couple of times we saw spots of light near the road and knew we were passing along behind houses. Then we saw a large patch of light.

  “That must be the tavern.” We turned back across the field. We had to go through a small orchard, so our faces were continually being slapped by branches. When we came out of the orchard we could make out the shape of the tavern. There were four windows along the back and a blank space in the middle which we figured to be the door. We waited. Then came the gunshots—first one, then another, then a third. We couldn’t tell whether it was our men or not. Suddenly the rear door of the tavern burst open. Two men dashed out and disappeared in the darkness. We charged forward and into the tavern. I had my sword out. I was the third one through the door. I raised my sword over my head, but the tavern was empty.

  Chapter Nine

  WE SPENT THE NIGHT IN THE TAVERN. IT was risky: Nobody knew where Lincoln’s troops were, nobody knew if the people who owned the tavern would gather together their friends and try to drive us out. We took turns standing guard—one by the back door to watch the fields, one out front on the road. But still, dark as it was, a company of men could easily creep in close and take us by surprise.