Characters Mentioned
Adams, Samuel – Continental Congress delegate. Leader of the rebel patriots of Massachusetts
Barker, Lieutenant John – 4th Regiment. Highly critical of superiors
Cochrane, Captain Charles – member of Major Mitchell’s patrol
Hancock, John – Rich Boston merchant. Continental Congress delegate
Hartwell, Ephraim – owner of a Lincoln tavern
Hartwell, Lucy – Mary and Samuel’s 5 month old daughter
Hartwell, Mary – Samuel’s wife
Hartwell, Sergeant Samuel – a leader of the Lincoln militia
Mitchell, Major Edward – 10th Regiment. In command of a body of officers assigned to intercept express riders prior to the raid upon Concord
Prescott, Dr. Samuel – traveling from his fiancee’s house near Lexington to Concord
Revere, Paul – Boston silversmith and express rider
Smith, Captain William – captain of the Lincoln militiaman
Sukey – Ephraim Hartwell’s slave
Map
Chapter 10, “My Name Is Revere,” Section 1
“Get off your horse!”
Revere dismounted. Standing on soft ground, he flexed his knees, arched his back.
An officer on foot approached. He stopped three feet away, looked Revere over. “Where did you come from?” he asked.
“Boston.”
The officer's eyebrows lifted. “What time did you leave?”
“10:30, I believe.”
The officer, approximately Revere’s age, turning his head, squinted at the closest mounted soldier. The soldier nodded some sort of acknowledgement.
“Are you an express rider, sir?” the officer asked.
“I am.”
He frowned. “Sir, I crave your name.”
“My name is Revere.”
“What?” The officer’s mouth stayed open. “You are Paul Revere?!”
“Yes.”
The man scowled, pivoted, stalked off to his tended horse. The others, high above Revere, glared.
“Damn rebel!”
“Villain! Bloody traitor!”
“We'll see you hung, you and Adams! And that flash bastard Hancock!”
“Major Mitchell will have you shot!”
Revere stared fiercely at his horse’s bridle. The officer on foot, hastily returning, said in a low voice, “You need not be afraid.”
Revere glared.
“No one will hurt you.”
“Gentlemen,” Revere said, addressing the horsemen that had cursed him. “You have missed your aim!”
They bristled. Barn cocks, he thought.
One of them said, officiously, “What of our aim?”
“Our aim is to arrest deserters,” the older officer said. “That is why we stopped you.”
Revere smiled at the man's duplicity. “I came out of Boston a half hour after your troops had come out of Boston to land at Lechmere's Point,” he said. “I have alarmed the country all the way up. We’ll have 500 men here soon. Your boats have catched aground.”
“You lie!”
“We have 1,500 coming!”
Revere grinned. “If I had not known that other people along the way had been sent out to alarm the country,” and he paused. “If I had not known I had time enough to ride fifty miles,” -- he faced the mounted officer nearest him -- “I would’ve ventured one shot from you before I would’ve suffered you to have stopped me!”
Curses rained upon him. Dismissing them, he watched the courteous officer pull taut his gloves. The officer mounted. He rode off across the pasture.
“Captain Cochrane’s getting the Major,” one of Revere's abusers declared, laughing.
“Bloody good entertainment t’be had, traitor!”
Two riders returned at a full gallop. Forty feet away, the taller rider, his horse yet in motion, dismounted. Drawing his pistol, he advanced. Revere saw he was the soldier that had threatened him on the road.
The officer pressed the end of his pistol against Revere's left ear. “You will give me truthful answers or I will blow your brains out!”
Neck muscles tight, Revere resisted the pressure. “I esteem myself a man of truth and I am not afraid of you!” Heat radiated from his face. “I demand you remove that pistol! By what right is a peaceable citizen detained on this highway?!”
“The truth, I say, or I’ll scatter your brains on this dirt!”
The officer applied additional pressure. Revere glowered at a distant tree.
“You are Paul Revere sent from Boston to alert the provincials. Am I correct?!”
“You are!”
“When did you leave Boston?”
“At 10:30!”
“And you saw His Majesty's troops leave Boston?” As mercurially as he had brandished it, Mitchell withdrew the pistol.
“Their boats catched aground.” Mitchell glared at him. “I have roused every minuteman from here to Lexington. Soon you’ll have 500 surrounding you.”
For ten seconds the officer’s fierce eyes assaulted him. To the closest lieutenant, Mitchell declared, “Search him!”
Two officers did so. Satisfied that he was not armed, Mitchell ordered the express rider to mount. Drawing his right leg over the horse’s back and saddle, Revere seated himself.
Mitchell grabbed the bridle. “By God, sir, you do not ride with reins!” He seized them. “Grant, come here!” His face contorting, he whipped the reins into the officer’s reaching hands.
“If you let me have them, I’ll not attempt to run from you.”
“I will not! I don’t trust you!”
Mitchell mounted. To the soldier that had surrendered the reins of Revere's horse, he ordered, “Bring them all out!” He nodded toward the wood.
The sergeant returned with yet another officer. Walking between them were four county men, each leading a horse. One of them was missing an arm. Ten yards away they were told to mount.
Mitchell said to Revere: “We will ride now toward your friends. If you attempt to run, or if we are insulted, I will scatter your brains!”
“You may do as you please!”
Through a pine wood and across two fields Samuel Prescott’s horse galloped. Having found the road, they stopped soon afterward at Ephraim Hartwell’s tavern. Prescott pounded on the old man’s door.
The sixty-six year old proprietor opened it.
“Go tell Captain Smith! Right now!” Ephraim ordered his slave girl, Sukey, after hearing the doctor’s short explanation. “Our militia captain’s house’s just down the road,” he told Prescott while the girl put on her coat. “Come in. Rest a spell.”
“I must decline,” Prescott answered. “Forgive me. I must ride to Concord!”
Hartwell watched Prescott mount. “Out with you!” he ordered the girl. “Tell Captain Smith the British army is coming! Out!”
Mary Hartwell was awakened by a persistent banging on her front door. Her five-month-old child, Lucy, lying in her crib, was crying. Mary rose. Holding her baby against her chest, she stepped apprehensively to the door.
“Who is it? What do you want?” Glancing behind her, she saw that Samuel had left their bed. He was taking his musket down off the wall.
“Sukey, ma'am. The British be comin'! Let me in!”
Her left hand upon the latch bolt, Mary caught her breath. Repositioning the baby against her left shoulder, she braced herself. She opened the door.
The slave girl edged through the narrow opening.
“British soldiers be on the road, t'Concord! Mr. Hartwell say I tell Captain Smith. I’m afraid!” She pressed her body against Samuel’s wall-hanging coat.
“I need t’muster the company,” Samuel said to Mary. “You go see William. Send Sukey back t'Father when you get back.”
Mary looked at her husband, looked at Sukey. Her baby, secure in the crook of her left arm -- When had she taken Lucy off her shoulder? -- was staring at her. “Sukey,” she said, “come here!”
The girl approached, warily.
“Tend her.” Mary handed the child over. “Care for her while I'm gone!”
Having taken her coat from its peg, drawing it about her shoulders, she stepped through the doorway. The baby cried.
Mary noticed immediately the bright moonlight. The eerie clarity frightened her. Clutching her coat close to her body, she hurried to the road.
John Barker had been wrong. Colonel Smith’s expeditionary force had dawdled in the marshland two hours, not one! They had moved a jaw-dropping distance of fifty feet!
His eminence had used much of the time changing the composition of his column. Light infantry companies were to lead; grenadier companies were to follow; within the two groupings regimental seniority determined the location of each company. Their shoes and gaiters soaked, the men of the 4th had stood, shivered, been moved, shivered, been moved again, stood, shivered, and cursed.
The column had waited a good portion of the second hour for provisions, a third crossing of the boats! Much better to have received the beef hardtack upon the completion of their mission when its delivery would actually have served its purpose! Its distribution now -- added weight soon to be discarded -- made no sense! But when had making sense factored in his superiors’ operations?
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