Cardigan

Her grave, gray eyes met mine in perfect composure.

"We must stay," she said.

"They are bringing cannon – can you not understand?" I repeated, harshly.

"I will not go," she said. "Every rifle is required here. I cannot take you from these men in their dire need. Dear heart, can you not understand me?"

"Am I to sacrifice you?" I asked, angrily. "No!" I cried. "We have suffered enough – "

Tears sprang to her eyes; she laid her hand on my rifle.

"Other women have sent their dearest ones. Am I less brave than that woman whose husband died yonder on his own door-sill? Am I a useless, passionless clod, that my blood stirs at naught but pleasure? Look at those dead men on the tavern steps! Look at our people's blood on the grass yonder! Would you wed with a pink-and-white thing whose veins run water? I saw them kill that poor boy behind his own barn! – these redcoat ruffians who come across an ocean to slay us in our own land. Do you forget I am a soldier's child?"

A loud voice bellowing from the tavern: "Women here for the bullet-moulds! Get your women to the tavern!"

She caught my hand. "You see a maid may not stand idle in Lexington!" she said, with a breathless smile.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Silver Heels stood in the tap-room of "Buckman's Tavern" casting bullets; the barefoot drummer watched the white-hot crucible and baled out the glittering molten metal or fed it with lumps of lead stripped from the gate-post of Hooper's house in Danvers.

Near the window sat some Woburn Minute Men, cross-legged on the worn floor, rolling cartridges. From time to time the parson of Woburn, who had come to pray and shoot, took away the pile of empty powder-horns and brought back others to be emptied.

The tavern was dim and damp; through freshly bored loopholes in the shutters sunlight fell, illuminating the dark interior.

In their shirts, barearmed and bare of throat to the breast-bone, a score of Lexington Minute Men stood along the line of loopholes, their long rifles thrust out. They had no bayonets, but each man had driven his hunting-knife into the wall beside him.

Jack Mount and the Weasel lay, curled up like giant cats, at the door, blinking peacefully out through the cracks into the early sunshine. I could hear their low-voiced conversation from where I stood at my post, close to Silver Heels:

"Redcoats, Cade, not redskins," corrected Mount. "British lobster-backs – eh, Cade? You remember how we drubbed them there in Pittsburg, belt and buckle and ramrod – eh, Cade?"

"That was long ago, friend."

"Call me Jack! Why don't you call me Jack any more?" urged Mount. "You know me now, don't you, Cade?"

"Ay, but I forget much. Do you know how I came here?"

"From Johnstown, Cade – from Johnstown, lad!"

"I cannot remember Johnstown."

Presently the Weasel peered around at Silver Heels.

"Who is that young lady?" he asked, mildly.

Silver Heels heard and smiled at the old man. The faintest quiver curved her mouth; there was a shadow of pain in her eyes.

The fire from the crucible tinted her cheeks; she raised both bared arms to push back her clustering hair. Hazel gray, her brave eyes met mine across the witch-vapour curling from the melting-pot.

"Do you recall how the ferret, Vix, did bite Peter's tight breeches, Michael?"

"Ay," said I, striving to smile.

"And – and the jack-knife made by Barlow?"

"Ay."

She flushed to the temples and looked at my left hand. The scar was there. I raised my hand and kissed the blessed mark.

"Dear, dear Michael," she whispered, "truly you were ever the dearest and noblest and best of all!"

"Unfit to kiss thy shoon's latchet, sweet – "

"Yet hast untied the latchets of my heart."

A stillness fell on the old tavern; the Minute Men stood silently at the loopholes, the barefoot drummer sat on his drum, hands folded, watching with solemn, childish eyes the nuggets of lead sink, bubble, and melt.

A militiaman came down-stairs for a bag of bullets.

"They be piping hot yet," said the drummer-boy, "and not close pared."

But the soldier carelessly gathered heaping handfuls in his calloused palms, and went up the bare, creaking stairs again to his post among the pigeons.

The heat of the brazier had started the perspiration on Silver Heels's face and neck; tiny drops glistened like fresh dew on a blossom. She stood, dreamily brushing with the back of her hand the soft hair from her brow. Her dark-fringed eyes on me; under her loosened kerchief I saw the calm breathing stir her neck and bosom gently as a white flower stirs at a breath of June.

"The scent of the sweet-fern," she murmured; "do you savour it from the pastures?"

I looked at her in pity.

"Ay, dear heart," she whispered, with a sad little smile, "I am homesick to the bones of me, sick for the blue hills o' Tryon and the whistling martin-birds, sick for the scented brake and the smell of sweet water babbling, sick for your arm around me, and your man's strength to crush me to you and take the kiss my very soul does ache to give."

A voice broke in from the pigeon-loft above, "Is there a woman below to sew bandages?"

"Truly there is, sir," called back Silver Heels.

"I'll take the mould," said the small drummer, "but you are to come when the fight begins, for I mean to do a deal o' drumming!"

She started towards the stairway, then turned to look at me.

"My post is wherever you are," I said, stepping to her side.

I took her little hand, all warm and moist from the bullet-moulding, and I kissed the palm and the delicate, rounded wrist.

"There is a long war before us ere we find a home," I said.

"I know," she said, faintly.

"A long, long war; separation, sadness. Will you wed me before I go to join with Cresap's men?"