by Ron Carter
They walked to the door and followed her inside, where Rebecca and Ruth stood quietly, near the hearth. A fire burned in the fireplace with a large kettle hung on an arm, heating.
Rachel hung her shawl, then turned to Caleb.
He gestured as he spoke. “This is my brother, Matthew, and our friend Billy Weems.”
Rachel shook their hands in turn. “You’re welcome here.” She turned to Caleb. “Do these men work on that committee? The one that writes about the trouble?”
“Yes. They’re the ones who started the paper.”
“Is that what brings you here?”
“Yes. That and a letter from George Washington.”
Rachel’s eyes opened wide. “He wrote to you?”
“He did.”
“You wanted to talk to me about what’s happened?”
“Yes.”
“Nathan and the boys have been gone since January.”
“Are they in town? Springfield?”
“We don’t know for sure. They was there in January when the battle was fought at the armory, and then we heard they was at Petersham early this month when the militia come during a snowstorm and there was another fight. We haven’t heard where they went after Petersham.”
“They’ve been gone since January?”
“January twenty-fifth, at the fight at the armory in town. Four farmers was killed, twenty hurt. Nathan came home only long enough to get food and some gunpowder, and he and the twins left, and then we heard about Petersham. Haven’t seen ’em since.”
Caleb could not miss the fear in her eyes, nor the concern in the two girls.
“Has anyone said where they might be now?”
“Some of ’em went to hide in Vermont and New York, but last Sunday the reverend said he’d heard they was coming back. Things was happening over in Sheffield. West of here. Might be they’re gathering there.”
Caleb turned to Matthew. “Shall we try Sheffield?”
Three minutes later Caleb waved his good-bye to Rachel, standing in the dooryard with her arms folded against the cold, then straightened in the wagon box as it rumbled down the lane, and Billy swung the horses west onto the frozen ruts they called a road. On the second day all three men sat silently as the wagon moved on, watching the frigid skyline for large smudges of gray or black smoke, the sure sign of the presence of an army of four thousand camped in the dead of a Massachusetts winter. On the third day Caleb’s arm shot up, and he exclaimed, “There! North and west! Smoke!”
The sun had passed its zenith when they rolled through the tiny village of Sheffield. Half an hour later they were passing through the southeastern fringes of a sprawling camp of Massachusetts militia, with soldiers reaching for their muskets to line the road and stand hard-eyed as Matthew held the horses on a steady course toward a huge fire that burned near the command tent. They were slowing near the fire when Billy murmured, “Keep an eye out for Eli. He’s likely here somewhere.”
Two pickets brought their bayoneted muskets to bear while the three men climbed from the wagon and stood facing them. Their leader, a surly man with sergeant stripes and a huge beard, challenged them.
“Who are you, comin’ in a wagon like farmers?”
“Matthew Dunson, of Boston. This is my brother, Caleb, and our friend Billy Weems. We represent the Committee of Correspondence in Boston. It has lately become known as the Committee of Merchants. We need to talk with your commander.”
The picket scowled. “Committee? No committee’s got nothin’ to do with us. You better keep movin’ before you’re mistook for the farmers we been shootin’ at, and git yourselves kilt!”
“Is General Lincoln here? Benjamin Lincoln?”
“In the tent. But you aren’t goin’ to see him.”
“Tell him we’re here because George Washington wrote to us. Tell him.”
The picket’s face fell. “Washington? Wrote a letter to you?”
“Tell General Lincoln.”
Within minutes the three men were standing inside the command tent, across a small, badly scarred desk from a bull-necked, surly, gravel-voiced, suspicious General Lincoln. A small, iron stove glowed a dull orange in one corner.
“George Washington sent you?” Lincoln raised doubtful eyes.
Matthew reached inside his coat and drew out the letter. “This is his letter.”
Lincoln laid it out on the desk, and his lips moved as he read it silently, then looked up. “What is it you want?”
“The General wants an end to the bloodshed. We intend doing what we can,” Matthew said.
Lincoln grunted, “Huh! I’ve got my orders. We stop when they surrender.”
“There’s no way to sit down under a white flag? Avoid all this?”
“Not after they attacked the armory and foundry at Springfield.”
“Those are federal properties. Not Massachusetts. Why not let the federal government handle their own affairs?”
“Because they can’t. No money, no way to raise it. Massachusetts isn’t going to stand by and let that rabble close down the courts. You should know that.”
“I do know that. Washington and Madison and others are holding a conference in May to take care of it. If the farmers will agree to stop what they’re doing until that conference is finished, will you?”
“That’s not for me to say. I have my orders, and I’ll carry them out until I get new ones.”
“You’re a field commander. It’s in your power to order your men to stand down if in your opinion that will best achieve your orders.”
“You a military man?”
“Six years on the sea. I was with de Grasse at Chesapeake Bay. Billy Weems here, fought from Concord to the storming of Redoubt Number Ten at Yorktown as a lieutenant. Caleb, my brother here, helped Morgan take down Tarleton at Cowpens. Yes, we’re military men. And I’m telling you, sir, you will better discharge your responsibilities if you will get this stopped until Congress tries to take care of it at their conference in May.”
Lincoln leaned back in his chair. “Tell that to the rabble out west of us. In the meantime, I know my orders. Is there anything else?”
Matthew picked the letter from the table. “Not at the moment. Thank you for your time.”
Matthew turned on his heel and walked out of the tent with Caleb and Billy following. He was folding the letter as they walked back toward the wagon, all three of them with eyes moving constantly, probing, memorizing the camp: the mess halls, the regimental flags hanging limp in the dead, freezing air; the commissaries; the half-buried powder magazines; the cannon standing muzzle to muzzle in two long lines; the shaggy horses with steam rising from their nostrils and hides; the men huddled about fires or cutting wood or dicing beef and potatoes into steaming pots hung on tripods. The familiar feel and smell and sounds of a winter military camp came back as though it had not been six years since Yorktown.
Matthew mounted the driver’s seat while Billy and Caleb settled on their knees in the wagon box, eyes moving, watching everything.
Again Billy said, “Watch for Eli.”
Matthew gigged the horses and held them to a slow walk, working them carefully to the west edge of the camp, then north until they passed the last of the tents and pickets. He swung the horses back to the east, then south, down the eastern edge of the camp to the place where six hundred horses were being held inside a rope corral that marked the south end of the camp. They were one hundred yards beyond the last pickets when Matthew drew rein and the steaming Percherons stopped. He turned to Caleb and Billy.
“We’ve got to make a plan.”
Caleb spoke. “For which side?”
Matthew answered, “Neither side. A plan to stop this thing if we can.”
Billy hooked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the camp. “We know where the army is, but we don’t know where the farmers are or how many they have, or how they’re armed, or how willing they’ll be to lay down their arms. Until we do, any plan will just be a guess.”
/> Matthew straightened in the driver’s seat. “Then we go find Shays’s people. Lincoln said they’re somewhere west of here.”
The sun was sitting on the western treetops before they saw the smoke staining the blue above. Minutes later they saw the first pickets. Watching, making estimates of numbers and munitions, they passed tents with sullen, suspicious men watching, on to the center of the camp and stopped. A man of medium height, large nose, and thin beard, dressed in shabby clothing and an old coat came from a tent to meet them. At his side was a second bearded man, shorter, thicker in the shoulders.
The taller man spoke. “Who are you?”
The three climbed down from the wagon, and Matthew faced him. “Matthew Dunson from Boston. I’m here for the Committee of Merchants, which used to be called the Committee of Correspondence. These men are with me. May I ask, sir, who are you?”
“Daniel Shays.” He glanced at the shorter man. “This is Andrew Bouchard. Did Lincoln send you here?”
“No. We were there. We left his camp over an hour ago.”
“What do you want?”
“The same thing we asked of General Lincoln. To find any way we can to stop all this. Congress has arranged a conference in May to try to work out a peaceful plan. Is there any way to get you and your men to wait? Give Congress a chance?”
Shays shook his head. “They’ve had six years. They’ve talked it to death. We’ve got over four thousand men here that are through talking.”
“You’ve already had dead and wounded, and there will be more. May is just ninety days away. Are more dead worth ninety days?”
Caleb and Billy were watching Shay’s eyes, his expressions, as he spoke.
“Can you promise Congress will do what’s right?”
“No, I can’t. But I can promise there are powerful men who will do everything they can.”
“Who?”
“Washington. Madison. Franklin. Hamilton. Morris. Mason. Others.”
“Where they been this past six years?”
“Working at it.”
The man shook his head and smiled. “They didn’t do very well. We already had two battles, and we’re getting ready for one more.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Wait. Give Congress one last chance.”
“They’ve had one last chance.”
“Is there anything to stop this?”
“Tell Lincoln to take his men home. Tell the courts to stop taking away our land. Tell the legislatures to make fair laws. That’ll stop it.”
“That takes time.”
“Or muskets. Go on back to Boston. No need you getting hurt.” Shays and Bouchard turned and walked to the tent and disappeared, without looking back.
With the sun gone and dusk settling over the frozen camp, Matthew took the driver’s seat while Billy and Caleb climbed back into the wagon bed. Matthew gigged the horses and walked them past campfires and tents, angling north and east to pass through the rest of the camp. He was fifty yards past the north edge when a shadowy figure in a wolf-skin coat with a parka, and wearing beaver-skin moccasins that reached to his knees broke trotting from the woods with a Pennsylvania rifle in one hand, grasped the side of the moving wagon with the other, and swung up.
“Nice to see you all again.”
Billy gaped. “Eli! How—”
“Saw you pass through camp.”
Matthew turned in the wagon seat while Caleb recovered enough to exclaim, “Nice to see you, too.”
Billy asked, “You were in this camp?”
“Both camps. What brings you here?”
Matthew hauled back on the reins and stopped the wagon, then handed Eli the letter from Washington. Eli held it close to make out the words in the fading light before he handed it back and spoke.
“You been to the militia camp?”
“This afternoon. General Lincoln is stubborn.”
“So are these men.”
Billy leaned forward. “You’ve scouted both camps?”
“Yes.”
“How do you see it?”
Eli wasted no words. “Lincoln is spoiling for another fight and so are Shays’s men. From the camp talk I’ve heard, it’s likely to be tomorrow morning. The Massachusetts militia have about four thousand men and about eighty cannon and horses to move them. Their cannon are just south of the middle of their camp. Their powder magazines are off to the west. Most of their horses—maybe six hundred head—are in a pen at the south end of camp. If their attack is for tomorrow morning, they’ll start hooking the horses to the guns in the night and likely start loading the cannon with grapeshot. They’ll have their men fed and ready to march before dawn and be moving before the sun rises.”
He pointed. “The people with Shays have just over four thousand men here, and others not far north. But they have no cannon and only a few horses. Most of these farmers were in the Continental Army until six years ago, and they know about battles. But if the militia gets those cannon in place and use grapeshot, any battle could become a massacre.”
Billy gave him no pause. “Is there a way to stop this?”
Eli shook his head, and his eyes dropped. “Four of us, stop eight thousand stubborn men? No chance. The best we can hope for is to save some of them.”
Matthew said, “Do you have a plan?”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“Go on.”
“I think the militia intends surprising the camp here about dawn. So the battle will be right here. If we can get into the militia camp around three o’clock in the morning, near the cannon, we’ll know when they start to hook up the horses to the guns. If they do, we’ll know they’re getting ready. That’s when we blow two of their powder magazines and run the horses through camp and scatter them in the forest.”
He paused to order his thoughts. “When those powder magazines go, every farmer in this camp will know it. That’s when we move in to their leaders and tell them that we’ve probably slowed down the militia, but not for long. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll scatter—get out of camp so the militia will find no one here when they roll their cannon into place. Save their men to fight another day, and maybe, just maybe, that future day will be after May when the Congress meets in Philadelphia.”
He stopped and drew a breath. “That’s the best I can do.”
Matthew asked, “How do you plan to be in both camps within minutes?”
“We split. Two go to the militia camp, two to this one.”
“Which two to which camp?”
“Billy and I have done this two or three times before. We’ll work on blowing up the magazine. You and Caleb work on getting this camp to scatter.”
Matthew said, “Anyone have a better idea?”
Silence held for a time before Caleb said, “You sure I can’t help blow those powder magazines?”
Eli smiled. “I thought you’d like that.”
Matthew cut in. “I doubt we can do better. We better eat what we can and get wrapped in our blankets before we freeze.”
At midnight, beneath a quarter moon in the east and a blanket of stars overhead, Eli and Billy dropped from the wagon bed to the ground, their weapons in hand, and started east with patchy snow and frost crunching at each step. At half past two o’clock they stopped to study the fires and the pickets at the militia camp and picked their way through silently, to drop flat on the ground at the north end of the lined cannon, muzzles gleaming dully in the moonlight. At three o’clock they watched the dark forms moving in the moonlight and heard the sounds of horses being harnessed and hooked to the big guns. At twenty minutes past three o’clock, they stopped again, on the west side of the nearest powder magazine.
Eli reached inside his wolf-skin coat to draw out his hatchet, and Billy waited for the muffled sound of the flat side of the hatchet head striking a skull, then moved quickly to Eli’s side. Without a word they used the fallen picket’s musket to pry loose the lock on the powder magazine and within secon
ds were inside with the bungs knocked out of three huge powder barrels and a heavy trail of powder leading from the stacked barrels to the door. Eli kept watch while Billy struck flint to steel, blew on the spark in the charred linen, then dumped the glowing lump onto the powder trail. As it began to burn, they darted out the door, shouting, “Fire in the magazine! Fire in the magazine! Run! Run! Scatter!”
There was no shout that would terrify soldiers more than “Fire in the magazine!” and the militiamen instantly dropped everything and ran for their lives, scattering in every direction away from the doomed gunpowder. Billy and Eli waited until the nearest men were safely more than fifty yards away before they turned from the door and sprinted south. They had covered one hundred yards before the first explosion blew the sod covered roof off the front half of the magazine, and they were scrambling on hands and knees when a second, horrendous blast blew yellow flame and dirt and shattered timbers four hundred feet into the clear, freezing night air.
Within ten seconds the camp was bedlam. Stunned militiamen were running in every direction, shouting, pointing, with no reason or plan. In the midst of the tumult, Eli and Billy sprinted south, dodging through the falling pieces of shattered wood, knocking soldiers left and right. They reached the rope horse pen and Eli was swinging his tomahawk while Billy worked with his belt knife, cutting the two rope lines as they ran, circling the pen, shouting, waving their arms at the frantic, terrified horses, driving them north to stampede through the camp. Running blind, the crazed animals bolted over men and through tents, turning away from the great fire where the magazine had been.
Billy and Eli fell in behind the horses, running. Following the swath they cut straight through the middle of the camp, to dodge off to the right to the second powder magazine. The pickets had long since disappeared in the panic, and Eli used a huge rock to smash down the door. Within two minutes Billy dropped a ball of glowing tinder into the gunpowder they had scattered at the door, and once again the two ran from the doomed magazine. Ninety seconds later the blast leveled tents fifty yards away and knocked wagons and soldiers sideways. The tower of flame and burning debris lighted the world for two miles. Three minutes later Eli and Billy stopped and dropped to one knee twenty feet inside the tree line of the forest. For a long time they watched the frenzied militia running in every direction as their officers tried to shout them to a standstill and restore some sense of discipline and sanity.
