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?"