“And it better be we!” Gerry felt his own features soften in a smile.
He put up his head in the sharp night air and heard the bugles sounding on the peaceful green crest of Bunker Hill. They were British bugles, and they reassured him. For the last hour or so, he had been sure he would never have the heart to go forth disguised and playing pranks about the countryside again. But now it seemed to him that perhaps he might.
Chapter Four
THE COURAGE TO GO AND THE FEET TO GET HIM THERE
“Not that way, child!” cried Granny warningly. “Lord o’ mercy, Sally Rose, take care!”
Sally Rose stood by the huge brick fireplace in the raftered kitchen and stared desperately about her. In her hands she held a hot iron kettle full of molten silver-gray lead. It was too heavy for her to hold any longer, and she saw no place to set it safely down. Kitty would have figured out ahead of time what she meant to do with it, but not Sally Rose.
“Let me help you,” cried Kitty, jumping up from her place at the heavy oak table where she had been preparing the bullet molds while Sally Rose heated the lead. She reached her cousin’s side a second too late. The kettle tilted dangerously and fell from Sally Rose’s loosened fingers, just missing the yellow flames beneath. It lay on its side at the edge of the wide hearth, its contents spilling out harmlessly in a gray film over the rosy old bricks, sinking into the cracks between them.
“I’m sorry, Gran,” said Sally Rose contritely.
Granny sniffed. “Sorrow butters no parsnips,” she retorted. “Well, it’s no use crying over spilt lead, I suppose. That’s one batch of bullets will do no harm to the British. But it’s a mercy you didn’t burn yourself or set the house afire.” She straightened her muslin cap and smoothed her plaid apron with thin, blue-veined hands.
Kitty let her glance rove out of the window, at the gooseberry bushes in the kitchen garden and the moist brown seedbeds where Timothy had been spading yesterday. His old hickory-handled spade still leaned against the garden wall. No telling when he would use it again. Timothy had taken his gun and gone to Cambridge, and it seemed like half the town had gone with him. Even boys not much older than herself, boys like Johnny Pettengall. She still didn’t know about Dick, but then, Dick didn’t have a gun, so he’d probably be down at the shipyard, just as he always was. She’d make some excuse to go by there, later in the day. She wondered about the strange lad from up the Merrimack. Maybe, since the war was in Massachusetts Colony, the New Hampshire men would think they had no call to go. Still, with his keen eyes and sharp jaw, he looked like he’d be wherever there was a fight going on. She heard Granny’s brisk voice calling her attention back to the kitchen.
“I suppose you’d better run down to the gunsmith’s, Kitty, and fetch me some more pig lead—all he can spare. Sally Rose, you and me’ll get the bake ovens going. Uncle Moses Chase came by here awhile back, and he says they’re gathering supplies to send by oxcart—enough to feed the lads for a few days: hams, flour, meal, salt fish and cooked victuals; lint and medicines, too, in case—who told you to take your apron off, Sally Rose?”