“Yes, and I felt I was getting the worst of it, though it seems that at the moment all the greatest powers in our Great American Army be on my side. Steady, Timothy! This will take but a minute. There! As I was saying, the whole camp has been in an uproar the past month, as to whether or not we should fortify Bunker Hill and make a stand against the British there. Some say we must fight them, and it better be soon rather than late. Old Put and Prescott go with that way of thinking.”
“Fortify Bunker Hill?” whispered Timothy manfully through his pain. “Why, that be close by!”
“Very close,” said the doctor. “General Ward and I have talked much about it. I have been housed at his Cambridge headquarters of late, where I can easily visit the Provincial Congress in Watertown. He and I think our men are not yet ready to make a stand. We are against such an incautious display of valor. Later, perhaps, but not until we have a better equipped and conditioned army.”
“I wisht,” muttered Timothy, “I had displayed less incautious valor with that brandy keg. In God’s mercy, I do, sir.”
Dr. Warren tightened the last bandage and got to his feet.
“Take him up carefully, lads,” he said, “and carry him above stairs. The little golden-head will show you where.”
Kitty thought fleetingly that even the great doctor had been enough like common men so that he had an eye for the beauty of Sally Rose. She had hardly noticed what he said about a battle on Bunker Hill.
But she thought about it later when she was standing at the tavern door in the hot dusk, looking past the roofs of Charlestown at the green countryside rising behind it. Gran was at home now, alternately tending Timothy and scolding Sally Rose. The doctor and the soldiers had long since gone, and the exchange of prisoners was probably complete.
Bunker Hill rose smooth and round and green. Breed’s Hill, not so tall, was nearer the point, and the third hill, away to the southeast, she could not see. The hills were criss-crossed with rail fences and stone walls, divided into orchards, gardens, and pasture land. Daisies and buttercups bloomed all white and gold in the hayfields. The locust trees rose tall, and the elm trees taller. Hard green fruit clung to the apple boughs, and tassels were coming on the stalks of Indian corn. Gulls cried from the harbor, and a bat swooped down from the eaves above her head, and darted off, winging its way from side to side of the crooked street.
Away to the eastward a low-lying cloud bank merged with the dim sea. There were clouds in the west, too, and thickening round the hills and steeples of Boston. But over Bunker Hill the sky was clear, lighted with one pale star. She took it to be a good omen—that there would be no battle there.