“I don’t know. I didn’t hear.”
They were starting down the hill now, toward a cluster of roofs and gables with a tall spire in the midst of it, toward a shadowy line of wharves along the shore.
“I know sure enough about Johnny. I was there in the tavern when we chose him by a show of hands. They say some voted twice. I know I did. He was my neighbor up in Derryfield. I worked in his sawmill some and went hunting with his son Caleb. Caleb’s a right smart lad.”
It was harder going down Breed’s Hill than going up, for the western side was as steep as the eastern, and they had to hold back. There were stone walls to climb, and the dew-wet grass was hard to wade through, but Tom scarcely noticed that. Funny, he thought, as he heard his tongue run on, how he never had very much to say, unless it was about John Stark.
“Oh, Johnny’s the man for you,” he was saying. “Once when the Indians captured him and put him to hoeing their fields, he cut down the corn and left the weeds standing. When they made him run the gantlet, he whacked them as he went through, instead of t’other way. Kept singing while he ran that he’d kiss all their women. He never liked the British either, after he fought beside them at Quebec. ’Fore I was high as a rail fence, I heard him say we’d have to fight against them sometime. There was folks who laughed at him, but I guess they ain’t laughing now.”
“Here we be,” said Johnny as they came to the beginning of a street that led past the darkened windows of Charlestown. “I got no idea where the place is. Likely there’ll be a horse and a dog on its sign.”
But Charlestown was no very extensive metropolis, and after a little wandering through its dim lanes and uncobbled streets, they found the tavern they were seeking. The door stood open to let in the night breeze, and the two boys stepped uncertainly through.
A few candles burning in iron holders lit the dim taproom. Clean mugs and glasses stood neatly on shelves behind the bar, and the long brown braid of tobacco leaves hanging near it swayed gently in the draft from the open door. Tom thought that the braid looked like a cow’s tail. He made up a face when he remembered the pipeful of tobacco he’d had to smoke the night they burned the Diana. Here was one customer of Ma’am Greenleaf’s who wouldn’t ask her to cut off a few inches for him, that was sure. But where was Ma’am Greenleaf? Or Kitty? Or the other girl? The room was empty, so far as he could see.
Johnny, too, was looking around him. “Don’t see where they could have gone to,” he muttered, “and left the door open and the lights burning.”
Just at that moment there came an anguished wail from somewhere overhead.