fist on his weapon, and he saw Amos and a few other men nodding. They could do that much without feeling like cowards.
If the British gave them the chance to do it. The skirmish line came at them steady, eager to engage and expecting to win any contest of arms. They were less than a quarter mile distant when Barrett signaled to the drummer and the colonials began their slow, deliberate retreat. The militia drummers matched the rhythm of the British drummers, beat for beat, with the fifers playing similar tunes. It would have felt like one of the parades Proctor had seen in Boston, mixing regular army with the colonial militia, were it not for the deadly circumstances earlier that morning.
They marched into Concord with the British holding firm a quarter mile behind them. The rest of the militia companies were lined up in formation on the high hill across the road from the meeting house. The liberty pole stood behind them, a thin reed stark against the pale sky, next to a pole flying the town flag. The minutemen hurried up the hill to join the other companies.
The Redcoats still outnumbered the militia two to one.They slowed down as they entered the town, but still they swept down the road with the practiced ease of a scythe at reaping.
Along the hilltop, townswomen had been carrying food to the men. Proctor snatched a warm piece of buttered bread from a pale, determined girl he'd never met. She glanced down at the Redcoats and hurried away with her basket before he could thank her. Arthur started after her, but Proctor put a hand on his shoulder and handed him the bread. While Arthur devoured that, Proctor reached in his pocket, crumbled off a piece of the cheese his mother had given him, and slipped it in his mouth, savoring the sharp taste. He hoped she wasn't too worried, though she must have heard the shots or the news by now. By the time he swallowed, the British forces were forming their own line. Behind Proctor, the Concord militia officers debated their course of action.
“What are we waiting for?” Arthur said. “Let's shoot them.”
Eleazar Brooks, a gray-haired veteran from Lincoln and another friend of Proctor's father, stood near them in the line. “Careful, now. It will not do for us to begin a war.”
“The war's already begun,” Proctor said. He told Brooks what happened to Munroe and Everett.
Brooks sucked his teeth. “That's unfortunate. Munroe was a good man. But it's not a war yet, just some scattered shooting. If it's going to get worse, we must make sure the regulars are the ones as start it.”
Could Proctor take comfort in that? That he hadn't started it, that it was up to the Redcoats? He wasn't comforted. Somehow he had to make things right.
Up and down the line, the older men were cautious and wanted to wait, while the young men were all for meeting the British and giving them a whipping. Captain Smith, of the Lincoln minutemen, ran toward them, mopping sweat from his forehead. “More militia are coming in,” he said.“We're going to retreat across the North Bridge to Punkatasset Hill, until our strength is equal to theirs.”
“Another retreat?” Arthur asked. “Why?”
“The hill's a good choice,” the veteran Brooks said. “It'll give us a clear view to see them coming. And it's a bigger field for us to make formation.”
“It doesn't matter if we have a bigger field, if they've got the bigger force,” Proctor said.
Then the drums and the fifes kicked up a tune, and Proctor retreated again through the town. Their double file stomped on the wooden planks as they ran across the North Bridge, drowning out the sound of the drums. They climbed Punkatasset Hill, a broad field that looked over the Concord River into the center of town.
The British force followed their retreat, occupying the abandoned bridge. Now they were blocking the way back to Emily's house, Proctor realized, and he still needed to go talk to her, to make things right somehow, so they could have the