January 25th, 1787
1:54 a.m.
“Patrol?” the youth scoffed to his cohort, glancing around at his sparse surroundings. The moon, not yet in its first quarter, would scarcely have been sufficient to illuminate the scene if not for the mantle of crisp snow that covered the countryside, four feet deep in places. Even without the obscuring mask of white, turned a pale blue under the moonlight, there wasn’t much to survey. Wilbraham was a town of barely over one thousand souls, sparsely dotting the hills of western Massachusetts roughly eighty miles inland from Boston. Punctuating the dim panorama, dotting the thoroughfare of Main Street that carved a ruddy, wet path through the pallid blanket, the occasional structure jutted intermittently. “What’s to patrol?”
“Call it a watch, then,” responded the second young man, positioned across the span of the street. The two men stood shivering, momentarily stagnant in their rounds to facilitate there conversation. Each had been following along a corrugation through the snow, imprinted along either side of the avenue throughout the preceding weeks by the town’s inhabitants. The snow had lingered since the beginning of the year. The occasional tepid day had melted the topmost layers only for them to refreeze as the mercury dropped, forming a rigid crust. Hardly outfitted for such a setting, the sentries made do with whatever arms and equipment they could muster from home. Each had worn leather boots and mismatched woolen pants and shirt. The younger one was fortunate enough to have a shabby waistcoat and the other had a musket. Beyond these meager accessories, all they shared were words and misery.
“What’s the point though?” continued the first, perhaps seventeen years of age. Pulling the collar of his waistcoat up around his neck and face, he commenced griping, each breath loosing a swirl of condensation about his face. “Who are we watching for? It’s not like we’re in enemy territory or something”
“But we are, Samuel” the second admonished. Himself no more than nineteen, he affected the demeanor of a man twice his age. “All of Massachusetts is enemy territory until the tyrant Bowdoin is dethroned.” Nursed on tales of the War for Independence, of appeals to a higher authority against the follies of mans’ councils, the youth spoke with an inflated sense of purpose, the impression that his struggle was that of all of mankind.
“Oh, come off it, Alden,” Samuel exhaled sharply. “He’s governor, not king. Look around you. Does it look like we’re in danger here? These people want us here.”
There was some truth to it. The Regulators had descended upon the town without incident, finding enough open hearths to accommodate their overwhelming numbers. For every man, woman, and child the village harbored on a given day, one would-be belligerent boarded among them this early morning, with a few hundred extra for good measure, all intent on showing the current authorities the strength of their numbers. That their occupation was thus far peaceful was owed to several factors.
First, as Samuel surmised, the Regulators’ cause—that of beleaguered farmers, veterans, and debtors, desperate for relief from ever increasing taxes—was in many ways their own. Massachusetts, like each of the newly independent United States, had a serious debt problem. Wars are expensive, as the nascent confederation had found out, and each of its constituent States now found itself facing the very same predicament that had flummoxed Parliament. For its part, Massachusetts had implemented measures shockingly similar to those of the mother country in order to balance the ledger, and similarly had found entire townships engaging in civil disobedience.
Second, the ranks of the Regulators were filled mostly from among the western counties, and if the townspeople didn’t exactly share the company’s ideology there was a good chance that they shared blood. Many of those quartered upon the town’s inhabitants were staying with relatives or friends.
Lastly, the threat posed to Wilbraham was nominal. There were in fact, despite Samuel’s dismissive assessment, those who shared neither cause nor kinship, who wanted no part in the confrontation to come. However, the imposition of this noncommissioned army’s arrival was insufficient to drive this sect to action. Grieved as they were by the fumbling government, they were weary of war and would not be the ones to start a fight; not when the occupation force was comprised of largely of youths like Alden and Samuel; not when barely half of them were armed with anything more than a pitchfork or a club;
Not when they’d be moving on in the morning.
“Be that as it may, Sam, we have our orders.” Alden reminded him stoically, clutching the pair’s sole rifle tightly as if to remind himself it was there.
“Are our orders to freeze to death out here for no good reason?”
“Our orders,” Alden scolded, “are to alert Captain Shays to any mischief.” Seeing the acerbic glare from his counterpart, he headed off another barrage of negativity. “So maybe we don’t need to keep a watch, but we’re gonna need the discipline this instills if we run into trouble tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’d have the discipline to follow orders if I were armed,” Sam said, greedily eyeing the Brown Bess in Alden’s grip.
Nearing the end of his patience, the elder took his turn at derision. “Who needs a musket when we’re among friendlies?”
“I don’t suspect they’ll be friendly at Springfield.”
Beneath the veneer of irreverence, Sam seemed to exude genuine distress that Alden, for all his hard-nosed stoicism, couldn’t fail to detect. “Look, nobody’s expecting a fight tomorrow. You said so yourself, the people around here are on our side. And when the men at the arsenal see how determined we are—how disciplined we’ve become as soldiers—they’ll know we’re not the reprobates Bowdoin and his cronies are making us out to be. They’ll probably welcome us with open arms.”
“And then I’ll get a musket?” Sam chuckled, trying to remain lighthearted.
“And some decent accommodations, and a proper coat for me!” Alden shivered, not above envy of his own.
A moment passed, wherein a breeze rustled the topmost layer of snow and sent shivers throughout the chilled forms of both young men. Glancing down, contemplating the worst, Sam muttered, “What if they don’t welcome us, though. What if…what if there is a fight”
Sam paused and continued to stare at his feet, expecting some astute words of reassurance. When none came forth, he lifted his gaze to where Alden had stood across the lane mere moments before. Seeing nothing, he squinted into the gloom.
Empty. The furrow in the snow across from his own was empty.
“Alden?”
Wading a few steps into the snow bank between the furrow and the street Sam looked closer. Moonlight glinted off of something metal poking out of the snow drift near where his friend had been standing.
“Alden?!” he repeated slightly louder, alarm creeping into his voice.
Another few labored steps and his eyes focused clearly on the source of the gleam. Alden’s musket lay partly buried in the snow, the metal barrel angled upward, resting at the bottom of a small trough it had carved as it landed, the butt resting upon the packed ice of the furrow. Following its length downward, Sam’s eyes came to rest on his compatriot laying face down in the frost, eyes closed; unconscious.
My God, Sam thought, quickly trudging the remaining distance, he’s slipped on the ice and broken his neck. He burst into the channel, displacing the snow and sending the musket sprawling onto the ice near Alden’s feet. Sliding to a kneeling position beside Alden, Sam determined that the fallen guard was breathing. “Thank God,” he muttered.
Sam’s thoughts raced for what felt like hours, trying to decide his next move. Should I roll him over so his face won’t freeze? Might moving him injure him further? Should I go for help?
Before more questions could bombard his young mind, a metallic thunk sounded behind him. It was a sound he had heard but a handful of times, but he knew it all too well, and given the circumstances it chilled him more than the frigid winter air.
It was the sound of metal sliding against the inside of a muzzle.
He spun on his heels, almost slipping on the slick surface. Instead of staring down the barrel of a firearm as he had expected he was greeted with a peculiar sight.
There in front of him, standing defiantly, starkly silhouetted against the muted hues of the frozen world around them, was a broad shouldered man. He was unarmed, but his strikingly muscular frame seemed poised in such a way that suggested to the young watchman that this man needed no weapon. The man’s arms were suspended offensively at his sides, like spring loaded pistons ready to release at a moments notice. Above tightly clenched, gloved fists, dull, rustic manacles encased his wrists, chains hanging a few inches down to a broken link on either side.
Billowing in the breeze behind him were the remnants of a tattered blue Continental greatcoat clasped by a brooch at the base of its upturned collar. Long since beyond any use as a jacket, the sleeves disappeared into the folds of ragged fabric draped over his shoulders. Atop this imposing figure sat a tri-cornered hat, with sharp angles lending the appearance of ramparts on a fortified wall, giving the cap a slight resemblance to a crown.
Perhaps most peculiarly, his countenance lay hidden beneath a faceless muslin mask that flowed in a smooth arc from his temples to a sharp point at his chin as if suspended just above the contours of man’s face.
Before Sam could react, the man was upon him, grabbing him by the collar and lifting him up off the ground. Pivoting to the right, he slammed the young man into the wall of a nearby building, sending a small avalanche down around them.
“Where is Shays?!” the assailant hissed.
Bewildered, Sam sputtered through the falling snow, struggling to form any words.
“Where is your Captain?!” Sam felt his feet leave the earth again as the stranger lifted him up, scraping the young man’s back against the wood planks of the wall.
All the anxiety about the following day’s plans that had been simmering suddenly boiled over with the added confusion and fear of Alden’s sudden neutralization and the arrival of the masked man, and Sam found himself blurting, “Warriner! He’s in the Warriner House!”
With that, the attacker let Sam fall. No sooner had he landed than his face was greeted by the man’s fist and elbow in rapid succession, sending him sprawling, unconscious, to the ice next to Alden.
The masked man turned to face his mark. The Warriner House lay three hundred yards to the south along Main Street, a conspicuous two-story structure he had surveyed during his hour long reconnaissance of the town.
This is it, he thought. Time to see if this was a good idea or not. These two were just kids. Shays and his lieutenants are soldiers. He took a few deep breaths to center himself, surveyed the street to verify there were no other patrols, stretched his hands a few times to regain their feeling, and began to slink off through the shadows in the tavern’s direction.
“Hold it right there!” came a shaky order from behind him.
I knew that was too easy, he cursed himself silently, rising to his full height in acknowledgment. He glanced over his shoulder to see Alden standing unsteadily, squinting through the stream of blood that trickled from a gash on his forehead, and sighting down the barrel of his musket.
Turning casually back to his objective, the masked man called out, “Trust me, son. You don’t want to do that.”
Looks like I’ll get to see how another of my plans turns out first. Either way, the jig is up. Time for plan B.
The element of surprise having evaporated, he strode confidently forward, contemplating his next move.
“I mean it!” Alden yelled after him again, sounding even less intimidating than before.
“Do what you have to do,” the man called, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”