Father served with the Massachusetts Artillery during the Revolution, then he went back to his farm in Pelham, Massachusetts—”

“Pelham? That’s the town where Daniel Shays came from, isn’t it?”

“Shays of Shays’s Rebellion. And the Pikes were right in the middle of it….”

THREE
October 1786

WILL PIKE WATCHED THE hawks for twenty miles, until he approached the place where the land dropped away and there seemed a peculiar brightness radiating upward. The power of the Connecticut River was that considerable. Its valley cut a wide furrow through the landscape, and it waters reflected the sunlight, so that the traveler knew, long before he could see the river, that it was there.

Springfield was there, too. Washington himself had chosen it as the safest yet most accessible New

England site for an arms depot. A windowless stone warehouse had been built on a rise near the Post Road and stocked with muskets, flints, bullets, and powder. It was surrounded, on what was now called Armory Hill, by storehouses and barracks.

Will positioned himself opposite the entrance, noted the things that Shays had asked him to observe, and waited less than an hour before he saw Henry Knox.

The Secretary of War was arriving on foot, in company with several men of the town, no doubt after a dinner at some local tavern. It was easy to pick him out. He stood six foot three and well fit the description Will’s father had drawn: “Imagine two men rolled together and stuffed into a waistcoat, with one man’s huge head comin’ out the top and the other man’s big feet stickin’ out the bottom and the bulk of them both fillin’ out the breeches.”

Will had planned to follow Knox to his lodgings and beg an audience that night. But he might not get a better chance than now. So this polite young man, who seldom spoke unless spoken to, cleared his throat and cried out, “General Knox! A word, sir!”

Knox and the others stopped and looked across the road.

“Who is it?” said one of the gentlemen.

“I’m the son of George North Pike, a captain in the Massachusetts Artillery.” Will strode toward them. “You may remember him, General.”

“Pike?” said Knox.

“A debtor,” said one of the others, whom Will recognized by his height and spider-thin body as Nathan Liggett, the very creditor who had lodged the complaint against Will’s father.

“A brave soldier, sir,” said Will. “A man hard-used by the state and by certain merchants, too.”

“Sir,” said Liggett to Knox, “this boy can offer you nothing.”

Will kept his eyes on Knox. “I seek a favor, sir, for a veteran, sir.” Will knew that he was inserting a few too many “sirs,” but he was nervous.

Knox gestured to Liggett and the others. His coarse features and high-crowned tricorne made him seem even more enormous than he was. “These gentlemen have priority on my time, young man—”

“Thank you, sir,” said Liggett, as smug as a priest. “That’s as it should be.”

Knox cocked an eyebrow at Liggett, then went on, “But I’ll never turn away the son of one of my captains.”

Without so much as a glance at Liggett, which was a smugness of its own, Will followed Knox into the barracks office. Papers covered the table, and a big-seated wing chair, suitable for a man as big-seated as Knox, had been pulled over from the hearth.

Knox dropped into the chair with a great huff, dropped his hat on the table, and gestured Will to the other side.

As he sat, Will’s eyes scanned the papers.

And Knox noticed the boy’s interest. “A report to General Washington. My impressions of the crisis here in central Massachusetts.”

Will closed his mouth, realizing he was slack-jawed before a letter bound for the great Washington.

“What would you have me say to the general?” asked Knox.

“I think that … er … I would say that—” Will had rehearsed a speech in behalf of his father. He had not expected to offer opinions for George Washington.

So Knox read from the letter: “ ‘It is indeed fact that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotions, but that they are the real cause is as far from the truth as light from darkness. The insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes—’ “

“That’s not true!” blurted Will.

Knox stopped. “Oh?”

Will swallowed his awe of Knox and his surprise at own outburst. “My father paid his taxes, and he had nothing left to pay his debts to men like Nathan Liggett, because Liggett and his ilk won’t take paper money.”

“Paper money loses value too quickly,” said Knox.

“Then something should be done, sir.”

“What would you suggest?”

Will grew bolder. “I would not allow a man like my father to be imprisoned.”

“I remember your father. A good officer. But there are laws—”

“There are God-made laws, sir, and there are manmade laws. We cannot change God’s laws, but a wise man should know enough to change an unwise law.”

Knox ruminated a moment, as if he liked the young man’s answer and perhaps his spirit, too. “Would you agree also that the creed of the rebels—”

“Regulators, sir. They call themselves Regulators.”

“Regulators, then … would you agree that their creed is”—Knox read from his letter—” ‘that the property of the United States has been protected from confiscation of Britain by the joint executions of all, and he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice and ought to be swept off the face of the earth’?”

Will swallowed.