When the coachman called for help to clear the wheels, Will grabbed a shovel and went to work, but it was after ten before they dug the coach out of a snowdrift and began to roll.

SOME EIGHTY MILES away, eleven hundred men under the command of Daniel Shays were tramping west on the Post Road toward Springfield. Their plan was for three columns of Regulators to attack the arsenal at the same time—from West Springfield on the west, from Chicopee on the north, and from Palmer on the east.

By three that afternoon, Shays’s column was drawn up before the arsenal. But the column in the west had not marched. The commander had changed the plan on his own, and his message to Shays had been intercepted, then brought to General William Shepard, who defended the arsenal.

AT THE SAME time, Will Pike was getting his first glimpse of the steeples of Boston. The snow was not as deep here, perhaps because the city was surrounded by water and reached by a causeway called the Neck.

As the coach approached the gates, Herr Gefahlz—who was still farting silently, or so Will was certain—explained that the water to the north was the Back Bay, to the south Dorchester Bay, and the snowy hills beyond were Dorchester Heights, where Henry Knox had entrenched the cannon that drove the British from Boston ten years before.

“My father commanded one of the artillery companies,” said Will.

And Herr Gefahlz brightened. “Ja? So? A man to make a son proud, eh?”

“Yes, sir. Very proud.”

WHILE WILL SPOKE of cannon in Boston, his brother faced them in Springfield.

North Pike and several of the other lieutenants stood with Shays, about two hundred yards from the arsenal, and studied the ranks of defenders drawn up on the snowy ground before it.

“This ain’t what my brother saw in October,” said North. “Two cannon, four hundred men armed with new muskets taken right from the stores. A tall order, Dan’l.”

“Yeah,” said Doc Hines. “And where are the other columns?”

“Don’t know,” said Shays. “But we’d best drive this team today, or they’ll never pull for us again.”

A rider was coming down from the arsenal. He reined up close to Shays and said, “I bring General Shepard’s ultimatum: If you put your troops in motion, they will be fired upon.”

The wind skittered across the road. It ruffled coat-tails and hat brims and two American flags, one fluttering over the arsenal, the other at the head of that cold column of farmers.

Then Daniel Shays pulled his sword from his hanger and shouted, as much for his own men as for those before the arsenal, “We are here in defense of the country you’ve come to destroy.”

“Aye!” cried North Pike. “And if we’re not in possession of new muskets by sundown, the people of New England will see a day such as they’ve never seen before.” Then he gave Shays a wink, as if to say that yes, they would brazen their way through.

Some of the troops cheered. But it was a halfhearted sound that caught in most throats, because none of these Regulators had yet marched against cannon. Big talk would not protect them from grapeshot.

Then the messenger leaned down and said to Shays: “You see the stakes in the ground on either side of the road? A hundred yards from the arsenal? They form the line of demarcation. Cross it, and General Shepard will give the order to fire.”

Shays laughed. He was normally a morose man, not much given to display. It had been shocking enough to see him swinging his sword about. But to hear him laugh … perhaps it was more brazening.

Then Shays turned to his lieutenants and said, “Your posts, men.”

WHILE NORTH WAS taking his place at the front of the Pelhamite column, Will Pike was walking through Boston with his flatulent new friend.

Herr Gefahlz explained that as a Hessian soldier he had been captured by the Massachusetts Artillery at Trenton. “They treat me better than my own sergeants. So I decide to stay in America and make clocks. And because your father command them, I treat you good now.”

The red bricks of the city seemed to glow in the setting sun. The world, Will Pike concluded, was brightening.

BACK IN SPRINGFIELD the light was fading, and North Pike, who had fought on battlefields and in forecastles and in Boston back alleys, was preparing to fight in the cold blue of a January afternoon.

At Shays’s command, North shouted, “Forward!”

Few of the men moved, except to shiver.

“Forward!” shouted Shays. “Forward march! March, Goddamn you!”

The other officers from the other towns took up the cry.

And four hundred men—the only ones who were armed—began to advance.

North tried to call out a cadence, as he had when he drilled these men on the Pelham town green. But they were farmers, and they were frightened. Their advance, so slow in starting, quickly became a stampede.

And General Shepard was true to his word.

As the first units crossed the line, his cannon flashed and blasted jets of smoke. The sound echoed off the advancing farmers, then bounced back and echoed off the walls of the arsenal. But the shots went high, a warning.

A few of the Regulators stopped, as if shocked by the noise. But many others pressed forward with even greater momentum, as if they would be safe once they closed with the cannon.

North cried for the Pelham men to keep order, to remember their training, but there was no stopping the column now.