He was still looking when, to his surprise, another shot rang out, right next to him. Jumping, Johnston’s head spun to his left where he laid eyes on his companion, now enshrouded in a cloud of gray smoke. With an ease borne of long hours of drill and training, the man was bringing his musket down to reload. “DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!” Martin shouted as he reached behind with his right hand to fish a fresh round from his cartridge box. Then he looked over at Johnston. “Well,” he roared. “You’re always griping that we’re never allowed to take our measure against those bastards. Here’s your chance, man. Take it now or never utter another word of complaint to me.”

Johnston was still staring dumbly at Martin, considering what to do, when several more men in the ranks around him brought their pieces to bear on the rebels and fired. Though he hadn’t heard an order to fire, Johnston didn’t much care. Finally, he realized, he could do what he had wished he could do for so long. He could lash out and strike a telling blow against a foe that had, for so long, taunted them with impunity.

With the steady, measured steps that were second nature to him, Johnston brought his musket up to his shoulder, pointed it at the group of men who were, under the King’s law, as much an Englishmen as Johnston himself. But this little legal nicety didn’t matter to Johnston. Not in the least. With great deliberateness, he locked the hammer of his musket back into the full cocked position, steadied his piece, and pulled the trigger.

The crack of musket fire was deafening. Even on the ground, where Ned lay, the sound was the most awful noise he had ever heard. For the longest time he stayed there, wondering where he had been hit. It took young Ned a moment before he realized that he hadn’t been shot. Only then did he slowly begin to look about. To his front, the English line was half masked by billowing clouds of smoke their own firing was creating. Off to his right he watched as several of his fellow militia gamely tried to return the English fire. Feeling embarrassed by the fact that he was cowering instead of standing tall and bold, Ned turned his eyes away to the left.

This, however, brought him no relief, for his eyes were met by the sight of Robert Munroe, lying but a few feet from him. Munroe, with blood pouring freely from an ugly wound, was motionless. Closing his eyes, Ned began to whisper the Lord’s prayer.

Only the sound of feet scampering all about him by caused Ned to open his eyes. This revealed a most horrible sight. Individually and in pairs, English soldiers, with their bayonets leveled, were rushing forward. To Ned it seemed as if their own officers were trying hard to restrain them, to hold them back. Whether this was so didn’t matter to Ned Smith. In a single swift motion he was up, on his feet, and fleeing. What consequences the events he had just witnessed would have on him, on his family, and on his tiny community of Lexington did not matter at that moment. All that was important to Ned was that he put as much distance between himself and the vicious regulars who had brought death to the community in which he had been born.