Within minutes, he was at the British guardhouse on Boston Neck, which was on high alert. According to some accounts, Dawes eluded the guards by slipping through with some British soldiers or attaching himself to another party. Other accounts say he pretended to be a bumbling drunken farmer. The simplest explanation is that he was already friendly with the sentries, who let him pass. However Dawes did it, he made it in the nick of time. Shortly after he passed through the guardhouse, the British halted all travel out of Boston.

Dawes sped west and then north through Roxbury, Brookline, Brighton, Cambridge and Menotomy. Unlike Revere, who awoke town leaders and militia commanders along the way to share his news, Dawes apparently let them sleep, either because he wassingularly focused on getting to Lexington as quickly as possible or because he wasn’t as well-connected with the patriots in the countryside.

Dawes arrived at his destination, Lexington’s Hancock-Clarke House, at 12:30 a.m., about half an hour after Revere, who had traveled a shorter distance on a faster horse. Thirty minutes later, the dynamic duo mounted their weary steeds again to warn the residents of Concord, and Dr. Samuel Prescott soon joined them.

Before they could reach Concord, however, the three riders encountered a British patrol around 1:30 a.m. Revere was captured. Prescott and his horse hurtled over a stone wall and managed to make it to Concord. According to family lore, the quick-witted Dawes, knowing his horse was too tired to outrun the two British officers tailing him, cleverly