The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army: A Story of the Great Rebellion, - [story reading .TXT] 📗

poor Tom Somers.

When the pole fell, it made a tremendous racket, as all poles will when they fall just at the moment when they ought to stand up, and be decent and orderly. This catastrophe had the effect to quicken the steps of the young man. He reached the stairs, and had commenced a rapid descent, when the door of the squire’s room, which was on the lower floor, opened, and Tom found himself flanked in that direction.

“Who’s there? What’s that?” demanded the squire, in hurried, nervous tones.

Tom was so impolite as to make no reply to these pressing interrogatories, but quickly retreated in the direction from which he had come.

“Wife, light the lamp, quick,” said the squire, in the hall below.

Just then a door opened on the other side of the entry where Tom stood, and he caught a faint glimpse of a figure robed in white. Though it was the solemn hour of midnight, and Tom, I am sorry to say, had read the Three Spaniards, and Mysteries of Udolpho, he rejected the suggestion that the “sheeted form” might be a ghost.

“Who’s there?” called the squire again.

A romantic little scream from the figure in white assured Tom that Miss Susan was the enemy immediately on his front. Then he caught the glimmer of the light below, which Mrs. Pemberton had procured, and the race seemed to be up. Concealment was no longer practicable, and he seized upon the happy suggestion that the window opening upon the portico over the front door was available as a means of egress.

Springing to the window, he raised it with a prompt and vigorous hand, and before the squire could ascend the stairs, he was upon the roof of the portico. Throwing his boots down, he grasped the gutter, and “hung off.” He was now on terra firma, and all his trials appeared to have reached a happy termination; but here again he was doomed to disappointment.

“Bow, wow, wow-er, woo, row!” barked and growled the squire’s big bull dog, when he came to realize that some unusual occurrences were transpiring.

The animal was a savage brute, and was kept chained in the barn during the day, and turned loose when the squire made his last visit to the cattle about nine in the evening. Tom was thoroughly alarmed when this new enemy confronted him; but fortunately he had the self-possession to stand his ground, and not attempt to run away, otherwise the dog would probably have torn him in pieces.

“Come here, Tige! Poor fellow! Come here! He’s a good fellow! Don’t you know me, Tige?” said Tom, whose only hope seemed to be in conciliation and compromise.

If Tige knew him, he appeared to be very unwilling to acknowledge the acquaintance under the present suspicious circumstances, and at this unseemly hour. The brute barked, snarled, howled, and growled, and manifested as strong an indisposition to compromise as a South Carolina fire-eater. He placed himself in front of the hero of the night’s adventure, as resolute and as intractable as though he had known all the facts in the case, and intended to carry out to the letter the wishes of his master.

Tom slowly retreated towards the garden fence, the dog still following him up. He had tried coaxing and conciliation, and they had failed. As he cautiously backed from the house, his feet struck against a heavy cart stake, which seemed to suggest his next resort. He was well aware that any quick movement on his part would cause the dog to spring upon him. Placing his toe under the stake, he raised it with his foot, till he could reach it with his hand, keeping his gaze fixed upon the eyes of the dog, which glared like fiery orbs in the gloom of the hour.

Tige saw the stick, and he appeared to have a wholesome respect for it—a sentiment inspired by sundry beatings, intended to cure a love of mutton on the hoof, or beef on the shelf. The brute retreated a few paces; but at this moment Squire Pemberton appeared at the front door, with a lantern in his hand. He understood the “situation” at a glance.

“Take him, Tige! Stu’ boy!” shouted the squire.

The dog snarled an encouraging reply to this suggestion, and moved up towards the fugitive. Tom’s courage was equal to the occasion, and he levelled a blow at the head of the bull dog, which, if it had hit him fairly, must have smashed in his skull. As it was, the blow was a heavy one, and Tige retreated; but the shouts of the squire rallied him, and he rushed forward to the onslaught again.

Tom, as we have before had occasion to suggest, was a master of strategy, and instead of another stroke at the head of his savage foe, with only one chance in ten of hitting the mark he commenced swinging it vigorously to the right and left, as a mower does his scythe. His object was to hit the legs of the dog—a plan which was not entirely original with him, for he had seen it adopted with signal success by a fisherman at the Harbor. The consequence of this change of tactics was soon apparent, for Tige got a rap on the fore leg, which caused him to yelp with pain, and retire from the field. While the dog moved off in good order in one direction, Tom effected an equally admirable retreat in the other direction.

On reaching the road, he pulled on his boots, which he had picked up after the discomfiture of his canine antagonist. Squire Pemberton still stood at the door trying to bring Tige to a sense of his duty in the trying emergency; but the brute had more regard for his own shins than he had for the mandate of his master, and the victor was permitted to bear away his laurels without further opposition.

When he reached his father’s house, supposing the front door was locked, he went to the kitchen window, where he had heard the patriotic remarks of his mother. Tom told his story in substance as we have related it.

“Do you mean what you have said, mother?” inquired he, when he had finished his narrative.

Mrs. Somers bit her lip in silence for a moment.

“Certainly I do, Thomas,” said she, desperately.

It was half-past one when the boys retired, but it was another hour before Tom’s excited brain would permit him to sleep. His head was full of a big thought.

Chapter VIII. Signing the Papers.

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Thomas went to sleep at last, and, worn out by the fatigue and excitement of the day, he slept long and soundly. His mother did not call him till eight o’clock, and it was nine before he reached the store of his employer, where the recital of the adventure of the preceding night proved to be a sufficient excuse for his non-appearance at the usual hour.

In the course of the week Captain Benson had procured the necessary authority to raise a company for three years or for the war. When he exhibited his papers, he found twenty persons ready to put down their names. A recruiting office was opened at the store, and every day added to the list of brave and self-denying men who were ready to go forward and fight the battles of liberty and union. The excitement in Pinchbrook was fanned by the news which each day brought of the zeal and madness of the traitors.

Thomas had made up his mind, even before his mother had been surprised into giving her consent, that he should go to the war. At the first opportunity, therefore, he wrote his name upon the paper, very much to the astonishment of Captain Benson and his employer.

“How old are you, Tom?” asked the captain.

“I’m in my seventeenth year,” replied the soldier boy.

“You are not old enough.”

“I’m three months older than Sam Thompson; and you didn’t even ask him how old he was.”

“He is larger and heavier than you are!”

“I can’t help that. I’m older than he is, and I think I can do as much in the way of fighting as he can.”

“I don’t doubt that,” added the captain, laughing. “Your affair with Squire Pemberton shows that you have pluck enough for anything. I should be very glad to have you go; but what does your father say?”

“He hasn’t said anything. He isn’t at home. He went away before Sumter was fired upon by the rebels.”

“True—I remember. What does your mother say?”

“O, she is willing.”

“Are you sure, Tom?”

“Of course, I am. Suppose you write something by which she can give her consent, and she will sign it.”

Captain Benson drew up the document, and when Tom went home to dinner, he presented it to his mother for her signature.

“I hope you won’t back out, mother,” said he, as she put on her spectacles, and proceeded to ascertain the contents of the document.

“Back out of what, Thomas?”

“I’ve signed the muster roll, and I belong to Captain Benson’s company now.”

“You!” exclaimed Mrs. Somers, lowering the paper, and gazing earnestly into the face of the young man, to discover whether he was in earnest.

“Yes, mother; you said you were willing, and I have signed the papers; but Captain Benson wants your consent in writing, so that there shall be no mistake about it.”

The mother read the paper in silence and sadness, for the thought of having her noble boy exposed to the perils of the camp and the march, the skirmish and the battle, was terrible, and nothing but the most exalted patriotism could induce a mother to give a son to his country.

“I don’t want to sign this paper, Thomas,” said she, when she had finished reading it.

“Have you forgot what you said the other night, mother?”

“No, I haven’t forgot it, and I feel now just as I did then. If there is any real need of your going, I am willing you should go.”

“Need? Of course there is need of soldiers. The President wasn’t joking when he called for seventy-five thousand men.”

“But there are enough to go without you.”

“That’s just what everybody might say, and then there wouldn’t be anybody to go.”

“But you are young, and not very strong.”

“I’m old enough, and strong enough. When I can get a day to myself, I don’t think it’s any great hardship to carry father’s heavy fowling-piece from sunrise to sunset; and I guess I can stand it to carry a musket as long as any of them.”

“You are only a boy.”

“I shall be a man soon enough.”

“When you have gone, John will want to go too.”

“No, mother, I don’t want to go into the army,” said John, with a sly wink at his brother. “I shall never be a soldier if I can help it.”

“What am I going to do, if you all go off and leave me?” added Mrs. Somers, trying hard to keep down a tear which was struggling for birth in her fountain of sorrows.

“I don’t think you will want for anything, mother. I’m sure I wouldn’t leave you, if I thought you would. I don’t get but two dollars and a half a week in the store, and I shall have eleven dollars a month in the army, and it won’t cost me any thing for board or clothes. I will send every dollar I get home to you.”

“You are a good boy, Thomas,” replied Mrs. Somers, unable any longer to restrain the tear.

“I know you and John both will do every thing you can for me. If your father was only at home, I should feel different about it.”

“He would believe in my fighting for my country, if he were here.”

“I know he would,” said Mrs. Somers, as she took the pen which Thomas handed her, and seated herself at the table. “If you are determined to go, I suppose you will go, whether I am willing or not.”

“No, mother, I will not,” added Thomas, decidedly. “I shouldn’t have signed the muster roll if you hadn’t said you were willing. And if you say now that you won’t consent, I will take my name off the paper.”

“But you want to go—don’t you?”

“I do; there’s no mistake about that: but I won’t go if you are not willing.”

Mrs. Somers wrote her name upon the paper. It was a slow and difficult operation to her, and during the time she was thus occupied, the rest of the family watched her in silent anxiety. Perhaps, if she had not committed herself on the eventful night when she fully believed that Thomas had run away and joined the army, she might have offered more and stronger objections than she now urged. But there was a vein of patriotism in her nature, which she had inherited from her father, who had fought at Bunker Hill, Brandywine, and Germantown, and which had been exemplified in the life of her brother; and this, more than any other consideration, induced her to sign the