Chapter 3 | Our Soldier Boy

It was quite six weeks after Dick had been found, and he was weak still, but that only troubled him by making him feel tired, and at such times there was always a ride ready for him on the top of a pack carried by a mule.

And there he was happy enough, for he was rapidly growing into being the pet of the regiment, and first one of the men brought him fruit, and some one thing and some another; but Mrs Corporal was always pretty close at hand to take care that he was not spoiled or made ill, and Corporal Joe said over and over again to his wife, that it was “ama-a-azin’.”

“What’s amazing, Joe?” she said one day. “What do you keep saying that for?”

“’Cause it is,” he said.

“Yes, but why, Joe?”

“’Cause ever since I found that there boy you’ve been as proud as a peacock with two tails.”

“And enough to make me,” said Mrs Corporal tartly. “There never was such a boy before. Look at him!” and she pointed to where the little fellow, in full uniform, was perched on a mule-pack, and the baggage guard with fixed bayonets marched close beside.

“Yes,” said Joe drily, as he screwed up his face; “I’ve been a-looking at him a deal. His coatee fits horrid.”

“That it don’t,” said Mrs Corporal; “and it was the best I could do out of such old stuff.”

“Well, it weer old,” said her husband; “but it’s all crinkles and creases, and that boy puzzles me.”

“Why? How?”

“’Cause you’d think after he’d seen his people killed and the house burnt about his ears he’d ha’ been frightened like; but he don’t seem to mind nothing about it, not a bit.”

“Ah, it is strange,” said Mrs Corporal; “but there couldn’t be a braver nor a better little chap.”

“That there couldn’t,” said the Corporal proudly; “but I think I’ve found out what’s the matter with him. That crack on the head made him an idjit.”

“For shame, Joe!” cried his wife. “He’s as clever and bright a little fellow as ever stepped.”

“So he is, missus; but he puzzles me. It’s ama-a-azin’.”

The boy puzzled Tom Jones the bugler boy too, who whenever he got a chance came alongside of the mule or baggage wagon in the rear, and let the little invalid earn his bugle on condition that he did not try to blow it, and Tom made this an excuse for solemnly asking the same questions over and over again.

“I say, who’s your father?”

“Corporal Joe Beane,” said the boy promptly; “I say, Tom, mayn’t I have a blow now?”

“What? No, of course not. You don’t want to send the men at the double up a hill like this.”

“Why not? I should like to run too, only I so soon get tired.”

“You shall have a blow some day. But I say, who’s your mother?”

“Mrs Corporal Joe Beane,” was the prompt reply, and the boy drummed the mule’s sides to make it go faster, but without effect.

“Well, where did you live before Joe Beane found you?”

“I don’t know,” said the boy, shaking his head, and Tom Jones stared hard with his mouth open before asking his next question.

“I say, how’s your head?”

“Quite well, thank you,” said the boy; “how’s yours?”

Tom scratched his as if he did not know.

“Look here,” he cried, after a pause, as a happy thought crossed his mind, and without pausing to state how his own head was, he fired off another question:—“I say, who did you live with before we found you?”

“I don’t know,” said the boy, looking at him wonderingly, and as if he felt amused by his companion’s questions. “You ask mother.”

“Here! Quick,” whispered Tom. “Give me my bugle.”

“Shan’t. I want it,” replied the boy coolly.

“But you must. Here’s the Colonel and half the officers reined up at the side to see us go by.”

He snatched the bugle away as he spoke and threw the cord over his shoulder, drawing himself up smartly, and keeping step with the guard.

Mrs Corporal Beane had caught sight of the group of officers they were approaching, and with her heart in her mouth as she called it, she hurried up to the side of the mule, catching up to it just as they came abreast of the Colonel, a quiet stern-looking officer whose hair was sprinkled with grey.

Nothing escaped his sharp eyes, and he pressed his horse’s side and rode close to the baggage mule.

“What boy’s that, my good woman?”

“Mine, sir,” said Mrs Beane huskily.

“Indeed? Is that the little fellow who was found in the burned village?”

“Yes, sir,” faltered the woman, as she gazed in the Colonel’s stern frowning countenance.

“Humph!” he ejaculated, and drew rein for the rear of the regiment to file past.

“And now my poor boy will be sent away, Joe,” said the agitated woman that night; but Joe said nothing, not even when he felt his wife get up and go to where the little fellow was sleeping soundly, and he heard her utter a curious sobbing sound before she came to lie down again.

But no orders were given next day for the boy to be sent to the rear, nor yet during the next week, during which the men were still hunting frogs, as they called it—frogs which took such big leaps that the toiling British soldiers could not come up to them.

“Oh, if they only would let us,” Joe used to say every night when he pulled off his boots to rest his feet. “It’s my one wish, for we must give ’em a drubbing, or we shall never have the face to go back to old England again.”

Joe had his wish sooner than he expected.

It was in a wild mountainous part of the beautiful country, so full of forest and gorge that there was plenty of opportunity for the French to hide their force on the mountain slopes of a lovely valley and let the English regiment get well past them before they attacked.

The result was a desperate fight which lasted a couple of hours before the 200th managed to extricate themselves with the loss of many killed and wounded, and in spite of every man fighting like a hero, they were beaten and had to suffer the miseries of a retreat as well as a defeat.

But the 200th did not fall back many miles before the major of the regiment halted the main body of the men on the slopes of a rocky mount which he determined to hold and to give the scattered and wounded a chance to return, so a stand was made. For there was no hiding the fact; the poor 200th had been badly beaten, as an English regiment might reasonably be when every man was surprised and called upon to fight six, mostly hidden from him by rocks and trees.

The enemy did not follow their advantage, so that the English had the whole of that night to rest and refresh, though there was not much of either, for upon the roll of the companies being called a hundred brave men did not answer; many were wounded; and, worst misfortune of all, the Colonel was among the missing, and had been seen last fighting like a hero as he tried with a small company of men to save the baggage and ammunition.

“And our poor boy, Joe,” sobbed Mrs Corporal that night, as she sat by the watch-fire, “trampled down and killed, just as I had begun to love him as much as if he had been my own.”

“Cheer up, old lass,” said Joe, wincing as he spoke, for a bullet had ploughed a nasty furrow in one arm; “we don’t know yet that he isn’t all right. Prisoner, perhaps. Let’s wait till morning, and see.”

Mrs Corporal sobbed, and of course waited, with the men under arms all night and expecting an attack.

But the night passed away without any alarm, and soon after sunrise in the beautiful chestnut wood, about fifty of the missing crawled back into camp, but there was no news of the Colonel, none of Dick, and poor Mrs Corporal Beane had another terrible trouble on her mind as she nursed and held water to her husband’s feverish lips, for in the terrible fight at the surprise brave stout-hearted Joe Beane had been shot close to the Colonel’s side, and he remembered seeing that officer wave his sword, and hearing him cry, “Forward, my lads; this way,” but he could recollect no more.