Frontier and pioneer life -- Québec (Province) -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Short stories
“An order to see my own son! Jimmy, don’t you hear me; tell the man to
let me in to you. (A pause.) Are you sleeping, Jimmy? It’s your mother
has come to see you. (Here she knocked). Are you much hurt? Just a
scratch, they tell me; perhaps they will let you go home with me till
it heals. O, Jimmy, I miss you sorely at home.”
Again the woman knocked and placing her ear to a crack in the door
listened.
“He ain’t moving! Soger man, tell me true, is my Jimmy here?”
“He is, mem; you must go to the colonel. I cannot let you in; I must
obey orders.”
“If Jimmy is here, then he must be worse than they told me.”
“Very likely, mem; it is always best to be prepared for the worst.”
“He may be dyin’ for all you know. Do let me in.”
“There is the captain passing; ask him.”
“What’s wanted, Bill?”
“This is Jimmy’s mother and she wants to see him. Come and tell her.”
“That I won’t,” answered the captain, with an oath, “I want to have a
hand in no scene; do as you like to break it to the old woman,” and on
the captain passed.
“What does he mean? Jimmy ain’t to be punished, is he? He would not do
wrong. It was just Tuesday week he went to the pasture for the cows and
as he came back, there marched a lot of sogers, with flags aflying and
drums and fifes playin’ beautiful. ‘O, mother,’ says he, ‘I would like
to join em,’ an he kept acoaxin an aworryin me until I let him come up
to the Corners an take the bounty, which he brings back to me, dressed
in his fine clothes, the lovely boy.”
“Now, good woman, you go home an’ I will send you word of him.”
“That I won’t; if Jimmy is here I see him. Word came this morning that
the Injuns had sprang on to the camp an’ there was a soger killed,
stone dead, an’ two taken prisoners. An’, says I, lucky Jimmy ain’t one
of them, for so they told me, an’ I will hurry up my chores an’ go and
see him this evenin’, an’ here I am. An’ at the camp they tells me he
is over here, and won’t you let me see him?”
“Your Jimmy, mem, yes, your Jimmy is----By God, I can’t speak the word.
Here, take the key and go in; you’ll find him right in front o’ the
door.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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