“But I understood if they didn’t, and I should be telling my own self a lie. No, not a turkey shall die. They shall all have a real good Thanksgiving once in their lives.”
Two days later, on the 18th of December, Thanksgiving Day came, the turkeys were yet alive, and Becca Blackstone was happy.
The next day General Washington’s eleven thousand men marched into Valley Forge, and went out upon the cold, bleak hillsides, carrying with them almost three thousand poor fellows, too ill to march, too ill to build log huts, ill enough to lie down and die. Such a busy time as there was for days and days. Farmer Blackstone felt a little toryish in his thoughts, but the chance to sell logs and split slabs so near home as Valley Forge was not likely to happen again, and he worked away with strong good will to furnish building material. Jack went every day to the encampment, and grew quite learned in the ways of warlike men.
Becca staid at home with her mother, but secretly wished to see what the great army looked like.
At last the final load of chestnut and walnut and oaken logs went up to the hills from Mr. Blackstone’s farm, and a great white snow fell down over all Pennsylvania, covering the mountains and hills, the soldiers’ log huts, and the turkeys in the apple-tree. January came and went, and every day affairs at the camp grew worse. Men were dying of hunger and cold and disease. Stories of the sufferings of the men grew strangely familiar to the inhabitants. Affairs that Winter would not have been quite so hard at Valley Forge if the neighbors for miles around had not been Tories. Now Becca Blackstone’s mother was a New England women, and in secret she bestowed many a comfort upon one after another of her countrymen at the encampment. Her husband was willing to sell logs and slabs and clay from his pits, but not a farthing or a splinter of wood had he to bestow on the rebels.
At last, one January day, when Mr. Blackstone had gone to Philadelphia, permission was given to Becca to accompany her mother and Jack to the village. Into the rear of the sleigh a big basket was packed. Becca was told that she must not ask any questions nor peep, so she neither questioned nor looked in, but found out, after all, for when they were come to the camp, she saw her mother take out loaves of rye bread and a jug, into which she knew nothing but milk ever was put, and carry them into a hut which had the sign of a hospital over it. Every third cabin was 163 a hospital, and each and every one held within it men that were always hungry and in suffering.
In all her life Becca had never seen so much to make her feel sorry, as she saw when she followed her mother to the door of the log-hospital, into which she was forbidden to enter.
There large-eyed, hungry men lay on the cold ground, with only poor, wretched blankets to cover them. She caught a glimpse of a youth—he did not seem much older than her own Jack—with light, fair hair, such big blue eyes, and the thinnest, whitest hands, reaching up for the mug of milk her mother was offering to him.
Then, when Jack came to her, he was wiping his eyes on his jacket sleeve. He said “If I was a soldier, and my country didn’t care any more for me than Congress does, I’d go home and leave the Red Coats to carry off Congress. It’s too bad, and he’s a jolly good fellow. Wish we could take him home and get him well.”