Sybil Ludington: Revolutionary War Rider (Based on a True Story Series)
194
Sybil Ludington: Revolutionary War Rider (Based on a True Story Series)
194eBook
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Overview
What would you do if your country was counting on you to deliver a message? That’s sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington’s urgent mission.
In 1777, Sybil and her family believe the American colonies should be free from British control. Sybil’s father leads a regiment of New York militiamen, and everyone in the family is dedicated to the Patriot cause. Using spy tactics and codes, the Ludingtons gather intelligence, hoping to stay one step ahead of their enemies. When British troops raid nearby Danbury, Connecticut, Sybil gallops through the night to call out her father’s men. But the journey is dangerous for a girl who’s all alone. With obstacles at every turn, will she make it in time to stop the British?
Based on a True Story books are exciting historical fiction about real children who lived through extraordinary times in American History. This title has Common Core connections.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250080349 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Feiwel & Friends |
| Publication date: | 03/26/2024 |
| Series: | Based on a True Story Series |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 194 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Sybil Ludington
Revolutionary War Rider
By E. F. Abbott, Clint Hansen
Feiwel and Friends
Copyright © 2016 MacmillanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-08034-9
CHAPTER 1
APRIL 26, 1777
A man rode thundering up the hill on his horse, spattering rain and mud as he galloped directly to the Ludingtons' front door.
In the inner room, lit only by the fire, the family heard him coming out of the dark and moved swiftly to be ready.
Papa stopped rocking the baby. "Take her, please," he said, and passed little Abigail to Mama, her namesake. Mama carried the sleeping baby into the front hall. Papa hovered in the shadows behind Mama. Cradling Abby, she opened the door. "Come in out of the rain, you poor fellow!"
"Message for Colonel Ludington from Colonel Cooke!" the man gasped out.
Papa reached his arm back toward the kitchen. His three daughters hidden there saw his fingers snap, although the sound was covered by his calm, steady voice. "Tell me what you know."
"Danbury is burning, sir! Your regiment is wanted."
As the messenger came in the front, the girls went out the back. Sybil, sixteen, crouched on the porch, unlacing her boots, her dark braid falling over her shoulder. Rebecca, fourteen, held up a pair of boys' breeches. Sybil hopped into them, then pulled her skirt down over the breeches to hide them. Sybil was tall and thin, almost as tall as Mama, with Papa's slate-blue eyes and Mama's high cheekbones. Dressed in those breeches, with her hair bunned up save for one braided ponytail at the neck, she could pass for a boy if she needed to. And she might need to during the long night to come.
Sybil put on a blue woolen militia jacket, turned inside out so only the black lining showed. (There was a johnnycake and a sharp knife already stored in its pockets.) Becky pulled a dark red hood over her sister's hair and knotted its scarf around her throat.
Swift little Molly, eleven, darted across the rain-swept yard to the stable and saddled up Lady Jane as fast as she knew how. She hung a man's tricorn hat across the saddle and draped a shawl over it. The shawl would soon be sopping in this downpour, but it would hide the hat.
On her way back, leading the gray mare, Molly met Papa as he brought the messenger's horse to the stable. "Just water, some oats, and a quick rubdown for this one, my love," said Papa. "The messenger's not staying longer than it takes to eat a bowl of stew."
Papa took Lady Jane's reins. Sybil braced a hand on the horse's shoulder, ready to mount, but Papa held her back. "Did you hear the man?" he asked. "What will be your alarm?"
Sybil straightened, took a breath, then said, "The British are burning Danbury. Muster at Ludington's."
Papa nodded and pulled her close. "Yes! They're coming, and they must be met. We need every single man in the regiment here as fast as he can ride or run."
"You mean as fast as I can ride," Sybil said.
The messenger had come out onto the porch and stood, watching. Papa boosted his oldest girl onto the horse's back.
Molly came running back, a strong maple branch in her hand. She held it up to Sybil. "Don't let anyone near you," she said.
"Don't even get off the horse," said Papa. "Just rap on the doors with the stick."
Sybil tapped her heels against the mare's sides. "Come on, Jane," she said. She left safety behind, with no idea what the night would bring. She went out into lashing wind and cold spring rain, riding among those in this violent corner of New York who might rob her, betray her to enemies, or worse. If she succeeded, her dear papa would be leading his full regiment off to battle come morning. If she failed — what then?
CHAPTER 2TWO YEARS EARLIER
Colonel Henry Ludington was a traitor, and his wife and children were just as untrustworthy.
That's what the Tories — the people loyal to King George III — around the county said.
"They're right," Papa said. "At least, they've got a right to think so."
Ludington had been on the king's side most of his life, but he had switched sides two years ago when the Revolutionary War began. "It wasn't as sudden on my inside as it looked from the outside," Papa would say, his blue eyes winking — first the left, then the right — at Sybil the way he did when he knew he sounded a little crazy.
Crazy like a fox, thought Sybil, which meant sly and tricky and smart. Crazy the way she wanted to be.
When the first shot of the Revolutionary War was fired on Lexington's town green — "the shot heard 'round the world" — Papa walked away from his Tory friends and didn't turn back.
Sybil was fourteen when that had happened. She was there the day Papa came into the kitchen and stood in the back doorway, leaning heavily against the frame. Mama turned from the fire and met his eyes. "So it's begun," she said.
Sybil's four little brothers looked up from marching their animals into the wooden Noah's ark and stopped making animal sounds. Sybil and Becky stopped weaving. They let the beaters on their looms fall still and exchanged a meaningful glance. It took Molly, then nine, to say flatly, "What?"
"The bloodshed," said Papa, too upset to mince words in front of the children.
British soldiers holding Boston — 175 miles to the east of the Ludingtons in Dutchess County, New York — had marched on the nearby towns of Lexington and Concord. Two wily leaders of the Patriot rebellion, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, were rumored to be hiding in Lexington. The redcoats, as the British soldiers were called, hoped to get hold of supplies the Patriot militia had stored in Concord — after they'd caught the rebel leaders and strung them up.
"Adams and Hancock knew ahead of time, of course," Papa said.
"How?" That was Molly again, always asking questions.
"General Gage is not as brilliant as he thinks," said Papa gruffly. Gage was the British general in charge of Boston.
"Someone spilled the beans," said Becky. She meant a spy had talked.
"And somebody else picked them up," said Sybil. She meant the message had been passed to the Patriots.
"So they were waiting?" Molly wanted the full story, too impatient to wait for the situation to be drawn out more clearly.
"Two Bostonians were waiting for news of whether the troops were coming by land or sea," said Papa. "One of them — Paul Revere — slipped right under the nose of the big British man-o'-war Somerset — that's a ship — and rode all the way to Lexington and on to Concord, to spread the alarm. His friend William Dawes took one leg of the trip, and he took the other."
"How far is that?" asked Sybil.
"At least twenty miles," said Papa. Sybil and Becky raised their eyebrows at each other, impressed.
"Were they in time to call out the militia?" asked Molly.
Papa nodded. He sat down at the table and rubbed his fingers over the wood grain. "But there wasn't much of a militia to drum up," he said. "Old Captain Parker can hardly give the rally cry, he's so weak. He's got eighty-odd farmers for soldiers, so-called minutemen! They haven't got many muskets to speak of. But when somebody fired, they were ready to answer in a minute, all right."
"How many redcoats?" asked Becky.
"Hundreds, my love," said Papa. "More by the time they got to Concord, but by then, there were more minutemen, too."
"All called out by only two men?" asked Sybil.
"Not exactly. There was a chain of alarm. Some rang bells. People heard and blew horns or conch shells — or lit fires."
"That worked?" asked Archie. Just seven, he was listening sharp-eared from the floor while his little brothers trotted bears and elephants into the ark.
"It did."
"Then what happened?" Becky chewed a fingernail anxiously.
"Adams and Hancock got away, warned by Revere — who eventually got himself caught." Papa paused, then went on, "The militia marched out to protect their stores, and the redcoats fired on them."
There was a shocked silence.
"How many dead?" asked Sybil.
"More of them than us," said Papa softly.
"'Us,' Henry?" Mama asked.
"Patriots," Papa said firmly. "Colonists. People who came here to have a country of their own."
"We all did that," said Becky. "The Loyalists, too. Not just the Patriots."
Mama reached for Becky's hand. "When it comes to guns being fired, you can't be for both sides," she said.
Papa made a little speech then. "I'd rather defend these colonies for ourselves, not for some ruler on a throne thousands of miles away. The so-called Loyalists — the Tories who call us traitors and rebels — are too scared to oppose him. The British have been getting ready, and now they're gunning us down," said Papa. "It's time for us to get ready, too. More ready. Being the readiest — the best prepared — is the only chance the Patriots have got."
"I'm with Papa," said Sybil.
"So am I," said Molly quickly.
"Family business?" asked Papa, placing the palm of his hand on the kitchen table. This signaled that he wanted to keep the matter secret from anyone outside the family. His wife and children circled around him.
"Family business," they answered, and slapped their hands on the tabletop. The decision was made.
CHAPTER 3"It's time you girls learned to handle a musket," said Papa. His daughters' faces lit up.
In times of peace, any man whose three oldest children were daughters had to turn at least one of them into a son. By the spring of 1776, when war seemed surely to be coming to Dutchess County, it became clear there needed to be two people in the family who could manage a musket besides Papa, who might be off doing the work of the war, and Mama, who needed to look after the babies. Two people could take turns on watch, or could defend both the front and back of the house in the event of an attack. Sybil and Rebecca got to be the ones who learned to shoot the best, leaving Archie to muck out the stalls in the barn and Molly to do most of the milking. But eventually they would learn, too.
Papa took his girls out to the woodland behind the house, a good distance from the road. "Have you decided to let us into your regiment at last?" asked Becky.
Sybil added, "I've heard tell about some girls who dressed as men and went to battle and weren't detected."
"I'd detect you in a minute," said Papa. And he said, as he had said so many times, "No. You won't be soldiers in my regiment, my loves. But you'll be watchmen, in charge of the safety of your mother and sisters and brothers."
He taught them to load, aim, and fire.
They aimed at horse chestnuts set on fence posts and got so they could knock them off the posts at a decent distance. Mama shot, too, brushing up skills learned long ago. Molly could fire a musket if it was propped on a fence post (usually by Archie) but you couldn't rely on her to hit a target.
Although Molly wasn't much of a shot, she was good with her hands in other ways. After target practice one night, Molly presented each of her sisters with a small wooden disk on which she had drawn an oak tree — the sign of the Sons of Liberty. But each of their disks (Molly had made one for herself, too) said DAUGHTER OF LIBERTY. They hung them on black threads around their necks, hidden inside their shifts.
After a month, nobody was a better shot than Sybil; she could even light a campfire with a musket. Soon Sybil and Rebecca had to stop practicing to keep from using up the gunpowder.
"Anyway, girls can't be soldiers." Poor Archie! Never did a boy so want to be a soldier; never was a family so grateful their oldest son was too young to be a drummer boy or even to carry a fife.
Papa said, "George Washington thinks this war will be won with intelligence, not soldiers." It didn't mean being smart, he explained. "The kind of intelligence he needs is secret information."
"The kind you get from spies," added Sybil.
"Can girls be spies?" asked Molly.
"No!" said Archie.
"Why not?" asked Papa. "A spy is like a fox, slipping quickly through the woods, eavesdropping on the mice."
"A gray fox," said Sybil. "Blending in with the branches of the trees." She moved her hands like a fox slipping through the woods.
"Or a red fox," Becky said, shaking back her ginger curls. "Blending in with the fall leaves."
"Mama would make a good spy," said Papa.
Mama rolled her eyes.
"Look at her sweet face. Would you ever doubt a thing she said? Would you ever think she had a trick up her sleeve? But she does. She always has. Remember how she planted a potato on me?"
In the French and Indian War, Papa had served the king of England. He'd fought for the king in 1759 at the Battle of Lake George when he was seventeen, just a year older than Sybil was now.
Papa and his uncles and cousins had traveled from Connecticut to Lake George for the fight. Along the way, they had stopped off in Amenia, New York, to stay with another branch of the family. That was when he first caught a glimpse of Mama, then no bigger than Molly and every bit as smart. Young as she was, Mama hoped Papa wouldn't forget her — and she played a trick on him to make sure he didn't.
Mama had hidden a potato in Papa's knapsack when he went off to fight his battle in Canada back then. It was a potato she and Papa had laughed over in the kitchen at her house. She had stowed it in his knapsack so Papa would find it after he left.
The girls had heard the story before, but Archie didn't recall it, so Papa said, "This potato had a face — two eyes, of course, but also a blobby nose right in between the eyes. Your mama gave it a mouth —"
"— with a row of cloves stuck in —" said Molly.
"— and he carried it all the way to Lake George and back —" said Sybil.
"— singing it sweet love songs," teased Becky.
"That potato kept me company on many a lonely night," said Papa seriously. Then they all laughed, and he laughed, too. "So I took it back to her."
"Wasn't it rotten by then?" asked Archie.
"Well, my love," said Papa, "it had seen better days."
"Don't you want to know what he did to me to earn himself that potato?" asked Mama.
"Aw, don't," said Papa. "You were just a little pup. Who could resist?"
"He tied my pigtails to the button on the back of my dress!"
The little boys chuckled.
"That's not all," said Papa, pleased with his younger self.
"No. Then he tied my apron to the back of my chair."
The little boys giggled.
"And then, then, when they were marching off to war, everyone sniffling and worried —"
"As they should have been," said Papa.
"You know what he did?"
"What?"
Papa couldn't stand it. He took over the story. "There we are, heading off, solemn moment, handkerchiefs waving from the gate, and there's a huge yell —" He squeaked like a stuck pig. "AGH!"
"It was me," said Mama. "And you'd have yelled, too, if suddenly you realized you were tied up to a goat."
"A goat!" the little boys roared.
"He'd tied me to our billy goat by my apron strings, so tight I couldn't turn around to undo them."
Papa was laughing so hard he was crying. "There she is, trying to get away from the goat, and he's trying to butt her, but he's too close to butt her, and the old folks are all sniffling and waving, and she's in a wrestling match with a goat!" Then he pretended to be his young self again, marching off, saluting, before dissolving into laughter again. The children and Mama laughed with him.
They all knew the awful thing that happened next. In the battle, Papa's uncle Amos and his cousin Ezra were killed, dropping wounded as they fought beside him and dying on the battlefield.
That night, alone in his tent, as miserable as he could be, Papa had found the potato, and he knew, if he could just get back to where that girl cousin was, he would be all right.
Papa sobered up telling this part, chucked Mama's cheek, and said, "That potato was like a secret message to me. A person needs to study whatever's in front of him to see what it really is."
"What was the potato really, when you studied it?" asked Molly.
"Your mama," said Papa. "With me all the while."
"So are we supposed to study potatoes?" asked Archie.
"No," said Papa. "Spies see through to what the potato stands for. They take second looks at everything."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sybil Ludington by E. F. Abbott, Clint Hansen. Copyright © 2016 Macmillan. Excerpted by permission of Feiwel and Friends.
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