The Able Mclaughlins by Margaret Wilson — Read

Wully slept the whole afternoon, and that evening the aunts and uncles and cousins began coming to see him. He and Allen, being among the oldest of the clan's young fry, had been the first to enlist, though since then two of the McNairs, a Stevenson, and a McElhiney had grown old enough to fight. Allen's death and Wully's spectacular career had endeared him to the neighbors. They had suffered with him, they thought. Two years before, when they had gathered to offer their consolation to the family because he was reported dead, they had found his mother rejecting sympathy with as much decision as was civil. The United States government might be a powerful organization, but it could never make her believe that Wully had been shot in the back, running away from duty. The Stowes doubtless did well to array themselves in mourning for Harvey, but she knew her son was alive. And sure enough, after three weeks a letter came, no larger than the palm of her hand. She knew it had come when she saw a nephew running towards the house to give it to her. On one side, the little paper had said that Wully was alive and well in a prison in Texas, and on the other, crowded together, were ten names of comrades imprisoned with him, and Harvey Stowe's name was written first and largest. That minute she had buttoned the bit of paper into Andy's shirt pocket, and sent him fifteen miles down the creek to tell the Stowes to take off their mourning, and the clan, hearing the news from the mad-riding Andy had gathered to rejoice with her. And now that the exciting Wully was home again, they brought him wild turkeys, and the choice of the wild plums, an apple or two, first fruit of their new orchards, and whatever else their poverty afforded. Mrs. Stowe came to see him, bringing a package of sugar. But the Stowes were well-to-do. The others were exclusively what Allen had dubbed "the ragged lairds of the Waupsipinnikon."

Not that their creek was really the Waupsipinnikon. Allen had only crossed that chuckling stream on his first journey with his father, but he had delighted in a name so whimsical, so rollicking, and had used it largely. Pigs and chickens of his christening bore it unharmed. And he put it into the song he used to sing sometimes, when the prairie's youth and beauty were tired of dancing to his fiddle. All the neighbors were mentioned in it: