Author's note: This story takes place during the last half of the American Civil War. The war has already turned against the South. The casualty rates have devestated families in many Southern communities. A draft has been instituted. Unless a family held a large number of slaves, every male able to hold a rifle was suddenly called to fight for the Southern cause. As the war drug on, boys as young as 13 and men as old as 65 were expected to fill the already depleted ranks of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Chapter 1
"I'm sorry, but you cannot have Emmit," a defiant Carolyn Walker told the young captain who stood on her porch.

"In a few months, we will be returning to fetch him," the young captain declared. "We've lost too many men already. We need everyone we can find."

"You've already gotten too many men in this family," she in a stern voice, and then pointed to three freshly dug graves near what little crops she had planted. "Do I have to remind you of that? Emmit is not a man, but a boy. You've already gotten all the men you're going to get from this family, Boyd Robinson!"

The young captain wasn't unsympathetic. To the woman who stood before him, he was still just the preacher's son who lived just down the road, not much older than the woman's oldest son. They joined up together.

Like most of the men of the community, they joined to defend the honor of their state, as did their fathers. The woman's husband, Ben Sr., and her eldest son, Ben Jr., joined as soon as Virginia seceded. Her son, Mark, turned 18 a year later and joined the cause as soon as he could sign up.

Her husband and oldest son were members of Stonewall Jackson's famous brigade. Mark served in another part of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.

She thought about her youngest son as Capt. Robinson and a couple of young soldiers rode off from her home. The last argument she had with her husband was over when she was going to breech her youngest son, who was about to turn 10 when both of her Ben's were about to march off to war.

"Carolyn, it's time for the boy to be breeched," Ben Sr. told her. "It's time to get him out of those dresses."

Her keeping her son in dresses was a silent protest of the threats of war. She would have breeched him a couple of years earlier, but John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry delayed her decision to do so. She made the decision to finally breech him on his 10th birthday, but the Battle of First Manasses gave her a reason to delay again.

He was breeched on his 11th birthday.

Emmit did not seem to mind his mother's reluctance. He was a gentler child than her two older sons. He was more like his older sister Rebecca, who was a year older, and his younger sister, Rachel, who was a couple of years younger. They were more his playmates that his much older brothers.

He still maintained his long, golden locks of hair, and at times was mistaken for a girl by strangers.

Shortly after his breeching came the first real bad news of the war for the family. Ben Jr. was killed in a skirmish with federal cavalry in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her husband rode home to tell her the bad news and brought a letter of condolences from Stonewall Jackson himself.

In her anger, she tore the note up in front of her husband, who despite his wife's pleading, returned to his brigade.

"Don't you ever fight in this damn war," she cried as she held on to her youngest son.

The news was much worse a year later, just a couple of months the young captain came to her door.

She lost her husband and her other son Mark in a span of three days near a town she had never heard of in Pennsylvania: Gettysburg.

Her husband was killed on the first day of the battle. Mark, only 19, died in the assault known as Pickett's Charge. The young captain's father, the Parson Robinson, made sure both bodies were returned to Virginia. They were among the very few from that battle to return home for burial.

Carolyn Walker was left at 45, trying to hold on to the family farm with her young surviving son and two daughters.

She argued with her sister about Emmit's fate. He was only 12.

"I'm not going to lose another son in a war I did not believe in when it started," she told her sister. "It is not his duty as a boy to go fight a war for politicians and rich plantation owners."

She didn't know what to do until a visit to the mercantile store, where she went to buy what goods she could, which wasn't much considering what little money she had, and what little the store had to sell.

"It's a shame with the men off to war that you have to dress your daughter as a boy so she can work on the farm," an elderly woman from out of town said, pointing to Emmit.

Emmit didn't say a word to reveal otherwise. Rebecca, her mother and the store clerk tried to keep from laughing, but they didn't say a word edge-wise, either.

"Times are hard, Mrs. Basham," Carolyn Walker told the store owner. "I may have to give up the farm to the bank."

"A couple of families have already done so and moved to Richmond," the store owner said.

She looked over at her son, who stood next to a dress on a dummy that Mrs. Basham had out.

****

"You're really serious about this?" Carolyn Walker's sister asked.

"Yes, we're giving the farm back to the bank, Mary," she replied. "What good can Emmit, the girls and me do to keep it going."

The second part of her plan, she kept secret from her sister.

She had already written to a woman who ran a boarding house, and made arrangements for her and her "three" daughters to move there.

If Emmit hit a growth spurt, she figured she would make a decision then about her son going off to fight.

But he wasn't a man, not yet. If people thought he was a girl, maybe she could keep him safe until the war was over.

"You really want me to dress like this, Momma?" Emmit asked.

"Yes, I am," his mother replied. "You and Rebecca are about the same size. We won't have to buy a lot more clothes."

She was surprised by how little her son protested. And his sisters seemed fine with the plan.

"I don't want you ending up like this, Emma," Rebecca said as they put flowers on their father's and brothers grave.

He understood, and cried along with her as they slowly walked toward the wagon where there mother and sister waited.

"The dress Grandma Lillian made for me for my 13th birthday looks good on you," Rebecca said.

"It's a little big, but it is pretty," Emma replied as she adjusted the bow in her hair.

She took her place in the back of the wagon, not wanting to be noticed by any of the towns people as started their journey toward Richmond.