William Faulkner - Unvanquished

"Lieutenant," he said, loud, jerking my horse around, "ride back up the hill and close in with your troop on their right. Git!" he whispered, slapping my horse across the rump with his hand. "Make a fuss! Holler! See if

you can keep up with Ringo.------Boys," he said, while

they still looked up at him; they hadn't even put the cups down: "Boys, I'm John Sartoris, and I reckon I've got you."

Ringo was the only difficult one to capture. The rest of Father's men came piling over the hill, reining back, and I reckon that for a minute their faces looked about

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like the Yankees' faces did, and now and then I would quit thrashing the bushes and I could hear Ringo on his side hollering and moaning and hollering again, "Marse John! You, Marse John! You come here quick!" and hollering for me, calling Bayard and Colonel and Marse John and Granny until it did sound like a company at least, and then hollering at his horse again, and it run­ning back and forth. I reckon he had forgotten again and was trying to get up on the nigh side again, until at last Father said, "All right, boys. You can come on in."

It was almost dark then. They had built up a fire, and the Yankees still sitting around it and Father and the others standing over them with then- pistols while two of them were taking the Yankees' pants and boots off. Ringo was still hollering off in the trees. "I reckon you better go and extricate Lieutenant Marengo," Father said. Only about that time Ringo's horse came bursting out with his blind eye looking big as a plate and still trotting in a circle with his knees up to his chin, and then Ringo came out. He looked wilder than the horse; he was al­ready talking, he was saying, "I'm gonter tell Granny

on you, making my horse run------" when he saw the

Yankees. His mouth was already open, and he kind of squatted for a second, looking at them. Then he hol­lered, "Look out! Ketch um! Ketch urn, Marse John! They stole Old Hundred and Tinney!"

We all ate supper together—Father and us and the Yankees hi their underclothes.

The officer talked to Father. He said, "Colonel, I be­lieve you have fooled us. I don't believe there's another man of you but what I see."

"You might try to depart, and prove your point," Father said.

"Depart? Like this? And have every darky and old woman between here and Memphis shooting at us for ghosts? ... I suppose we can have our blankets to sleep hi, can't we?"

"Certainly, Captain," Father said. "And with your per­mission, I shall now retire and leave you to set about that business."

We went back into the darkness. We could see them about the fire, spreading their blankets on the ground.

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"What in the tarnation do you want with sixty pris­oners, John?" one of Father's men said.

"I don't," Father said. He looked at me and Ringo. "You boys captured them. What do you want to do with them?"

"Shoot 'em," Ringo said. "This ain't the first time me and Bayard ever shot Yankees."

"No," Father said. "I have a better plan than that. One that Joe Johnston will thank us for." He turned to the others behind him. "Have you got the muskets and am­munition?"

"Yes, Colonel," somebody said.

"Grub, boots, clothes?"

"Everything but the blankets, Colonel."

"We'll pick them up in the morning," Father said. "Now wait."

We sat there in the dark. The Yankees were going to bed. One of them went to the fire and picked up a stick. Then he stopped. He didn't turn his head and we didn't hear anything or see anybody move. Then he put the stick down again and came back to his blanket. "Wait," Father whispered. After a while the fire had died down. "Now listen," Father whispered. So we sat there in the dark and listened to the Yankees sneaking off into the bushes in their underclothes. Once we heard a "splash and somebody cursing, and then a sound like somebody had shut his hand over his mouth. Father didn't laugh out loud; he just sat there shaking.

"Look out for moccasins," one of the others whis­pered behind us.

It must have taken them two hours to get done sneak­ing off into the bushes. Then Father said, "Everybody get a blanket and let's go to bed."

The sun was high when he waked us. "Home for dinner," he said. And so, after a while, we came to the creek; we passed the hole where Ringo and I learned to swim and we began to pass the fields, too, and we came to where Ringo and I hid last summer and saw the first Yankee we ever saw, and then we could see the house, too, and Ringo said, "Sartoris, here we is; let them that want Memphis take hit and keep hit bofe." Because we were looking at the house, it was like that

day when we ran across the pasture and the house would not seem to get any nearer at all. We never saw the wagon at all; it was Father that saw it; it was com- -ing up the road from Jefferson, with Granny sitting thin and straight on the seat with Mrs. Compson's rose cut­tings wrapped in a new piece of paper in her hand, and Joby yelling and lashing the strange horses, and Father stopping us at the gate with his hat raised while the wagon went hi first. Granny didn't say a word. She just looked at Ringo and me, and went on, with us com­ing behind, and she didn't stop at the house. The wagon went on into the orchard and stopped by the hole where we had dug the trunk up, and still Granny didn't say a word; it was Father that got down and got into the wagon and took up one end of the trunk and said over his shoulder,

"Jump up here, boys."

We buried the trunk again, and we walked behind the wagon to the house. We went into the back parlor, and Father put the musket back onto the pegs over the mantel, and Granny put down Mrs. Compson's rose cut­tings and took off her hat and looked at Ringo and me. "Get the soap," she said. "We haven't cussed any," I said. "Ask Father." "They behaved all right, Miss Rosa," Father said. Granny looked at us. Then she came and put her hand

on me and then on Ringo. "Go upstairs------" she said.

"How did you and Joby manage to get those horses?" Father said.

Granny was looking at us. "I borrowed them," she

said.------"upstairs and take off your------"

"Who from?" Father said.

Granny looked at Father for a second, then back at

us. "I don't know. There was nobody there.------take

off your Sunday clothes," she said.

It was hot the next day, so we only worked on the new pen until dinner and quit. It was even too hot for Ringo and me to ride our horses. Even at six o'clock it was still hot; the rosin was still cooking out of the front steps at six o'clock. Father was sitting hi his shirt sleeves and his stockings, with his feet on the porch railing, and Ringo and I were sitting on the steps wait-

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ing for it to get cool enough to ride, when we saw them coming into the gate—about fifty of them, coming "fast, and I remember how hot the blue coats looked. "Father," I said. "Father!"

"Don't run," Father said. "Ringo, you go around the house and catch Jupiter. Bayard, you go through the house and tell Louvinia to have my boots and pistols at the back door; then you go and help Ringo. Don't run, now; walk."

Louvinia was shelling peas in the kitchen. When she stood up, the bowl broke on the floor. "Oh Lord," she said. "Oh Lord. Again?"

I ran then. Ringo was just coming around the corner of the house; we both ran. Jupiter was in his stall, eat­ing; he slashed out at us, his feet banged against the wall right by my head twice, like pistols, before Ringo jumped down from the hayrack onto his head. We got the bridle on him, but he wouldn't take the saddle. "Get your horse and shove his blind side up!" I was hollering at Ringo when Father came in, running, with his boots in his hand, and we looked up the hill toward the house and saw one of them riding around the corner with a short carbine, carrying it in one hand like a lamp.