William Faulkner - Unvanquished

"So they caught you, hey?" Uncle Buck said. "A In­nocent and unsuspecting traveler. I reckon the name of them would never be Grumby now, would it?"

It was like we might have stopped and built a fire and thawed out that moccasin—just enough for it to find out where it was, but not enough for it to know what to do about it. Only I reckon it was a high com­pliment to set Ab Snopes xip with a moccasin, even a little one. I reckon it was bad for him. I reckon he realised that they had thrown him back to us with­out mercy, and that if he tried to save himself from us at their expense, they would come back and kill him. I reckon he decided that the worst thing that could hap­pen to him would be for us not to do anything to him at all. Because he quit jerking his arms; he even quit lying; for a minute his eyes and his mouth were telling the

same thing.

"} made a mistake," he said. "I admit hit. I reckon everybody does. The question is, what are you fellows going to do about hit?"

"Yes," Uncle Buck said. "Everybody makes mistakes. Your trouble is, you make too many. Because mistakes are bad. Look at Rosa Millard. She just made one, and look at her. And you have made two."

Ab Snopes watched Uncle Buck. "What's them?"

"Being born too soon and dying too late," Uncle

Buck said.

He looked at all of us, fast; he didn't move, still talking to Uncle Buck. "You ain't going to kill me. You

don't dast."

"I don't even need to," Uncle Buck said. "It wasn't my grandmaw you sicked onto that snake den."

He looked at me now, but his eyes were going again, back and forth across me at Ringo and Uncle Buck; it was the two of them again now, the eyes and the voice. "Why, then I'm all right. Bayard ain't got no hard feel-

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ings against me. He knows hit was a pure accident; that we was doing hit for his sake and his paw a.nd them niggers at home. Why, here hit's a whole year and it was me that holp and tended Miss Rosa when she

never had ara living soul but them chil-------" Now the

voice began to tell the truth again; it was the eyes and the voice that I was walking toward. He fell back, crouching, his hands flung up.

Behind me, Uncle Buck said, "You, Ringo! Stay back."

He was walking backward now, with his hands flung up, hollering, "Three on one! Three on one!"

"Stand still," Uncle Buck said. "Ain't no three on you. I don't see nobody on you but one of them chil­dren you was just mentioning." Then we were both down in the mud; and then I couldn't see him, and I couldn't seem to find him any more, not even with the hollering; and then I was fighting three or four for a long time before Uncle Buck and Ringo held me, and then I cuukl see him again, lying on the ground with his arms over his face. "Get up," Uncle Buck said.

"No," he said. "Three of you can jump on me and knock me down again, but you got to pick me up first to do hit. I ain't got no rights and justice here, but you can't keep me from protesting hit."

"Lift him up," Uncle Buck said. "I'll hold Bayard."

Ringo lifted him; it was like lifting up a half-filled cotton sack. "Stand up, Mr. Ab Snopes," Ringo said. But he would not stand, not even after Ringo and Uncle Buck tied him to the sapling and Ringo had taken off his and Uncle Buck's and.Ab Snopes' galluses and knotted them together with the bridle reins from the mules. He just hung there in the rope, not even flinching when the lash fell, saying, "That's hit. Whup me. Lay hit on me; you got me three to one."

"Wait," Uncle Buck said. Ringo stopped. "You want another chance with one to one? You can take your choice of the three of us."

"I got my rights," he said. "I'm helpless, but I can still protest hit. Whup me."

I reckon he was right. I reckon if we had let him go clean, they would have circled back and killed him

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themselves before dark. Because—that was the night

it began to rain and we had to burn Ringo's stick because

Uncle Buck admitted now that his arm was getting bad—

we all ate supper together, and it was Ab Snopes that was

the most anxious about Uncle Buck, saying how it

wasn't any hard feelings and that he could see himself

that he had made a mistake in trusting the folks he did,

and that all he wanted to do now was to go back home,

because it was only the folks you had known all your

life that you could trust, and when you put faith in a

stranger you deserved what you got when you found

that what you had been eating and sleeping with was no

better than a passel of rattlesnakes. But as soon as

Uncle Buck tried to find out if it actually was Crumby,

he shut up and denied that he had ever seen him.

They left us early the next morning. Uncle Buck was sick by then; we offered to ride back home with him, or to let Ringo ride back with him, and I would keep Ab Snopes with me, but Uncle Buck wouldn't have

it.

"Grumby might capture him again and tie him to another sapling in the road, and you would lose tune burying him," Uncle Buck said. "You boys go on. It ain't going to be long now. And catch them!" He begun to holler, with his face flushed and his eyes bright, taking the pistol from around his neck and giving it to me, "Catch them! Catch them!"

3

so Ringo and I went on. It rained all that day; now it began to rain all the tune. We had the two mules apiece; we went fast. It rained; sometimes we had no fire at all; that was when we lost count of tune, because one morning we came to a fire still burning and a hog they had not even had time to butcher; and sometimes we would ride all night, swapping mules when we had guessed that it had been two hours; and so, sometimes it would be night when we slept and sometimes it would be daylight, and we knew that they must have watched us from somewhere every day and that now that Uncle

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Buck was not with us, they didn't even dare to stop and try to hide.

Then one afternoon—the rain had stopped but the clouds had not broken and it was turning cold again— it was about dusk and we were galloping along an old road in the river bottom; it was dun and narrow under the trees and we were galloping when my mule shied and swerved and stopped, and I just did catch myself before I went over his head; and then we saw the thing hanging over the middle of the road from a limb. It was an old Negro man, with a rim of white hair and with his bare toes pointing down and his head on one side like he was thinking about something quiet. The note was pinned to him, but we couldn't read it until we rode on into a clearing. It was a scrap of dirty paper with big crude printed letters, like a child might have made them:

Last woning not thret. Turn back. The barer of this my promise and garntee. I have stood all I aim to stand children no children. G.

And something else written beneath it in a hand neat and small and prettier, than Granny's, only you knew that a man had written it; and while I looked at the dirty paper I could see him again, with his neat little feet and his little black-haired hands and his fine soiled shirt and his fine muddy coat, across the fire from us that night.

This is signed by others beside G., one of whm in particular havttg less scruples re children than he has. Nethless undents'"1 desires to give both you and G. one more chance. Take it, and some day become a man. Refuse it, and cease even to be a child.

Ringo and I looked at each other. There had been a house here once, but it was gone now. Beyond the clear­ing the road went on again into the thick trees hi the gray twilight. "Maybe it will be tomorrow," Ringo said.

It was tomorrow; we slept that night in a haystack, but we were riding again by daylight, following the dim