William Faulkner - Unvanquished

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THE UNVANQUISHED

road along the river bottom. This time it was Ringo's mule that shied; the man had stepped out of the bushes that quick, with his fine muddy boots and coat and the pistol in his little black-haired hand, and only his eyes and his nose showing between his hat and his beard.

"Stay where you are," he said. "I will still be watching you."

We didn't move. We watched him step back into the bushes, then the three of them came out—the bearded man and another man walking abreast and leading two saddled horses, and the third man walking just in front of them with his hands behind him—a thick-built man with a reddish stubble and pale eyes, in a faded Con­federate uniform coat and Yankee boots, bare-headed, with a long smear of dried blood on his cheek and one ciHf« nf hk mat rake.fl with dried mud and that sleeve

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turned right into the pistol in the bearded man's hand.

"Steady," the bearded man said. "Have you got him, Bridger?"

"Yes," the other man said. The bearded man backed to the other horse and got on it without lowering his pistol or ceasing to watch Grumby. Then he sat there, too, looking down at Grumby, with his little hooked nose and his eyes alone showing between the hat and the ink-colored beard. Grumby began to move his head from side to side.

"Boys," he said, "boys, you ain't going to do this to me."

"We're not going to do anything to you," the bearded man said. "I can't speak for these boys there. But since you are so delicate about children, maybe they will be delicate with you. But we'll give you a chance though."

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this place, I would advise you to go at least that far also. But just remember that Texas is a wide place, and use that knowledge. Ride!" he shouted.

He whirled the mare. Bridget whirled too. As they did so, Grumby leaped and caught the pistol from the ground and ran forward, crouching and shouting into the bushes, cursing. He shot three times toward the fad­ing sound of the horses, then he whirled back to face us. Ringo and I were on the ground, too; I don't remember when we got down nor why, but we were down, and I remember how I looked once at Ringo's face and then how I stood there with Uncle Buck's pistol feeling heavy as a firedog in my hand. Then I saw that he had quit whirling; that he was standing there with the pistol hang­ing against his right leg and that he was looking at me; and then all of a sudden he was smiling.

"Well, boys," he said, "it looks like you have got me. Dum my hide for letting Matt Bowden fool me into emptying my pistol at him."

And I could hear my voice; it sounded faint and far away, like the woman's in Alabama that day, so that I wondered if he could hear me: "You shot three times. You have got two more shots in it."

His face didn't change, or I couldn't see it change. It j«,st lowered, looking down, but the smile was gone from it. "In this pistol?" he said. It was like he was examining a pistol for the first time, so slow and careful it was that he passed it from his right to his left hand and let it hang again, pointing down again. "Well, well, well. Sholy I ain't forgot how to count as well as how to shoot." There was a bird somewhere—a yellowhammer—I had been hearing it all the time; even the three shots hadn't frightened it. And I could hear Ringo, too, mak­ing a kind of whimpering sound when he breathed, and it was like I wasn't trying to watch Grumby so much as to keep from looking at Ringo. "Well, she's safe enough now, since it don't look like I can even shoot with my

right hand."

Then it happened. I know what did happen, but even now I don't know how, in what order. Because he was big and squat, like a bear. But when we had first seen him he was a captive, and so, even now he seemed

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more like a stump than even an animal, even though we had watched him leap and catch up the pistol and run firing after the other two. All I know is, one second he was standing there in his muddy Confederate coat, smil­ing at us, with his ragged teeth showing a little in his red stubble, with the thin sunlight on the stubble and on his shoulders and cuffs, on the dark marks where the braid had been ripped away; and the next second there were two bright orange splashes, one after the other, against the middle of the gray coat and the coat itself swelling slow down on me like when Granny told us about the balloon she saw in St. Louis and we would dream about it.

I reckon I heard the sound, and I reckon I must have heard the bullets, and I reckon I felt him when he hit me, but I don't remember it. I just remember the two bright flashes and the gray coat rushing down, and then the ground hitting me. But I could smell him—the smell of man sweat, and the gray coat grinding into my face and smelling of horse sweat and wood smoke and grease—and I could hear him, and then I could hear my arm socket, and I thought "In a minute I will hear my fingers breaking, but I have got to hold onto it" and then—I don't know whether it was under or over his arm or his leg—I saw Ringo, in the air, looking exactly like a frog, even to the eyes, with his mouth open too and his open pocket knife In his hand.

Then I was free. I saw Ringo straddle of Grumby's back and Grumby getting up from his hands and knees and I tried to raise the pistol only my arm wouldn't move. Then Grumby bucked Ringo off just like a steer would and whirled again, looking at us, crouched, with his mouth open too; and then my arm began to come up with the pistol and he turned and ran. He shouldn't have tried to run from us in boots. Or maybe that made no difference either, because now my arm had come up and now I could see Grumby's back (he didn't scream, he never made a sound) and the pistol both at the same time and the pistol was level and steady as a rock.

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4

it took us the rest of that day and part of the night to reach the old compress. But it didn't take very long to ride home because we went fast with the two mounts apiece to change to, and what we had to carry now, wrapped in a piece of the skirt of Grumby's coat, didn't weigh anything.

It was almost dark when we rode through Jefferson; it was raining again when we rode past the brick piles and the sooty walls that hadn't fallen down yet, and went on through what used to be the square. We hitched the mules in the cedars and Ringo was just starting off to find a board when we saw that somebody had already put one up—Mrs. Compson, I reckon, or maybe Uncle Buck when he got back home. We already had the piece of wire. *

The earth had sunk too now, after two months; it was almost level now, like at first Granny had not wanted to be dead either but now she had begun to be reconciled. We unwrapped it from the jagged square of stained faded gray cloth and fastened it to the board. "Now she can lay good and quiet," Ringo said.

''Yes," I said. And then we both began to cry. We stood there in the slow rain, crying. We had ridden a lot, and during the last week we hadn't slept much and we hadn't always had anything to eat.

"It wasn't him or Ab Snopes either that kilt her," Ringo said. "It was them mules. That first batch of mules we got for nothing."

"Yes," I said. "Let's go home. I reckon Louvinia is worried about us."

So it was good and dark when we came to the cabin. And then we saw that it was lighted like for Christmas; we could see the big fire and the lamp, clean and bright, when Louvinia opened the door long before we had got to it and ran out into the rain and began to paw at me, crying and hollering.

"What?" I said. "Father? Father's home? Father?"

"And Miss Brasilia!" Louvinia hollered, crying and praying and pawing at me, and hollering and scolding