Unvanquished

by William Faulkner

  "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!"

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  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

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  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

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  at Ringo all at once. "Home! Hit done finished! All but the surrendering. And now Marse John done home." She finally told us how Father and Drusilla had come home about a week ago and Uncle Buck told Father where Ringo and I were, and how Father had tried to make Drusilla wait at home, but she refused, and how they were looking for us, with Uncle Buck to show the way.

  So we went to bed. We couldn't even stay awake to eat the supper Louvinia cooked for us; Ringo and I went to bed in our clothes on the pallet, and went to sleep all in one motion, with Louvinia's face hanging over us and still scolding, and Joby in the chimney corner where Louvinia had made him get up out of Granny's chair. And then somebody was pulling at me, and I thought I was fighting Ab Snopes again, and then it was the ram in Father's beard and clothes that I smelled. But Uncle Buck was still hollering, and Father holding me, and Ringo and I held to him, and then it was Drusilla kneeling and holding me and Ringo, and we could smell the rain in her hair, too, while she was hollering at Uncle Buck to hush. Father's hand was hard; I could see his face beyond Drusilla and I was trying to say, "Father, Father," while she was holding me and Ringo with the rain smell of her hair all around us, and Uncle Buck hollering and Joby looking at Uncle Buck with his mouth open and his eyes round.

  "Yes, by Godfrey! Not only tracked him down and caught him but brought back the actual proof of it to where Rosa Millard could rest quiet." "The which?" Joby hollered. "Fotch back the which?" "Hush! Hush!" Drusilla said. "That's all done, all finished. You, Uncle Buck!"

  "The proof and the expiation!" Uncle Buck hollered. "When me and John Sartoris and Drusilla rode up to that old compress, the first thing we see was that murdering scoundrel pegged out on the door to it like a coon hide, all except the right hand. 'And If anybody wants to see that, too,' I told John Sartoris, 'just let them ride into Jefferson and look on Rosa Millard's grave!' Ain't I told you he is John Sartoris' boy? Hey? Ain't I told you?"

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  ll%HEN I think of that day, of Father's old troop on their horses drawn up facing the house, and Father and Brasilia on the ground with that Carpet Bagger vot­ing box in front of them, and opposite them the women —Aunt Louisa, Mrs. Habersham and all the others—on the porch and the two sets of them, the men and the women, facing one another like they were both waiting for a> bugle to sound the charge, I think I know the rea­son. I think it was because Father's troop (like all the other Southern soldiers too), even though they had sur­rendered and said that they were whipped, were still soldiers. Maybe from the old habit of doing everything as one man; maybe when you have lived for four years in a world ordered completely by men's doings, even when it is danger and fighting, you don't want to quit that world: maybe the danger and the fighting are the reasons, because men have been pacifists for every rea­son under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting. And so now Father's troop and all the other men in Jefferson, and Aunt Louisa and Mrs. Habersham and all the women in Jefferson were actually enemies for the reason that the men had given in and admitted that they belonged to the United States but the women had never surrendered.

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  I remember the night we got the letter and found out at last where Drusilla was. It was just before Christ­mas in 1864, after the Yankees had burned Jefferson and gone away, and we didn't even know for sure if the war was still going on or not. All we knew was that for three years the country had been full of Yankees, and then all of a sudden they were gone and there were no men there at all anymore. We hadn't even heard from Father since July, from Carolina, so that now we lived in a world of burned towns and houses and ruined planta­tions and fields inhabited only by women. Ringo and I were fifteen then; we felt almost exactly like we had to eat and sleep and change our clothes in a hotel built only for ladies and children.

  The envelope was worn and dirty and it had been opened once and then glued back, but we could still make out Hawkhurst, Gihon County, Alabama on it even though we did not recognise Aunt Louisa's hand at first. It was addressed to Granny; it was six pages cut with scissors from wallpaper and written on both sides with pokeberry juice and I thoug
ht of that night eighteen months ago when Drusilla and I stood outside the cabin at Hawkhurst and listened to the niggers passing in the road, the night when she told me about the dog, about keeping the dog quiet, and then asked me to ask Father to let her join his troop and ride with him. But I didn't tell Father. Maybe I forgot it. Then the Yankees went away, and Father and his troop went away too. Then, six months later, we had a letter from him about how they were fighting in Carolina, and a month after that we had one from Aunt Louisa that Drusilla was gone too, a short letter on the wallpaper that you could see where Aunt Louisa had cried in the pokeberry juice about how she did not know where Drusilla was but that she had expected the worst ever since Drusilla had de­liberately tried to unsex herself by refusing to feel any natural grief at the death in battle not only of her affianced husband but of her own father and that she took it for granted that Drusilla was with us and though she did not expect Drusilla to take any steps herself to relieve a mother's anxiety, she hoped that Granny would. But we didn't know where Drusilla was either.

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  She had just vanished. It was like the Yankees in just passing through the South had not only taken along with them all living men blue and gray and white and black, but even one young girl who had happened to try to look and act like a man after her sweetheart was killed.

  So then the next letter came. Only Granny wasn't there to read it because she was dead then (it was the time when Grumby doubled back past Jefferson and so Ringo and I spent one night at home and found the letter when Mrs. Compson had sent it out) and so for a while Ringo and I couldn't make out what Aunt Louisa was trying to tell us. This one was on the same wallpaper too, six pages this time, only Aunt Louisa hadn't cried in the pokeberry juice this time: Ringo said because she must have been writing too fast: