Unvanquished

Father turned to the others. 'Two of you boys take them up behind you; we'll lead that horse.' Then he stopped and turned back to us. 'Have you-all had any­thing to eat?'

'Eat?' Ringo said. 'My stomach think my throat been cut.'

Father took a pone of bread from his saddle bag and broke it and gave it to us. 'Where did you get that horse?' he said.

After a while I said, 'We borrowed it.'

'Who from?' Father said.

After a while Ringo said, 'We ain't know. The man wasn't there.' One of the men laughed. Father looked at him quick, and he hushed. But just for a minute, be­cause all of a sudden they all began to whoop and holler, and Father looking around at them and his face getting redder and redder.

'Don't you say a word, Colonel,' one of them said. 'Hooraw for Sartoris!'

We galloped back; it was not far; we came to the field where the men had run, and the house with the barn, and in the road we could still see the scraps of harness where they had cut it. But the wagon was gone. Father led the old horse up to the house himself and knocked on the porch floor with his pistol, and the door of the house was still open, but nobody came. We put the old horse back into the barn; the pipe was still on the ground by the overturned shoeing box. We came back to the road and Father sat Jupiter in the mid­dle of the litter of harness scraps.

'You damn boys,' he said. 'You damn boys.'

When we went on now, we went slower; there were three men riding on ahead out of sight. In the afternoon, one of them came galloping back, and Father left Ringo and me three others, and he and the rest rode on; it was almost sunset when they came back with their horses sweated a little and leading two new horses with blue blankets under the saddles and U. S. burned on the horses' hips.

'I tole you they wasn't no Yankees gonter stop

56

THE UNVANQUISHED

Granny,' Ringo said. 'I bet she in Memphis right now.' 'I hope for your sake she is,' Father said. He jerked his hand at the new horses. 'You and Bayard get on them.' Ringo went to one of the new horses. 'Wait,' Father said; 'the other one is yours.'

'You mean hit belong to me?' Ringo said. 'No,' Father said. 'You borrowed it.' Then we all stopped and watched Ringo trying to get on his horse. The horse would stand perfectly still until he would feel Ringo's weight on the stirrup; then he would whirl completely around until his off side faced Ringo; the first time Ringo wound up lying on his back in the road.

'Get on him from that side,' Father said laughing. Ringo looked at the horse and then at Father. 'Git up from the wrong side?' Ringo said. 'I knowed Yankees wasn't folks, but I never knowed before they horses ain't horses.'

'Get on up,' Father said. 'He's blind in his near eye.' It got dark while we were still riding, and after a while I waked up with somebody holding me in the sad­dle, and we were stopped in some trees and there was a fire, but Ringo and I didn't even stay awake to eat, and then it was morning again and all of them were gone but Father and eleven more, but we didn't start off even then; we stayed there in the trees all day. 'What are we going to do now?' I said.

'I'm going to take you damn boys home, and then I've got to go to Memphis and find your grandmother,' Father said.

Just before dark we started; we watched Ringo trying to get on his horse from the nigh side for a while and then we went on. We rode until dawn and stopped again. This time we didn't build a fire; we didn't even unsaddle right away; we lay hidden in the woods, and then Father was waking me with his hand. It was after sunup and we lay there and listened to a column of Yankee infantry pass in the road, and then I slept again. It was noon when I waked. There was a fire now and a shote cooking over it, and we ate. 'We'll be home by midnight,' Father said.

Jupiter was rested. He didn't want the bridle for a

RETREAT

57

while and then he didn't want Father to get on him, and even after we were started he still wanted to go; Father had to hold him back between Ringo and me. Ringo was on his right. 'You and Bayard better swap sides,' Father told Ringo, 'so your horse can see what's beside him.'

'He going all right,' Ringo said. 'He like hit this way. Maybe because he can smell Jupiter another horse, and know Jupiter ain't fixing to get on him and ride.'

'All right,' Father said. 'Watch him though.' We went on. Mine and Ringo's horses could go pretty well, too; when I looked back, the others were a good piece behind, out of our dust. It wasn't far to sundown.

'I wish I knew your grandmother was all right,' Father said.

'Lord, Marse John,' Ringo said, 'is you still worrying about Granny? I been knowed her all my life; I ain't worried about her.'

Jupiter was fine to watch, with his head up and watch­ing my horse and Ringo's, and boring a little and just beginning to drive a little. 'I'm going to let him go a little,' Father said. 'You and Ringo watch yourselves.' I thought Jupiter was gone then. He went out like a rocket, flattening a little. But I should have known that Father still held him, because I should have seen that he was still boring, but there was a snake fence along the road, and all of a sudden it began to blur, and then I realised that Father and Jupiter had not moved up at all, that it was all three of us flattening out up toward the crest of the hill where the road dipped like three swallows, and I was thinking, 'We're holding Jupiter. We're holding Jupiter,' when Father looked back, and I saw his eyes and his teeth in his beard, and I knew he still had Jupiter on the bit.

He said, 'Watch out, now,' and then Jupiter shot out from between us; he went out exactly like I have seen a hawk come out of a sage field and rise over a fence.

When they reached the crest of the hill, I could see sky under them and the tops of the trees beyond the hill