Unvanquished

like they were flying, sailing out into the air to drop down beyond the hill like the hawk; only they didn't. It was like Father stopped Jupiter hi mid-air on

58 THEUNVANQUISHED

top of the hill; I could see him standing in the stirrups and his arm up with his hat in it, and then Ringo and I were on them before we could even begin to think to pull, and Jupiter reined back onto his haunches, and when Father hit Ringo's horse across the blind eye with the hat I saw Ringo's horse swerve and jump clean over the snake fence, and I heard Ringo hollering as I went on over the crest of the hill, with Father just behind me shooting his pistol and shouting, 'Surround them, boys! Don't let a man escape!'

There is a limit to what a child can accept, assimilate; not to what it can believe because a child can believe anything, given time, but to what it can accept, a limit hi time, in the very time which nourishes the believing of the incredible. And I was still a child at that moment when Father's and my horses came over the hill and seemed to cease galloping and to float, hang suspended rather in a dimension without time in it while Father held my horse reined back with one hand and I heard Ringo's half-blind beast crashing and blundering among the trees to our right and Ringo yelling, and looked quietly down at the scene beneath rather than before us—the dusk, the fire, the creek running quiet and peaceful beneath a bridge, the muskets all stacked care­fully and neatly and nobody within fifty feet of them; and the men, the faces, the blue Yankee coats and pants and boots, squatting about the fire with cups in their hands and looking toward the crest of the hill with the same peaceful expression on all their faces like so many dolls. Father's hat was flung onto his head now, his teeth were showing and his eyes were bright as a cat's.

'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

RETREAT

59

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 hol­ lered, '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.

60

THE UNVANQUISHED

RETREAT

61

'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