down again and came back to his blanket. 'Wait,' Father whispered. After a while the fire had died down. 'Now listen,' Father whispered. So we sat there in the dark and listened to the Yankees sneaking off into the bushes in their underclothes. Once we heard a 'splash and somebody cursing, and then a sound like somebody had shut his hand over his mouth. Father didn't laugh out loud; he just sat there shaking.
'Look out for moccasins,' one of the others whispered behind us.
It must have taken them two hours to get done sneaking off into the bushes. Then Father said, 'Everybody get a blanket and let's go to bed.'
The sun was high when he waked us. 'Home for dinner,' he said. And so, after a while, we came to the creek; we passed the hole where Ringo and I learned to swim and we began to pass the fields, too, and we came to where Ringo and I hid last summer and saw the first Yankee we ever saw, and then we could see the house, too, and Ringo said, 'Sartoris, here we is; let them that want Memphis take hit and keep hit bofe.' Because we were looking at the house, it was like that
day when we ran across the pasture and the house would not seem to get any nearer at all. We never saw the wagon at all; it was Father that saw it; it was com- -ing up the road from Jefferson, with Granny sitting thin and straight on the seat with Mrs. Compson's rose cuttings wrapped in a new piece of paper in her hand, and Joby yelling and lashing the strange horses, and Father stopping us at the gate with his hat raised while the wagon went hi first. Granny didn't say a word. She just looked at Ringo and me, and went on, with us coming behind, and she didn't stop at the house. The wagon went on into the orchard and stopped by the hole where we had dug the trunk up, and still Granny didn't say a word; it was Father that got down and got into the wagon and took up one end of the trunk and said over his shoulder,
'Jump up here, boys.'
We buried the trunk again, and we walked behind the wagon to the house. We went into the back parlor, and Father put the musket back onto the pegs over the mantel, and Granny put down Mrs. Compson's rose cuttings and took off her hat and looked at Ringo and me. 'Get the soap,' she said. 'We haven't cussed any,' I said. 'Ask Father.' 'They behaved all right, Miss Rosa,' Father said. Granny looked at us. Then she came and put her hand
on me and then on Ringo. 'Go upstairs------' she said.
'How did you and Joby manage to get those horses?' Father said.
Granny was looking at us. 'I borrowed them,' she
said.------'upstairs and take off your------'
'Who from?' Father said.
Granny looked at Father for a second, then back at
us. 'I don't know. There was nobody there.------take
off your Sunday clothes,' she said.
It was hot the next day, so we only worked on the new pen until dinner and quit. It was even too hot for Ringo and me to ride our horses. Even at six o'clock it was still hot; the rosin was still cooking out of the front steps at six o'clock. Father was sitting hi his shirt sleeves and his stockings, with his feet on the porch railing, and Ringo and I were sitting on the steps wait-
THE UNVANQUISHED
ing for it to get cool enough to ride, when we saw them coming into the gate—about fifty of them, coming 'fast, and I remember how hot the blue coats looked. 'Father,' I said. 'Father!'
'Don't run,' Father said. 'Ringo, you go around the house and catch Jupiter. Bayard, you go through the house and tell Louvinia to have my boots and pistols at the back door; then you go and help Ringo. Don't run, now; walk.'
Louvinia was shelling peas in the kitchen. When she stood up, the bowl broke on the floor. 'Oh Lord,' she said. 'Oh Lord. Again?'
I ran then. Ringo was just coming around the corner of the house; we both ran. Jupiter was in his stall, eating; he slashed out at us, his feet banged against the wall right by my head twice, like pistols, before Ringo jumped down from the hayrack onto his head. We got the bridle on him, but he wouldn't take the saddle. 'Get your horse and shove his blind side up!' I was hollering at Ringo when Father came in, running, with his boots in his hand, and we looked up the hill toward the house and saw one of them riding around the corner with a short carbine, carrying it in one hand like a lamp.
'Get away,' Father said. He went up onto Jupiter's bare back like a bird, holding him for a moment and looking down at us. He didn't speak loud at all; he didn't even sound in a hurry. 'Take care of Granny,' he said. 'All right, Jupe. Let's go.'
Jupiter's head was pointing down the hallway toward the lattice half doors at the back; he went out again, out from between me and Ringo like he did yesterday, with Father already lifting him and I thinking, 'He can't jump through that little hole.' Jupiter took the doors on his chest, only they seemed to burst before he even touched them, and I saw him and Father again like they were flying in the air, with broken planks whirling and spinning around them when they went out of sight. And then the Yankee rode into the barn and saw us, and threw down with the carbine and shot at us point-blank with one hand, like it was a pistol, and said, 'Where'd he go, the rebel son of a bitch?'
Louvinia kept on trying to tell us about it while we
RETREAT
were running and looking back at the smoke beginning to come out of the downstairs windows: 'Marse John setting on the porch and them Yankees riding through the flower beds and say, 'Brother, we wanter know where the rebel John Sartoris live,' and Marse John say, 'Hey?' with his hand to his ear and his face look like he born loony like Unc Few Mitchell, and Yankee say, 'Sartoris, John Sartoris,' and Marse John say, 'Which? Say which?' until he know Yankee stood about all he going to, and Marse John say, 'Oh, John Sartoris. Whyn't you say so in the first place?' and Yankee cussing him for idiot fool, and Marse John say, 'Hey? How's that?' and Yankee say, 'Nothing! Nothing! Show me where John Sartoris is 'fore I put rope around your neck too!' and Marse John say, 'Lemme git my shoes and I show you,' and come into house limping, and then run down the hall at me and say, 'Boots and pistols, Louvinia. Take care of Miss Rosa and the chillen,' and I go to the door, but I just a nigger. Yankee say, 'That
