Unvanquished

and have General Smith turn over his com­missary train to you, with about four wagonloads of new shoes in hit? Or, better than that, pick out the day when the pay officer is coming around and draw for the whole pay wagon; then we wouldn't even have to bother about finding somebody to buy hit.'

The money was in new bills. Granny folded them carefully and put them into the can, but she didn't put the can back inside her dress right away (and she never put it back under the loose board beneath her bed while Ab was about the place). She sat there looking at the fire, with the can in her hands and the string which sus­pended it looping down from around her neck. She didn't look any thinner or any older. She didn't look sick either.

RIPOSTE IN TERTIO

97

She just looked like somebody that has quit sleeping at night.

'We have more mules,' she said, 'if you would just sell them. There are more than a hundred of them that

you refuse------'

'Refuse is right,' Ab said; he began to holler now: 'Yes, sir! I reckon I ain't got much sense, or I wouldn't be doing this a-tall. But I got better sense than to take them mules to a Yankee officer and tell him that them hip patches where you and that durn nigger burned out

the U. S. brand are trace galls. By Godfrey, I------'

'That will do,' Granny said. 'Have you had some supper?'

'I------' Ab said. Then he quit hollering. He chewed

again. 'Yessum,' he said. 'I done et.'

'Then you had better go home and get some rest,' Granny said. 'There is a new relief regiment at Motts-town. Ringo went down two days ago to see about it. So we may need that new fence soon.'

Ab stopped chewing. 'Is, huh?' he said. 'Out of Memphis, likely. Likely got them nine mules in it we just got shet of.'

Granny looked at him. 'So you sold them further back than three days ago, then,' Granny said. Ab started to say something, but Granny didn't give him time. 'You go on home and rest up,' she said. 'Ringo will probably be back tomorrow, and then you'll have a chance to see if they are the same mules. I may even have a chance to find out what they say they paid you for them.'

Ab stood in the door and looked at Granny. 'You're a good un,' he said. 'Yessum. You got my respect. John Sartoris, himself, can't tech you. He hells all over the country day and night with a hundred armed men, and it's all he can do to keep them in crowbait to ride on. And you set here in this cabin, without nothing but a handful of durn printed letterheads, and you got to build a bigger pen to hold the stock you ain't got no market yet to sell. How many head of mules have you sold back to the Yankees?'

'A hundred and five,' Granny said. 'A hundred and five,' Ab said. 'For how much active cash money, in round numbers?' Only he didn't wait

T'

98

THE UNVANQUISHED

for her to answer; he told her himself: 'For six thou­sand and seven hun-dred and twen-ty-two dollars and six- ty-five cents, lessen the dollar and thirty-five cents I spent for whisky that tune the snake bit one of the mules.' It sounded round when he said it, like big sawn-oak wheels running in wet sand. 'You started out a year ago with two. You got forty-odd hi the pen and twice that many out on receipt. And I reckon you have sold about fifty-odd more back to the Yankees a hundred and five times, for a grand total of six thousand, seven hundred and twenty-two dollars and sixty-five cents, and in a day or so you are aiming to requisition a few of them back again, I understand.'

He looked at me. 'Boy,' he said, 'when you grow up and start out for yourself, don't you waste your time learning to be a lawyer or nothing. You just save your money and buy you a handful of printed letterheads—it don't matter much what's on them, I reckon—and you hand them to your grandmaw here and just ask her to give you the job of counting the money when hit comes in.'

He looked at Granny again. 'When Kernel Sartoris left here, he told me to look out for you against General 1 Grant and them. What I wonder is, if somebody hadn't better tell Abe Lincoln to look out for General Grant against Miz Rosa Millard. I bid you one and all good night.'

He went out. Granny looked at the fire, the tin can in her hand. But it didn't have any six thousand dollars in it. It didn't have a thousand dollars hi it. Ab Snopes knew that, only I don't suppose that it was possible for him to believe it. Then she got up; she looked at me, quiet. She didn't look sick; that wasn't it. 'I reckon it's bedtime,' she said. She went beyond the quilt; it came back and hung straight down from the rafter, and I heard the loose board when she put the can away under the floor, and then I heard the sound the bed made when she would hold to the post to kneel down. It would make another sound when she got up, but when it made that sound, I was already undressed and hi my pallet. The quilts were cold, but when the sound came

RIPOSTEINTERTIO 99

I had been there long enough for them to begin to get warm.

Ab Snopes came and helped me and Joby with the new fence the next day, so we finished it early in the afternoon and I went back to the cabin. I was almost there when I saw Ringo on the mule turning hi at the gates. Granny had seen him, too, because when I went inside the quilt, she was kneeling in the corner, taking the window shade from under the loose floor board. While she was unrolling the shade on the bed we heard Ringo getting off the mule, hollering at it while he hitched it to Louvinia's clothesline.

Then Granny stood up and looked at the quilt until Ringo pushed it aside and came in. And then they sounded like two people playing a guessing game hi code.

'------th Illinois Infantry,' Ringo said. He came on

toward the map on the bed. 'Col. G. W. Newberry. Eight days out of Memphis.'