Unvanquished

and I thinking quietly, 'He still don't know that that shoe is gone.' But that was all, and Uncle Buck sitting on his mule with the pistol raised in his hand and his beard blown back over his shoulder and the leather thong of the pistol hanging down his back like a girl's pigtail, and his mouth open and his eyes blinking at me and Ringo.

'What in the tarnation hell!' he said. 'Well, let's go back to the road. Whatever it was has done gone that way too.'

So we had turned. Uncle Buck had put the pistol up and his stick had begun to beat the mule again when we saw what it was, what it meant.

It was Ab Snopes. He was lying on his side, tied hand and foot, and hitched to a sapling; we could see the marks in the mud where he had tried to roll back into the underbrush until the rope stopped him. He had been watching us all the time, lying there with his face in the shape of snarling and not making a sound after he found out he could not roll out of sight. He was watching our mules' legs and feet under the bushes; he hadn't thought to look any higher yet, and so he did not know that we could see him; he must have thought that we had just spied him, because all of a sudden he began to jerk and thrash on the ground, hollering, 'Help! Help! Help!'

We untied him and got him onto his feet, and he was still hollering, loud, with his face and his arms jerking, about how they had caught and robbed him, and they would have killed him if they hadn't heard us coming

134 THE UN VANQUISHED

and run away; only his eyes were not hollering. They were watching us, going fast and quick from Ringo to me to Uncle Buck, and then at Ringo and me again, and they were not hollering, like his eyes belonged to one man and his gaped and yelling mouth belonged to an­other.

'So they caught you, hey?' Uncle Buck said. 'A In­nocent and unsuspecting traveler. I reckon the name of them would never be Grumby now, would it?'

It was like we might have stopped and built a fire and thawed out that moccasin—just enough for it to find out where it was, but not enough for it to know what to do about it. Only I reckon it was a high com­pliment to set Ab Snopes xip with a moccasin, even a little one. I reckon it was bad for him. I reckon he realised that they had thrown him back to us with­out mercy, and that if he tried to save himself from us at their expense, they would come back and kill him. I reckon he decided that the worst thing that could hap­pen to him would be for us not to do anything to him at all. Because he quit jerking his arms; he even quit lying; for a minute his eyes and his mouth were telling the

same thing.

'} made a mistake,' he said. 'I admit hit. I reckon everybody does. The question is, what are you fellows going to do about hit?'

'Yes,' Uncle Buck said. 'Everybody makes mistakes. Your trouble is, you make too many. Because mistakes are bad. Look at Rosa Millard. She just made one, and look at her. And you have made two.'

Ab Snopes watched Uncle Buck. 'What's them?'

'Being born too soon and dying too late,' Uncle

Buck said.

He looked at all of us, fast; he didn't move, still talking to Uncle Buck. 'You ain't going to kill me. You

don't dast.'

'I don't even need to,' Uncle Buck said. 'It wasn't my grandmaw you sicked onto that snake den.'

He looked at me now, but his eyes were going again, back and forth across me at Ringo and Uncle Buck; it was the two of them again now, the eyes and the voice. 'Why, then I'm all right. Bayard ain't got no hard feel-

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755

ings against me. He knows hit was a pure accident; that we was doing hit for his sake and his paw a.nd them niggers at home. Why, here hit's a whole year and it was me that holp and tended Miss Rosa when she

never had ara living soul but them chil-------' Now the

voice began to tell the truth again; it was the eyes and the voice that I was walking toward. He fell back, crouching, his hands flung up.

Behind me, Uncle Buck said, 'You, Ringo! Stay back.'

He was walking backward now, with his hands flung up, hollering, 'Three on one! Three on one!'

'Stand still,' Uncle Buck said. 'Ain't no three on you. I don't see nobody on you but one of them chil­dren you was just mentioning.' Then we were both down in the mud; and then I couldn't see him, and I couldn't seem to find him any more, not even with the hollering; and then I was fighting three or four for a long time before Uncle Buck and Ringo held me, and then I cuukl see him again, lying on the ground with his arms over his face. 'Get up,' Uncle Buck said.

'No,' he said. 'Three of you can jump on me and knock me down again, but you got to pick me up first to do hit. I ain't got no rights and justice here, but you can't keep me from protesting hit.'

'Lift him up,' Uncle Buck said. 'I'll hold Bayard.'

Ringo lifted him; it was like lifting up a half-filled cotton sack. 'Stand up, Mr. Ab Snopes,' Ringo said. But he would not stand, not even after Ringo and Uncle Buck tied him to the sapling and Ringo had taken off his and Uncle Buck's and.Ab Snopes' galluses and knotted them together with the bridle reins from the mules. He just hung there in the rope, not even flinching when the lash fell, saying, 'That's hit. Whup me. Lay hit on me; you got me three to one.'

'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.'