Unvanquished

I reckon he was right. I reckon if we had let him go clean, they would have circled back and killed him

136 THE UNVANQUISHED

themselves before dark. Because—that was the night

it began to rain and we had to burn Ringo's stick because

Uncle Buck admitted now that his arm was getting bad—

we all ate supper together, and it was Ab Snopes that was

the most anxious about Uncle Buck, saying how it

wasn't any hard feelings and that he could see himself

that he had made a mistake in trusting the folks he did,

and that all he wanted to do now was to go back home,

because it was only the folks you had known all your

life that you could trust, and when you put faith in a

stranger you deserved what you got when you found

that what you had been eating and sleeping with was no

better than a passel of rattlesnakes. But as soon as

Uncle Buck tried to find out if it actually was Crumby,

he shut up and denied that he had ever seen him.

They left us early the next morning. Uncle Buck was sick by then; we offered to ride back home with him, or to let Ringo ride back with him, and I would keep Ab Snopes with me, but Uncle Buck wouldn't have

it.

'Grumby might capture him again and tie him to another sapling in the road, and you would lose tune burying him,' Uncle Buck said. 'You boys go on. It ain't going to be long now. And catch them!' He begun to holler, with his face flushed and his eyes bright, taking the pistol from around his neck and giving it to me, 'Catch them! Catch them!'

3

so Ringo and I went on. It rained all that day; now it began to rain all the tune. We had the two mules apiece; we went fast. It rained; sometimes we had no fire at all; that was when we lost count of tune, because one morning we came to a fire still burning and a hog they had not even had time to butcher; and sometimes we would ride all night, swapping mules when we had guessed that it had been two hours; and so, sometimes it would be night when we slept and sometimes it would be daylight, and we knew that they must have watched us from somewhere every day and that now that Uncle

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137

Buck was not with us, they didn't even dare to stop and try to hide.

Then one afternoon—the rain had stopped but the clouds had not broken and it was turning cold again— it was about dusk and we were galloping along an old road in the river bottom; it was dun and narrow under the trees and we were galloping when my mule shied and swerved and stopped, and I just did catch myself before I went over his head; and then we saw the thing hanging over the middle of the road from a limb. It was an old Negro man, with a rim of white hair and with his bare toes pointing down and his head on one side like he was thinking about something quiet. The note was pinned to him, but we couldn't read it until we rode on into a clearing. It was a scrap of dirty paper with big crude printed letters, like a child might have made them:

Last woning not thret. Turn back. The barer of this my promise and garntee. I have stood all I aim to stand children no children. G.

And something else written beneath it in a hand neat and small and prettier, than Granny's, only you knew that a man had written it; and while I looked at the dirty paper I could see him again, with his neat little feet and his little black-haired hands and his fine soiled shirt and his fine muddy coat, across the fire from us that night.

This is signed by others beside G., one of whm in particular havttg less scruples re children than he has. Nethless undents''1 desires to give both you and G. one more chance. Take it, and some day become a man. Refuse it, and cease even to be a child.

Ringo and I looked at each other. There had been a house here once, but it was gone now. Beyond the clear­ ing the road went on again into the thick trees hi the gray twilight. 'Maybe it will be tomorrow,' Ringo said.

It was tomorrow; we slept that night in a haystack, but we were riding again by daylight, following the dim

138

THE UNVANQUISHED

road along the river bottom. This time it was Ringo's mule that shied; the man had stepped out of the bushes that quick, with his fine muddy boots and coat and the pistol in his little black-haired hand, and only his eyes and his nose showing between his hat and his beard.

'Stay where you are,' he said. 'I will still be watching you.'

We didn't move. We watched him step back into the bushes, then the three of them came out—the bearded man and another man walking abreast and leading two saddled horses, and the third man walking just in front of