Unvanquished

was just inside the door, with Father's old hat on her head rag and her mouth open, but we didn't stop. We ran on into the room where Granny was standing be­side the righted chair, her hand at her chest.

'We shot him, Granny!' I cried. 'We shot the bastud!'

'What?' She looked at me, her face the same color as her hair almost, her spectacles shining against her hair above her forehead. 'Bayard Sartoris, what did you say?'

'We killed him, Granny! At the gate! Only there was the whole army, too, and we never saw them, and now they are coming.'

She sat down; she dropped into the chair, hard, her hand at her breast. But her voice was strong as ever:

'What's this? You, Marengo! What have you done?'

'We shot the bastud, Granny!' Ringo said. 'We kilt him!'

Then Louvinia was there, too, with her mouth still open, too, and her face like somebody had thrown ashes at her. Only it didn't need her face; we heard the hoofs jerking and sliding in the dirt, and one of them holler­ing, 'Get around to the back there, some of you!' and we looked up and saw them ride past the window—the blue coats and the guns. Then we heard the boots and spurs on the porch.

'Granny!' I said. 'Granny!' But it seemed like none of us could move at all; we just had to stand there looking at Granny with her hand at her breast and her face looking like she had died and her voice like she had died too:

'Louvinia! What is this? What are they trying to tell me?' That's how it happened—like when once the musket decided to go off, all that was to occur after­ward tried to rush into the sound of it all at once. I could still hear it, my ears were still ringing, so that Granny and Ringo and I all seemed to be talking far away. Then she said, 'Quick! Here!' and then Ringo and I were squatting with our knees under our chins, on either side of her against her legs, with the hard points of the chair rockers jammed into our backs and her skirts spread over us like a tent, and the heavy feet

AMBUSCADE 3

coming in and—Lpuvinia told us afterward—the Yan kee sergeant shaking the musket at Granny and saying 'Come on, grandma! Where are they! We saw ther run in here!'

We couldn't see; we just squatted in a kind of fain gray light and that smell of Granny that her clothe and bed and room all had, and Ringo's eyes lookin like two plates of chocolate pudding and maybe both c us thinking how Granny had never whipped us for anj thing in our lives except lying, and that even when i wasn't even a told lie, but just keeping quiet, how sh would whip us first and then make us kneel down an kneel down with us herself to ask the Lord to forgrv us.

'You are mistaken,' she said. 'There are no childre in this house nor on this place. There is no one here i all except my servant and myself and the people i the quarters.'

'You mean you deny ever having seen this gun tx fore?'

'I do.' It was that quiet; she didn't move at all, si ting bolt upright and right on the edge of the chair, t keep her skirts spread over us. 'If you doubt me, yo may search the house.'

'Don't you worry about that; I'm going to. ... Sen some of the boys upstairs,' he said. 'If you find ar locked doors, you know what to do. And tell them fe lows out back to comb the barn and the cabins too.'

'You won't find any locked doors,' Granny said. 'V least, let me ask you------'

'Don't you ask anything, grandma. You set still. Be ter for you if you had done a little asking before yc sent them little devils out with this gun.'

'Was there------' We could hear her voice die aw?

and then speak again, like she was behind it with switch, making it talk. 'Is he—it—the one who------'

'Dead? Hell, yes! Broke his back and we had to sho< him!'

'Had to—you had—shoot------' I didn't know hon

fied astonishment either, but Ringo and Granny and were all three it.

'Yes, by God! Had to shoot him! The best horse in tl

32 THEUNVANQUISHED

whole army! The whole regiment betting on him for

next Sunday------' He said some more, but we were not

listening. We were not breathing either, glaring at each other in the gray gloom, and I was almost shouting, too, until Granny said it:

'Didn't—they didn't------ Oh, thank God! Thank

God!'

'We didn't------' Ringo said.

'Hush!' I said. Because we didn't have to say it, it was like we had had to hold our breaths for a long time without knowing it, and that now we could let go and breathe again. Maybe that was why we never heard the other man, when he came in, at all; it was Louvinia that saw that, too—a colonel, with a bright short beard and hard bright gray eyes, who looked at Granny sitting in the chair with her hand at her breast, and took off his hat. Only he was talking to the sergeant.

'What's this?' he said. 'What's going on here, Harri­son?'