The Unvanquished Page 10

  “Hit was the paper that lied; hit wasn’t us,” Ringo said.

  “The paper said a hundred and ten. We have a hundred and twenty-two,” Granny said. “Kneel down.”

  “But they stole them fore we did,” Ringo said.

  “But we lied,” Granny said. “Kneel down.” She knelt first. Then we all three knelt by the road while she prayed. The washing blew soft and peaceful and bright on the clothesline. And then Louvinia saw us; she was already running across the pasture while Granny was praying.

  Riposte in Tertio

  1.

  When Ab Snopes left for Memphis with the nine mules, Ringo and Joby and I worked on a new fence. Then Ringo went off on his mule and there was just Joby and me. Once Granny came down and looked at the new section of rails; the pen would be almost two acres larger now. That was the second day after Ringo left. That night while Granny and I were sitting before the fire, Ab Snopes came back. He said that he had got only four hundred and fifty dollars for the nine mules. That is, he took some money out of his pocket and gave it to Granny, and she counted it and said:

  “That’s only fifty dollars apiece.”

  “All right,” Ab said. “If you can do any better, you are welcome to take the next batch in yourself. I done already admitted I cant hold a candle to you when it comes to getting mules; maybe I cant even compete with you when it comes to selling them.” He chewed something—tobacco when he could get it; willow bark when he couldn’t—all the time and he never wore a collar and nobody ever admitted they ever saw him in a uniform, though when Father was away he would talk a lot now and then about when he was in Father’s troop and about what he and Father used to do. But when I asked Father about it once Father said, “Who? Ab Snopes?” and then laughed. But it was Father that told Ab to kind of look out for Granny while he was away; only he told me and Ringo to look out for Ab too, that Ab was all right in his way, but he was like a mule; while you had him in the traces, you better watch him. But Ab and Granny got along all right, though each time Ab took a batch of mules to Memphis and came back with the money, it would be like this. “Yes, sir,” Ab said, “it’s easy to talk about hit, setting here without no risk. But I’m the one that has to dodge them durn critters nigh a hundred miles into Memphis, with Forrest and Smith fighting on ever side of me and me never knowing when I wull run into a Confedrit or Yankee patrol and have ever last one of them confiscated off of me right down to the durn halters. And then I got to take them into the very heart of the Yankee army in Memphis and try to sell them to a e-quipment officer that’s liable at any minute to recognise them as the same mules he bought from me not two weeks ago. Yes. Hit’s easy enough for them to talk that sets here getting rich and takes no risk.”

  “I suppose you consider getting them back for you to sell taking no risk,” Granny said.

  “The risk of running out of them printed letterheads, sho,” Ab said. “If you aint satisfied with making just five or six hundred dollars at a time, why dont you requisition for more mules at a time? Why dont you write out a letter 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 it——”

  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. 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 aint 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 Mottstown. 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 cant 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 aint 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 for her to answer; he told her himself: “For six thou-sand 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 time 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 in 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, dont 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 dont 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 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 in it. Ab Snopes knew that, only I dont 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 on my pallet. The quilts were cold, but when the sound came 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 and the mule turning in the gate. 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 in code.

  “——th Illinois Infantry,” Ringo said. He came on toward the map on the bed. “Col. G. W. Newberry. Eight days out of Memphis.”

  Granny watched him while he came toward the bed. “How many?” she said.

  “Nineteen head,” Ringo said. “Four with; fifteen without.” Granny just watched him; she didn’t have to speak at all for the next one. “Twelve,” Ringo said. “Out of that Oxford batch.”

  Granny looked at the map; they both looked at it. “July the twenty-second,” Granny said.

  “Yessum,” Ringo said. Granny sat down on the saw chunk before the map. It was the only window shade Louvinia had; Ringo had drawn it (Father was right; he was smarter than me; he had even learned to draw, who had declined even to try to learn to print his name when Loosh was teaching me; who had learned to draw immediately by merely taking up the pen, who had no affinity for it and never denied he had not but who learned to draw simply because somebody had to.) with Granny showing him where to draw in the towns. But it was Granny who had done the writing, in her neat spidery hand like she wrote in the cookbook with, written on the map by each town: Colonel or Major or Captain So-and-So, Such-and-Such Regiment or Troop Then, under that: 12 or 9 or 21 mules And around four of them, town and writing and all, in purple pokeberry juice instead of ink, a circle with a date in it, and in big neat letters Complete.

  They looked at the map, Granny’s head white and still where the light came through the window on it, and Ringo leaning over her. He had got taller during the summer; he was taller than me now, maybe from the exercise of riding around the country, listening out for fresh regiments with mules, and he had got to treating me like Granny did—like he and Granny were the same age instead of him and me.

  “We just sold that twelve in July,” Granny said. “That leaves only seven. And you say that four of them are branded.”

  “That was back in July,” Ringo said. “It’s October now. They done forgot about hit. Sides, look here”—he put his finger on the map.—“We captived these here fourteen at Madison on the twelf of April, sont um to Memphis and sold um, and had all fourteen back and three more besides, here at Caledonia on the third of May.”

  “But that was four counties apart,” Granny said. “Oxford and Mottstown are only a few miles apart.”

  “Phut,” Ringo said, “these folks is too busy keeping us conquered to recognise no little ten or twelve head of stock. Sides, if they does recognise um in Memphis, that’s Ab Snopes’ trouble, not ourn.”

  “Mister Snopes,” Granny said.

  “All right,” Ringo said. He looked at the map. “Nineteen head, and not two days away. Jest forty-eight hours to have um in the pen.”

  Granny looked at the map. “I dont think we ought to risk it. We have been successful so far. Too successful perhaps.”

  “Nineteen head,” Ringo said. “Four to keep, and fifteen to sell back to um. That will make a even two hundred and forty-eight head of Confedrit mules we done recovered and collected interest on, let alone the money.”

  “I dont know what to do,” Granny said. “I want to think about it.”

  “All right,” Ringo said. Granny sat still beside the map. Ringo didn’t seem patient or impatient either; he just stood there, thin and taller than me against the light from the window, scratching himself; then he began to dig with his right hand little fingernail between his front teeth; he looked at his fingernail and spat something and then he said, “Must been five minutes now.” He turned his head a little toward me without moving. “Get the pen and ink,” he said.

  They kept the paper under the same floor board with the map and the tin can. I dont know how or where Ringo got it; he just came back one night with about a hundred sheets of it, stamped with the official letterhead: United States Forces. Department of Tennessee. He had got the pen and the ink at the same time, too; he took them from me and now it was Ringo sitting on the saw chunk and Granny leaning over him. Granny still had the first letter, the order that Colonel Dick had given us in Alabama last year; she kept it in the can, too, and by now Ringo had learned to copy it so that I dont believe that Colonel Dick himself could have told the difference; all they had to do was to put in the right regiment and whatever number of mules Ringo had examined and approved, and sign the right general’s name to it. At first Ringo had wanted to sign Grant’s name every time, and when Granny said that would not do anymore, Lincoln’s. At last Granny found out that Ringo objected to having the Yankees think that Father’s folks would have any dealings with anybody under the General-in-Chief. But at last he realised that Granny was right, that they would have to be careful about what general’s name was on the letter, as well as what mules they requisitioned. They were using General Smith now; he and Forrest were fighting every day up and down the road to Memphis, and Ringo always remembered to put in rope.

  He wrote the date and the town, the headquarters; he wrote in Colonel Newberry’s name and the first line. Then he stopped; he didn’t lift the pen. “What name you want this time?” he said.

  “I’m worried about this,” Granny said. “We ought not to risk it.”

  “We was on ‘F’ last time,” Ringo said. “It’s ‘H’ now. Think of a name in ‘H.’ ”

  “Mrs Mary Harris,” Granny said.

  “We done used Mary before,” Ringo said. “How about Plurella Harris?”

  “I’m worried about this time,” Granny said.

  “Miz Plurella Harris,” Ringo said, writing. “Now we done used up ‘P’ too. Member that, now. I reckon when we run out of letters, maybe we can start in on numbers. We will have nine hundred and ninety-nine before we have to worry, then.” He finished the order and signed General Smith to it; it looked exactly like the man who had signed the one Colonel Dick gave us was named General Smith, except for the number of mules. Then Granny turned and looked at me. “Tell Mr Snopes to be ready at sunup,” she said.

  We went in the wagon, with Ab Snopes and his two men following on two of the mules. We went just fast enough so that we would reach the bivouac at supper time, because Granny and Ringo had found out that that was the best time; that the stock would all be handy, and the men would be too hungry or sleepy or something to think very quick in case they happened to think, and we would just have time to get the mules and get out of sight before dark came. Then, if they should decide to chase us, by the time they found us in the dark, there wouldn’t be anything but the wagon with me and Granny in it to capture. So we did; only this time it was a good thing we did. We left Ab Snopes and his men in the woods beyond the bivouac, and Granny and Ringo and I drove up to Colonel Newberry’s tent at exactly the right time and Granny passed the sentry and went into the tent, walking thin and straight, with the shawl over her shoulders and Mrs Compson’s hat on her head and the parasol in one hand and hers and Ringo’s General Smith order in the other, and Ringo and I sat in the wagon and looked at the cook fires about the grove and smelled the coffee and the meat. It was always the same. Granny would disappear into the tent or the house and then in about a minute somebody would holler inside the tent or the house and then the sentry at the door would holler and then a sergeant or even sometimes an officer, only it would be a lieutenant, would hurry into the tent or the house and then Ringo and I would hear somebody cursing and then they would all come out, Granny walking straight and stiff and not looking much bigger than Cousin Denny at Hawkhurst and three or four mad Yankee officers behind her and getting madder all the time. Then they would bring up the mules, tied together; Granny and Ringo could guess to the second now; it would be just enough light left to tell that they were mules, and Granny would get into the wagon and Ringo would hang
his legs over the tail gate, holding the lead rope, and we would go on, not fast, so that when we came back to where Ab Snopes and his men waited in the woods you could not even tell that they were mules. Then Ringo would get onto the lead mule, and they would turn off into the woods, and Granny and I would go on home.

  That’s what we did this time, only this time it happened. We couldn’t even see our own team, when we heard them coming, the galloping hooves. They came up fast and mad; Granny jerked up quick and straight, holding Mrs Compson’s parasol. “Damn that Ringo!” she said. “I had my doubts about this time all the while.” Then they were all around us, like the dark itself had fallen down on us full of horses and mad men shouting “Halt! Halt! If they try to escape, shoot the damn horses.” with me and Granny sitting in the wagon and men jerking the team back and the team jerking and clashing in the traces and some of them hollering, “Where are the mules? The mules are gone!” and the officer cursing and shouting of course they are gone and cursing Granny and the darkness and the men and the mules. Then somebody struck a light and we saw the officer sitting his horse beside the wagon while one of the soldiers lit one lightwood splinter from another.

  “Where are the mules?” the officer shouted.

  “What mules?” Granny said.

  “Dont lie to me!” the officer shouted. “The mules you just left camp with on that forged order. By God, we’ve got you this time. We knew you’d turn up again. Orders went out to the whole department to watch for you a month ago! That damn Newberry had his copy in his pocket while you were talking to him.” He cursed Colonel Newberry now. “By God, they ought to let you go free and courtmartial him. Where’s the nigger boy and the mules, Mrs Plurella Harris?”

  “I dont know what you are talking about,” Granny said. “I have no mules except this team I am driving. And my name is Rosa Millard; I am on my way home, beyond Jefferson.”