Read Online The Unvanquished by William Faulkner - Free Book Online Page B

prove your point,” Father said.
    “Depart? Like this? And have every darky and old woman between here and Memphis shooting at us for ghosts?.… I suppose we can have our blankets to sleep in, cant we?”
    “Certainly, Captain,” Father said. “And with yourpermission I shall now retire and leave you to set about that business.”
    We went back into the darkness. We could see them about the fire, spreading their blankets on the ground. “What in the tarnation do you want with sixty prisoners, John?” one of Father’s men said.
    “I dont,” Father said. He looked at me and Ringo. “You boys captured them; what do you want to do with them?”
    “Shoot em,” Ringo said. “This aint the first time me and Bayard ever shot Yankees.”
    “No,” Father said. “I have a better plan than that. One that Joe Johnston will thank us for.” He turned to the others behind him. “Have you got the muskets and ammunition?”
    “Yes, Colonel,” somebody said.
    “Grub, boots, clothes?”
    “Everything but the blankets, Colonel.”
    “We’ll pick them up in the morning,” Father said. “Now wait.”
    We sat there in the dark. The Yankees were going to bed. One of them went to the fire and picked up a stick. Then he stopped. He didn’t turn his head and we didn’t hear anything or see anybody move. Then he put the stick down again and came back to his blanket. “Wait,” Father whispered. After a while the fire had died down. “Now listen,” Father whispered. So we sat there in the dark and listened to the Yankees sneaking off into the bushes in their underclothes. Once we heard a splash and somebody cursing and then a sound like somebodyhad shut his hand over his mouth. Father didn’t laugh out loud; he just sat there shaking. “Look out for moccasins,” one of the others whispered behind us.
    It must have taken them two hours to get done sneaking off into the bushes. Then Father said, “Everybody get a blanket and let’s go to bed.”
3.
    The sun was high when he waked us. “Home for dinner,” he said. And so after a while we came to the creek; we passed the hole where Ringo and I learned to swim and we began to pass the fields too and we came to where Ringo and I hid last summer and saw the first Yankee we ever saw and then we could see the house too and Ringo said, “Sartoris, here we is; let them that want Memphis take hit and keep hit bofe.” Because we were looking at the house, it was like that day when we ran across the pasture and the house would not seem to get any nearer at all, we never saw the wagon at all, it was Father that saw it; it was coming up the road from Jefferson with Granny sitting thin and straight on the seat with Mrs Compson’s rose cuttings wrapped in a new piece of paper in her hand, and Joby yelling and lashing the strange horses and Father stopping us at the gate with his hat raised while the wagon went in first. Granny didn’t say a word. She just looked at Ringo and me and went on with us coming behind and she didn’t stop at the house. The wagon went on into the orchard and stopped by the hole where we had dug the trunk up and still Granny didn’t say a word, it was Father thatgot down and got into the wagon and took up one end of the trunk and said over his shoulder, “Jump up here, boys.”
    We buried the trunk again and we walked behind the wagon to the house. We went into the back parlor and Father put the musket back onto the pegs over the mantel and Granny put down Mrs Compson’s rose cuttings and took off her hat and looked at Ringo and me. “Get the soap,” she said.
    “We haven’t cussed any,” I said. “Ask Father.”
    “They behaved all right, Miss Rosa,” Father said.
    Granny looked at us. Then she came and put her hand on me and then on Ringo. “Go up stairs—” she said.
    “How did you and Joby manage to get those horses?” Father said.
    Granny was looking at us. “I borrowed them,” she said. “—upstairs and take off