AMBUSCADE
29
down the musket. It weighed about fifteen pounds, though it was not the weight so much as the length; when it came free, it and the chair and all went down with a tremendous clatter. We heard Granny sit up in her bed upstairs, and then we heard her voice: "Who is it?"
"Quick!" I said. "Hurry!"
"I'm scared," Ringo said.
"You, Bayard!" Granny said. . . . "Louvinia!"
We held the musket between us like a log of wood. "Do you want to be free?" I said. "Do you want to be free?"
We carried it that way, like a log, one at each end, running. We ran through the grove toward the road and ducked down behind the honeysuckle just as the horse came around the curve. We didn't hear anything else, maybe because of our own breathing or maybe because we were not expecting to hear anything else. We didn't look again either; we were too busy cocking the musket. We had practiced before, once or twice when Granny was not there and Joby would come in to examine it and change the cap on the nipple. Ringo held it up and I took the barrel in both hands, high, and drew myself up and shut my legs about it and slid down over the hammer until it clicked. That's what we were doing, we were too busy to look; the musket was already riding up across Ringo's back as he stooped, his hands on his knees and panting, "Shoot the bastud! Shoot him!" and then the sights came level, and as I shut my eyes I saw the man and the bright horse vanish in smoke. It sounded like thunder and it made as much smoke as a brush fire, and I heard the horse scream, but I didn't see anything else; it was Ringo wailing, "Great God, Bayard! Hit's the whole army!"
the house didn't seem to get any nearer; it just hung there in front of us, floating and increasing slowly in size, like something in a dream, and I could hear Ringo moaning behind me, and farther back still the shouts and the hoofs. But we reached the house at last; Louvinia
r
30
THE 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: