The officer looked at us. "Sixty-three from a hundred and ten leaves forty-seven," he said. He cursed. "Get forty-seven mules! Hurry!" He looked at us again. "Think you can beat me out of three mules, hey?"
"Forty-seven will do," Ringo said. "Only I reckon maybe we better eat something, like the paper mention."
We crossed the ford. We didn't stop; we went on as soon as they brought up the other mules, and some more of the women got on them. We went on. It was after sundown then, but we didn't stop.
"Hah!" Ringo said. "Whose hand was that?"
We went on until midnight before we stopped. This time it was Ringo that Granny was looking at. "Ringo," she said.
"I never said nothing the paper never said," Ringo said. "Hit was the one that said it; hit wasn't me. All I done was to told him how much the hundred and ten liked; I never said we liked that many. 'Sides, hit ain't no use in praying about hit now; ain't no telling what we gonter run into 'fore we gits home. The main thing now is, whut we gonter do with all these niggers."
"Yes," Granny said. We cooked and ate the food the cavalry officer gave us; then Granny told all the niggers that lived in Alabama to come forward. It was about half of them. "I suppose you all want to cross some more rivers and run after the Yankee Army, don't you?"
92
THE UNVANQUISHED
Granny said. They stood there, moving their feet in the dust. "What? Don't any of you want to?" They just stood there. "Then who are you going to mind from now on?" After a while, one of them said, "You, missy." "All right," Granny said. "Now listen to me. Go home. And if I ever hear of any of you straggling off like this again, I'll see to it. Now line up and come up here one at a time while we divide the food."
It took a long time until the last one was gone; when we started again, we had almost enough mules for everybody to ride, but not quite, and Ringo drove now. He didn't ask; he just got in and took the reins, with Granny on the seat by him; it was just once that she told him not to go so fast. So I rode in the back then, on one of the chests, and that afternoon I was asleep; it was the wagon stopping that woke me. We had just come down a hill onto a flat, and then I saw them beyond a field, about a dozen of them, cavalry hi blue coats. They hadn't seen us yet, trotting along, while Granny and Ringo watched them.
"They ain't hardly worth fooling with," Ringo said. "Still, they's horses."
"We've already got a hundred and ten," Granny said. "That's all the paper calls for."
"All right," Ringo said. "You wanter go on?" Granny didn't answer, sitting there drawn back a little, with her hand at her breast again. "Well, what you wanter do?" Ringo said. "You got to 'cide quick, or they be gone." He looked at her; she didn't move. Ringo leaned out of the wagon. "Hey!" he hollered. They looked back quick and saw us and whirled about. "Granny say come here!" Ringo hollered.
"You, Ringo," Granny whispered. "All right," Ringo said. "You want me to tell um to never mind?" She didn't answer; she was looking past Ringo at the two Yankees who were riding toward us across the field, with that kind of drawnback look on her face and her hand holding the front of her dress. It was a lieutenant and a sergeant; the lieutenant didn't look much older than Ringo and me. He saw Granny and took off his hat. And then all of a sudden she took her hand away from her chest; it had the paper hi it; she held
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it out to the lieutenant without saying a word. The lieutenant opened it, the sergeant looking over his shoulder. Then the sergeant looked at us.
"This says mules, not horses," he said.
"Just the first hundred was mules," Ringo said. "The extra twelve is horses."
"Damn it!" the lieutenant said. He sounded like a girl swearing. "I told Captain Bowen not to mount us with captured stock!"
"You mean you're going to give them the horses?" the sergeant said.
"What else can I do?" the lieutenant said. He looked like he was fixing to cry. "It's the general's own signature!"
So then we had enough stock for all of them to ride except about fifteen or twenty. We went on. The soldiers stood under a tree by the road, with their saddles and bridles on the ground beside them—all but the lieutenant. When we started again, he ran along by the wagon; he looked like he was going to cry, trotting along by the wagon with his hat hi his hand, looking at Granny.
"You'll meet some troops somewhere," he said. "I know you will. Will you tell them where we are and to send us something—mounts or wagons—anything we can ride in? You won't forget?"
"They's some of yawl about twenty or thirty miles back that claim to have three extry mules," Ringo said. "But when we sees any more of um, we'll tell um about yawl."
We went on. We came in sight of a town, but we went around it; Ringo didn't even want to stop and send the lieutenant's message in, but Granny made him stop and we sent the message in by one of the niggers.
"That's one more mouth to feed we got shed of," Ringo said.
We went on. We went fast now, changing the mules every few miles; a woman told us we were in Mississippi again, and then, hi the afternoon, we came over the hill, and there our chimneys were, standing up into the sunlight, and the cabin behind them and Louvinia bending over a washtub and the clothes on the line, flapping bright and peaceful.
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THE UNVANQUISHED
"Stop the wagon," Granny said.
We stopped—the wagon, the hundred and twenty-two mules and horses, and the niggers we never had had time to count.
Granny got out slow and turned to Ringo. "Get out," she said; then she looked at me. "You too," she said. "Because you said nothing at all." We got out of the wagon. She looked at us. "We have lied," she said.
"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
TERTIO
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 can't hold a candle to you when it comes to getting mules; maybe I can't 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