“Them hosses was the puttiest livin’ things I ever see. They went off together like two hawks, neck and neck. They was outen sight in no time, with dust swirlin’ behind, but we could faller ’em fer a ways by the dust they left, watchin’ it kind of suckin’ on down the road like one of these here ottomobiles was in the middle of it. When they come to whar the road drapped down to the river, Cunnel had Zeb beat by about three hundred yards.
Thar was a spring-branch jest under the ridge, and when Cunnel sailed over the rise, thar was a comp’ny of Yankee cavalry with their hosses picketed and their muskets stacked, eatin’ dinner by the spring. Cunnel says they was a-settin’ thar gapin’ at the rise when he come over hit, holdin’ cups of cawfee and hunks of bread in their hands and their muskets stacked about fo’ty foot away, buggin’ their eyes at him.
“It was too late fer him to turn back, anyhow, but I don’t reckon he would have ef they’d been time. He jest spurred down the ridge and rid in amongst ’em, scatterin’ cook-fires and guns and men, shoutin’, ‘Surround, ’em, boys! Ef you move, you air dead men.’
One or two of ’em made to break away, but Cunnel drawed his pistols and let ’em off, and they come back and scrouged in amongst the others, and thar they set, still a-holdin’ their dinner, when Zeb come up. And that was the way we found ’em when we got thar ten minutes later.” Old man Falls spat again, neatly and brownly, and ‘he chuckled. His eyes shone like periwinkles. “That cawfee was sho’ mighty fine,” he added.
“And thar we was, with a passel of prisoners we didn’t have no use fer. We held ’em all that day and et their grub; and when night come we taken and throwed their muskets into the branch and taken their ammuninon and the rest of the grub and put a gyard on their hosses; then the rest of us bid down. And all that night we laid thar in them fine Yankee blankets, listenin’ to them prisoners sneakin’ away one at a time, slippin’ down the bank into the branch and wading off.
Time to time one would slip er make a splash er somethin’; then they’d all git right still fer a spell. But putty soon we’d hear ’em at it again, crawlin’ through the bushes to’a’ds the water, and us layin’ thar with blanket-aidges held agin our faces. Hit was nigh dawn ’fore the last one had snuck off in a way that suited ’im.
“Then Cunnel from whar he was a-Iayin’ let out a yell them pore critters could hear fer a mile.
“‘Go it, Yank; he says, ‘and look out fer moccasins!’
“Next mawnin’ we saddled up and loaded our plunder and ever’ man taken him a hoss and lit out fer home. We’d been home two weeks and Cunnel had his cawn laid by when we heard ’bout Van Dorn ridin’ into Holly Springs and burnin’ Grant’s sto’s.
Seems like he never needed no help from us, noways.” He chewed his tobacco for a time, quietly retrospective, reliving, in the company of men now dust with the dust for which they had, unwittingly perhaps, fought, those gallant, pinch-bellied days into which few who now trod that earth could enter with him.
Old Bayard shook the ash from his cigar. “Will,” he said, “what the devil were you folks fighting about, anyhow?”
“Bayard;” old man Falls answered, “be damned ef I ever did know.”
After old man Falls had departed with his small parcel and his innocently bulging cheek, old Bayard sat and smoked his cigar. Presently he raised his hand and touched the wen on his face, but lightly, remembering old man Falls’ parting stricture; and recalling this, the thought that it might not yet be too late, that he might yet remove the paste with water, followed.
He rose and crossed to the lavatory in the corner of the room. Above it was fixed a small cabinet with a mirror in the door, and in it he examined the black spot on his cheek, touching it again with his fingers, then examining his hand. Yes, it might still come off. . . .
But be damned if he would; be damned to a man who didn’t know his own mind. He flung his cigar away and quitted the room and tramped through the lobby toward the door where his chair sat. But before he reached the door he turned about and came up to the cashier’s window, behind which the cashier sat in a geen eyeshade.
“Res,” he said.
The cashier looked up. “Yes, Colonel?”
“Who is that damn boy that hangs around here, looking through that window all day?” Old Bayard lowered his voice within a pitch or so of an ordinary conversational tone.
“What boy, Colonel?”
Old Bayard pointed, and the cashier raised himself on his stool and peered over the partition and saw, beyond the indicated window, a boy of ten or twelve watching him with an innocent and casual air. “Oh. That’s Will Beard’s boy, from up at the boarding-house,” he shouted. “Friend of Byron’s, I think.”
“What’s he doing around here? Every time I walk through here, there he is looking in that window. What does he want?”
“Maybe he’s a bank robber,” the cashier suggested.
“What?” Old Bayard cupped his ear fiercely in his palm.
“Maybe he’s a bank robber,” the other shouted, leaning forward on his stool. Old Bayard snorted and tramped violently on and slammed his chair back against the door. The cashier sat lumped and shapeless on his stool, rumbling deep within his gross body. He said without turning his head: “Colonel’s let Will Falls treat him with that salve.” Snopes at his desk made no reply; did not raise his head. After a time the boy moved, and drifted casually and innocently away.
Virgil Beard now possessed a pistol that projected a stream of ammoniac water excruciatingly painful to the eyes, a small magic lantern, and an ex-candy showcase in which he kept birds’ eggs and an assortment of insects that had died slowly on pins, and a modest hoard of nickels and dimes.
In July Snopes had changed his domicile. He avoided Virgil on the street and so for two weeks he had not seen the boy at all, until one evening after supper he emerged from the front door of his new abode and found Virgil sitting blandly and politely on the front steps.
“Hi, Mr. Snopes,” Virgil said.
6
Miss Jenny’s exasperation and rage when old Bayard arrived home that afternoon was unbounded. “You stubborn old fool,” she stormed, “can’t Bayard kill you fast enough that you’ve got to let that old quack of a Will Falls give you blood poisoning?
After what Dr. Alford told you, when even Loosh Peabody, who thinks a course of quinine or calomel will cure anything from a broken neck to chilblains, agreed with him? I’ll declare, sometimes I just lose patience with you folks; wonder what crime I seem to be expiating by having to live with you.
Soon as Bayard sort of quiets down and I can quit jumping every time the ’phone rings, you have to go and let that old pauper daub your face up with axle grease and lampblack. I’m a good mind to pack up and get out, and start life over in some place where they never heard of a Sartoris.” She raged and stormed on; old Bayard raged in reply, with violent words and profane, and their voices swelled and surged through the house until Elnora and Simon in the kitchen moved furtively, with cocked ears.
Finally old Bayard tramped from the house and mounted his horse and rode away, leaving Miss Jenny to wear her rage out upon the empty air, and then there was peace for a time.
But at supper the storm brewed and burst again. Behind the swing door of the butler’s pantry Simon could hear them, and young Bayard too, trying to shout them down. “Let up, let up,” he howled, “for God’s sake. I can’t hear myself chew, even.”
“And you’re another one.” Miss Jenny turned promptly upon him. “You’re just as trying as he is. You and your stiff-necked, sullen ways. Helling around the country in that car just because you think there may be somebody who cares a whoop whether or not you break your worthless neck, and then coming in to the supper table smelling like a stable hand! Just because you went to a war. Do you think you’re the only person in the world that ever went to a war? Do you reckon that when my Bayard came back from The War that he made a nuisance of himself to everybody that had to live with him? But he was a gentleman: he raised the devil like a gentleman, not like you Mississippi country people. Clod hoppers. Look what he did with just a horse,” she added. “He didn’t need any flying machine.”
“Look at the little two-bit war he went to,” young Bayard rejoined, “a war that was so sorry that grandfather wouldn’t even stay up there in Virginia where it was.”
“And nobody wanted him at it,” Miss Jenny retorted, “a man that would get mad just because his men deposed him and elected a better colonel in his place. Got mad and came back to the country to lead a bunch of red-neck brigands.”
“Little two-bit war,” young Bayard repeated, “and on a horse. Anybody can go to a war on a horse. No chance for
