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, in 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.
“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 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 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 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, ma’am,” 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 Confed’rit 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 ain’t satisfied with making just five or six hundred dollars at a time, why don’t you requisition for more mules at a time?
Why don’t 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 hit.”
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 ain’t 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, can’t 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 ain’t 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, don’t 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 don’t 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
