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The Unvanquished
a long way, but it wasn’t far. You could have put a silver dollar down on the geography page with the center of it at Jefferson and we would have never ridden out from under it.

And we were closer behind them than we knew, because one night we had ridden late without coming to a house or a shed to camp in, and so we stopped and Ringo said he would scout around a little, because all we had left to eat was the bone of a ham; only it was more likely Ringo was trying to dodge helping to get in the firewood.

So Uncle Buck and I were spreading down pine branches to sleep on when we heard a shot and then a sound like a brick chimney falling onto a rotten shingle roof, and then the horses, starting fast and dying away, and then I could hear Ringo yelling. He had come onto a house; he thought it was deserted, and then he said it looked too dark, too quiet.

So he climbed onto a shed against the back wall, and he said he saw the crack of light and he was trying to pull the shutter open careful, but it came loose with a sound like a shot, and he was looking into a room with a candle stuck into a bottle and either three or thirteen men looking right at him; and how somebody hollered, “There they are!” and another man jerked out a pistol and one of the others grabbed his arm as it went off, and then the whole shed gave way under him, and he said how he lay there hollering and trying to get untangled from the broken planks and heard them ride away.

“So he didn’t shoot at you,” Uncle Buck said.
“Hit warn’t none of his fault if he never,” Ringo said.

“But he didn’t,” Uncle Buck said. But he wouldn’t let us go on that night. “We won’t lose any distance,” he said. “They are flesh and blood, the same as we are. And we ain’t scared.”
So we went on at daylight, following the hoof-prints now. Then we had three more notches in the stick; that night Ringo put the last notch in it that he was going to, but we didn’t know it.

We were sitting in front of a cotton pen where we were going to sleep, eating a shote that Ringo had found, when we heard the horse. Then the man begun to holler, “Hello! Hello!” and then we watched him ride up on a good short-coupled sorrel mare, with his neat little fine made boots, and his linen shirt without any collar, and a coat that had been good, too, once, and a broad hat pulled down so that all we could see was his eyes and nose between the hat and his black beard.

“Howdy, men,” he said.

“Howdy,” Uncle Buck said. He was eating a sparerib; he sat now with the rib in his left hand and his right hand lying on his lap just inside his coat; he wore the pistol on a loop of lace leather around his neck and stuck into his pants like a lady’s watch. But the stranger wasn’t looking at him; he just looked at each of us once and then sat there on the mare, with both his hands on the pommel in front of him.

“Mind if I light and warm?” he said.
“Light,” Uncle Buck said.

He got off. But he didn’t hitch the mare. He led her up and he sat down opposite us with the reins in his hand. “Give the stranger some meat, Ringo,” Uncle Buck said. But he didn’t take it. He didn’t move.

He just said that he had eaten, sitting there on the log with his little feet side by side and his elbows out a little and his two hands on his knees as small as a woman’s hands and covered with a light mat of fine black hair right down to the finger nails, and not looking at any of us now. I don’t know what he was looking at now.

“I have just ridden out from Memphis,” he said. “How far do you call it to Alabama?”

Uncle Buck told him, not moving either, with the sparerib still raised in his left hand and the other hand lying just inside his coat. “You going to Alabama, hey?”

“Yes,” the stranger said. “I’m looking for a man.” And now I saw that he was looking at me from under his hat. “A man named Grumby. You people in these parts may have heard of him too.”
“Yes,” Uncle Buck said, “we have heard of him.”

“Ah,” the stranger said. He smiled; for a second his teeth looked white as rice inside his ink-colored beard. “Then what I am doing does not have to be secret.” He looked at Uncle Buck now. “I live up in Tennessee. Grumby and his gang killed one of my niggers and ran my horses off. I’m going to get the horses back. If I have to take Grumby in the bargain, that will suit me too.”

“Sho, now,” Uncle Buck said. “So you look to find him in Alabama?”

“Yes. I happen to know that he is now headed there. I almost caught him yesterday; I did get one of his men, though the others escaped me. They passed you all sometime last night, if you were in this neighborhood then. You would have heard them, because when I last saw them, they were not wasting any time. I managed to persuade the man I caught to tell me where they are to rondyvoo.”

“Alabama?” Ringo said. “You mean they headed back toward Alabama?”
“Correct,” the stranger said. He looked at Ringo now. “Did Grumby steal your hog, too, boy?”
“Hawg,” Ringo said. “Hawg?”

“Put some wood on the fire,” Uncle Buck told Ringo. “Save your breath to snore with tonight.”
Ringo hushed, but he didn’t move; he sat there staring back at the stranger, with his eyes looking a little red in the firelight.
“So you folks are out to catch a man, too, are you?” the stranger said.

“Two is correct,” Ringo said. “I reckon Ab Snopes can pass for a man.”

So then it was too late; we just sat there, with the stranger facing us across the fire with the mare’s reins in his little still hand, looking at the three of us from between his hat and his beard. “Ab Snopes,” he said. “I don’t believe I am acquainted with Ab Snopes. But I know Grumby. And you want Grumby too.” He was looking at all of us now. “You want to catch Grumby. Don’t you think that’s dangerous?”

“Not exactly,” Uncle Buck said. “You see, we done got a little Alabama Grumby evidence ourselves. That something or somebody has give Grumby a change of heart about killing women and children.” He and the stranger looked at each other. “Maybe it’s the wrong season for women and children.

Or maybe it’s public opinion, now that Grumby is what you might call a public character. Folks hereabouts is got used to having their menfolks killed and even shot from behind. But even the Yankees never got them used to the other. And evidently somebody has done reminded Grumby of this. Ain’t that correct?”

They looked at each other; they didn’t move. “But you are neither a woman nor a child, old man,” the stranger said. He stood up, easy; his eyes glinted in the firelight as he turned and put the reins over the mare’s head. “I reckon I’ll get along,” he said.

We watched him get into the saddle and sit there again, with his little black-haired hands lying on the pommel, looking down at us — at me and Ringo now. “So you want Ab Snopes,” he said. “Take a stranger’s advice and stick to him.”

He turned the mare. I was watching him, then I was thinking “I wonder if he knows that her off back shoe is gone,” when Ringo hollered, “Look out!” and then it seemed to me that I saw the spurred mare jump before I saw the pistol flash; and then the mare was galloping and Uncle Buck was lying on the ground cussing and yelling and dragging at his pistol, and then all three of us were dragging and fighting over it, but the front sight was caught in his suspenders, and the three of us fighting over it, and Uncle Buck panting and cussing, and the sound of the galloping mare dying away.

The bullet went through the flesh of the inner side of the arm that had the rheumatism; that was why Uncle Buck cussed so bad; he said the rheumatism was bad enough, and the bullet was bad enough, but to have them both at once was too much for any man. And then, when Ringo told him he ought to be thankful, that suppose the bullet had hit his good arm and then he wouldn’t even be able to feed himself, he reached back and, still lying down, he caught up a stick of firewood and tried to hit Ringo with it.

We cut his sleeve away and stopped the blood, and he made me cut a strip off his shirt tail, and Ringo handed him his stick and he sat there cussing us while we soaked the strip in hot salt water, and he held the arm himself with his good hand, cussing a steady streak, and made us run the strip back and forth through the hole the bullet had made.

He cussed then sure enough, looking a little like Granny looked, like all old people look

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a long way, but it wasn’t far. You could have put a silver dollar down on the geography page with the center of it at Jefferson and we would have