But as soon as Uncle Buck tried to find out if it actually was Grumby, he shut up and denied that he had ever seen him.
They left us early the next morning. Uncle Buck was sick by then; we offered to ride back home with him, or to let Ringo ride back with him, and I would keep Ab Snopes with me, but Uncle Buck wouldn’t have it.
“Grumby might capture him again and tie him to another sapling in the road, and you would lose time burying him,” Uncle Buck said. “You boys go on. It ain’t going to be long now. And catch them!” He begun to holler, with his face flushed and his eyes bright, taking the pistol from around his neck and giving it to me, “Catch them! Catch them!”
3
So Ringo and I went on. It rained all that day; now it began to rain all the time. We had the two mules apiece; we went fast. It rained; sometimes we had no fire at all; that was when we lost count of time, because one morning we came to a fire still burning and a hog they had not even had time to butcher; and sometimes we would ride all night, swapping mules when we had guessed that it had been two hours; and so, sometimes it would be night when we slept and sometimes it would be daylight, and we knew that they must have watched us from somewhere every day and that now that Uncle Buck was not with us, they didn’t even dare to stop and try to hide.
Then one afternoon — the rain had stopped but the clouds had not broken and it was turning cold again — it was about dusk and we were galloping along an old road in the river bottom; it was dim and narrow under the trees and we were galloping when my mule shied and swerved and stopped, and I just did catch myself before I went over his head; and then we saw the thing hanging over the middle of the road from a limb.
It was an old Negro man, with a rim of white hair and with his bare toes pointing down and his head on one side like he was thinking about something quiet.
The note was pinned to him, but we couldn’t read it until we rode on into a clearing. It was a scrap of dirty paper with big crude printed letters, like a child might have made them:
Last woning not thret. Turn back. The barer of this my promise and garntee. I have stood all I aim to stand children no children.
G.
And something else written beneath it in a hand neat and small and prettier than Granny’s, only you knew that a man had written it; and while I looked at the dirty paper I could see him again, with his neat little feet and his little black-haired hands and his fine soiled shirt and his fine muddy coat, across the fire from us that night.
This is signed by others beside G., one of whm in particular havng less scruples re children than he has. Nethless undersand desires to give both you and G. one more chance. Take it, and some day become a man. Refuse it, and cease even to be a child.
Ringo and I looked at each other. There had been a house here once, but it was gone now. Beyond the clearing the road went on again into the thick trees in the gray twilight. “Maybe it will be tomorrow,” Ringo said.
It was tomorrow; we slept that night in a haystack, but we were riding again by daylight, following the dim road along the river bottom. This time it was Ringo’s mule that shied; the man had stepped out of the bushes that quick, with his fine muddy boots and coat and the pistol in his little black-haired hand, and only his eyes and his nose showing between his hat and his beard.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “I will still be watching you.”
We didn’t move. We watched him step back in to the bushes, then the three of them came out — the bearded man and another man walking abreast and leading two saddled horses, and the third man walking just in front of them with his hands behind him — a thick-built man with a reddish stubble and pale eyes, in a faded Confederate uniform coat and Yankee boots, bare-headed, with a long smear of dried blood on his cheek and one side of his coat caked with dried mud and that sleeve ripped away at the shoulder, but we didn’t realise at once that what made his shoulders look so thick was that his arms were tied tight behind him.
And then all of a sudden we knew that at last we were looking at Grumby. We knew it long before the bearded man said, “You want Grumby. Here he is.”
We just sat there. Because from then on, the other two men did not even look at us again. “I’ll take him now,” the bearded man said. “Get on your horse.” The other man got on one of the horses. We could see the pistol in his hand then, pointed at Grumby’s back. “Hand me your knife,” the bearded man said.
Without moving the pistol, the other man passed his knife to the bearded man. Then Grumby spoke; he had not moved until now; he just stood there with his shoulders hunched and his little pale eyes blinking at me and Ringo.
“Boys,” he said, “boys—”
“Shut your mouth,” the bearded man said, in a cold, quiet, almost pleasant voice. “You’ve already talked too much. If you had done what I wanted done that night in December, you wouldn’t be where you are now.” We saw his hand with the knife; I reckon maybe for a minute Ringo and I and Grumby, too, all thought the same thing. But he just cut Grumby’s hands loose and stepped back quick. But when Grumby turned, he turned right into the pistol in the bearded man’s hand.
“Steady,” the bearded man said. “Have you got him, Bridger?”
“Yes,” the other man said. The bearded man backed to the other horse and got on it without lowering his pistol or ceasing to watch Grumby. Then he sat there, too, looking down at Grumby, with his little hooked nose and his eyes alone showing between the hat and the ink-colored beard. Grumby began to move his head from side to side.
“Boys,” he said, “boys, you ain’t going to do this to me.”
“We’re not going to do anything to you,” the bearded man said. “I can’t speak for these boys there. But since you are so delicate about children, maybe they will be delicate with you. But we’ll give you a chance though.”
His other hand went inside his coat too fast to watch; it had hardly disappeared before the other pistol flicked out and turned once and fell at Grumby’s feet; again Grumby moved, but the pistols stopped him. The bearded man sat easy on the horse, looking down at Grumby, talking in that cold, still, vicious voice that wasn’t even mad:
“We had a good thing in this country.
We would have it yet, if it hadn’t been for you. And now we’ve got to pull out. Got to leave it because you lost your nerve and killed an old woman and then lost your nerve again and refused to cover the first mistake. Scruples,” he said. “Scruples.
So afraid of raising the country that there ain’t a man, woman or child, black or white, in it that ain’t on the watch for us. And all because you got scared and killed an old woman you never saw before. Not to get anything; not for one single Confed bank note.
But because you got scared of a piece of paper on which someone had signed Bedford Forrest’s name. And you with one exactly like it in your pocket now.”
He didn’t look at the other man, Bridger; he just said, “All right. Ease off. But watch him. He’s too tender-hearted to turn your back on.”
They backed the horses away, side by side, the two pistols trained on Grumby’s belly, until they reached the underbrush. “We’re going to Texas. If you should leave this place, I would advise you to go at least that far also. But just remember that Texas is a wide place, and use that knowledge. Ride!” he shouted.
He whirled the mare. Bridger whirled too. As they did so, Grumby leaped and caught the pistol from the ground and ran forward, crouching and shouting into the bushes, cursing. He shot three times toward the fading sound of the horses, then he whirled back to face us.
Ringo and I were on the ground, too; I don’t remember when we got down nor why, but we were down, and I remember how I looked once at Ringo’s face and then how I stood there with Uncle Buck’s pistol feeling heavy as a firedog in my hand. Then I saw that he had quit whirling; that he was standing there with the pistol hanging