It sounded like thunder and it made as much smoke as a brush fire, and I heard the horse scream, but I didn’t see anything else; it was Ringo wailing, “Great God, Bayard! Hit’s the whole army!”
4
The house didn’t seem to get any nearer; it just hung there in front of us, floating and increasing slowly in size, like something in a dream, and I could hear Ringo moaning behind me, and farther back still the shouts and the hoofs. But we reached the house at last; Louvinia was just inside the door, with Father’s old hat on her head rag and her mouth open, but we didn’t stop. We ran on into the room where Granny was standing beside the righted chair, her hand at her chest.
“We shot him, Granny!” I cried. “We shot the bastud!”
“What?” She looked at me, her face the same color as her hair almost, her spectacles shining against her hair above her forehead. “Bayard Sartoris, what did you say?”
“We killed him, Granny! At the gate! Only there was the whole army, too, and we never saw them, and now they are coming.”
She sat down; she dropped into the chair, hard, her hand at her breast. But her voice was strong as ever:
“What’s this? You, Marengo! What have you done?”
“We shot the bastud, Granny!” Ringo said. “We kilt him!”
Then Louvinia was there, too, with her mouth still open, too, and her face like somebody had thrown ashes at her. Only it didn’t need her face; we heard the hoofs jerking and sliding in the dirt, and one of them hollering, “Get around to the back there, some of you!” and we looked up and saw them ride past the window — the blue coats and the guns.
Then we heard the boots and spurs on the porch.
“Granny!” I said. “Granny!” But it seemed like none of us could move at all; we just had to stand there looking at Granny with her hand at her breast and her face looking like she had died and her voice like she had died too:
“Louvinia! What is this? What are they trying to tell me?” That’s how it happened — like when once the musket decided to go off, all that was to occur afterward tried to rush into the sound of it all at once. I could still hear it, my ears were still ringing, so that Granny and Ringo and I all seemed to be talking far away.
Then she said, “Quick! Here!” and then Ringo and I were squatting with our knees under our chins, on either side of her against her legs, with the hard points of the chair rockers jammed into our backs and her skirts spread over us like a tent, and the heavy feet coming in and — Louvinia told us afterward — the Yankee sergeant shaking the musket at Granny and saying:
“Come on, grandma! Where are they? We saw them run in here!”
We couldn’t see; we just squatted in a kind of faint gray light and that smell of Granny that her clothes and bed and room all had, and Ringo’s eyes looking like two plates of chocolate pudding and maybe both of us thinking how Granny had never whipped us for anything in our lives except lying, and that even when it wasn’t even a told lie, but just keeping quiet, how she would whip us first and then make us kneel down and kneel down with us herself to ask the Lord to forgive us.
“You are mistaken,” she said. “There are no children in this house nor on this place. There is no one here at all except my servant and myself and the people in the quarters.”
“You mean you deny ever having seen this gun before?”
“I do.” It was that quiet; she didn’t move at all, sitting bolt upright and right on the edge of the chair, to keep her skirts spread over us. “If you doubt me, you may search the house.”
“Don’t you worry about that; I’m going to. . . . Send some of the boys upstairs,” he said. “If you find any locked doors, you know what to do. And tell them fellows out back to comb the barn and the cabins too.”
“You won’t find any locked doors,” Granny said. “At least, let me ask you—”
“Don’t you ask anything, grandma. You set still. Better for you if you had done a little asking before you sent them little devils out with this gun.”
“Was there—” We could hear her voice die away and then speak again, like she was behind it with a switch, making it talk. “Is he — it — the one who—”
“Dead? Hell, yes! Broke his back and we had to shoot him!”
“Had to — you had — shoot—” I didn’t know horrified astonishment either, but Ringo and Granny and I were all three it.
“Yes, by God! Had to shoot him! The best horse in the whole army! The whole regiment betting on him for next Sunday—” He said some more, but we were not listening. We were not breathing either, glaring at each other in the gray gloom, and I was almost shouting, too, until Granny said it:
“Didn’t — they didn’t — Oh, thank God! Thank God!”
“We didn’t—” Ringo said.
“Hush!” I said. Because we didn’t have to say it, it was like we had had to hold our breaths for a long time without knowing it, and that now we could let go and breathe again. Maybe that was why we never heard the other man, when he came in, at all; it was Louvinia that saw that, too — a colonel, with a bright short beard and hard bright gray eyes, who looked at Granny sitting in the chair with her hand at her breast, and took off his hat. Only he was talking to the sergeant.
“What’s this?” he said. “What’s going on here, Harrison?”
“This is where they run to,” the sergeant said. “I’m searching the house.”
“Ah,” the colonel said. He didn’t sound mad at all. He just sounded cold and short and pleasant. “By whose authority?”
“Well, somebody here fired on United States troops. I guess this is authority enough.” We could just hear the sound; it was Louvinia that told us how he shook the musket and banged the butt on the floor.
“And killed one horse,” the colonel said.
“It was a United States horse. I heard the general say myself that if he had enough horses, he wouldn’t always care whether there was anybody to ride them or not. And so here we are, riding peaceful along the road, not bothering nobody yet, and these two little devils — The best horse in the army; the whole regiment betting—”
“Ah,” the colonel said. “I see. Well? Have you found them?”
“We ain’t yet. But these rebels are like rats when it comes to hiding. She says that there ain’t even any children here.”
“Ah,” said the colonel. And Louvinia said how he looked at Granny now for the first time. She said how she could see his eyes going from Granny’s face down to where her skirt was spread, and looking at her skirt for a whole minute and then going back to her face. And that Granny gave him look for look while she lied. “Do I understand, madam, that there are no children in or about this house?”
“There are none, sir,” Granny said.
Louvinia said he looked back at the sergeant. “There are no children here, sergeant. Evidently the shot came from somewhere else. You may call the men in and mount them.”
“But, colonel, we saw them two kids run in here! All of us saw them!”
“Didn’t you just hear this lady say there are no children here? Where are your ears, sergeant? Or do you really want the artillery to overtake us, with a creek bottom not five miles away to be got over?”
“Well, sir, you’re colonel. But if it was me was colonel—”
“Then, doubtless, I should be Sergeant Harrison. In which case, I think I should be more concerned about getting another horse to protect my wager next Sunday than over a grandchildless old lady” — Louvinia said his eyes just kind of touched Granny now and flicked away— “alone in a house which, in all probability — and for her pleasure and satisfaction, I am ashamed to say, I hope — I shall never see again. Mount your men and get along.”
We squatted there, not breathing, and heard them leave the house; we heard the sergeant calling the men up from the barn and we heard them ride away. But we did not move yet, because Granny’s body had not relaxed at all, and so we knew that the colonel was still there, even before he spoke — the voice short, brisk, hard, with that something of laughing behind it: “So you have no grandchildren.
What a pity in a place like this which two boys would enjoy — sports, fishing, game to shoot at, perhaps the most exciting game of all, and none the less so for being, possibly, a little rare this near the house. And with a gun — a very dependable weapon, I see.” Louvinia said how the sergeant had set the musket in the corner and how the colonel looked at it now, and
