Read Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner for Free Online Page A

ground.
    We climbed onto the ladder and got on him, and when we came out of the barn we could still see the three men; but we had to stop while Ringo got down and opened the lot gate and got back on again, and so they were gone, too, by then. When we reached the woods, there was no sign of them and we couldn’t hear anything, either, but the old horse’s insides. We went on slower then, because the old horse wouldn’t go fast again, anyway, and so we tried to listen, and so it was almost sunset when we came out into a road.
    “Here where they went,” Ringo said. They were mule tracks. “Tinney and Old Hundred’s tracks bofe,” Ringo said. “I know um anywhere. They done throwed them Yankees and heading back home.”
    “Are you sure?” I said.
    “Is I sure? You reckon I ain’t followed them mules all my life and can’t tell they tracks when I see um? … Git up there, horse!”
    We went on, but the old horse still wouldn’t go very fast. After a while the moon came up, but Ringo said he could still see the tracks of our mules. We went on; once Ringo almost fell off and then I almost fell off, and we came to a bridge and we hitched the old horse and got under the bridge and slept.
    It was something like thunder; I was dreaming I heard thunder, and it was so loud it waked me up, and then I knew I was awake, and I could still hear the thunder too; and then I knew it was the plank bridge, and Ringo and I sitting up and looking at each other, and the hoofs banging on the bridge right on top of us. Maybe it was because we were still half asleep, because we hadn’t had time to think at all, about Yankees or anything; we were just running all of a sudden before we knew we had started. I looked back one time, and it looked like the whole rim of the world was full of horses running along the sky. Then it all kind of ran together againlike yesterday; Ringo and me diving into the briers and lying on our faces, and men hollering and horses crashing all around us, and then hands dragging us, clawing and kicking and fighting, and then there was a circle of men and horses, and I saw Jupiter, and then father was shaking me and hollering, “Where’s your grandmother?” and Ringo saying, “We forgot Granny!”
    “Forgot her?” father said. “You mean you ran away and left her sitting there in the wagon in the road?”
    “Joby is with her,” I said.
    “Lord, Marse John,” Ringo said. “You know hit ain’t no Yankee gonter bother her if he know hit.”
    Father swore. “How far back did you leave her?”
    “It was about three o’clock yesterday,” I said. “We rode some last night.”
    Father turned to the others. “Two of you boys take them up behind you; we’ll lead that horse.” Then he stopped and turned back to us. “Have you-all had anything to eat?”
    “Eat?” Ringo said. “My stomach think my throat been cut.”
    Father took a pone of bread from his saddle bag and broke it and gave it to us. “Where did you get that horse?” he said.
    After a while I said, “We borrowed it.”
    “Who from?” father said.
    After a while Ringo said, “We ain’t know. The man wasn’t there.” One of the men laughed. Father looked at him quick, and he hushed. But just for a minute, because all of a sudden they all began to whoop and holler, and father looking around at them and his face getting redder and redder.
    “Don’t you say a word, colonel,” one of them said. “Hooraw for Sartoris!”
    We galloped back; it was not far; we came to the field where the men had run, and the house with the barn, and in the road we could still see the scraps of harness where they had cut it. But the wagon was gone. Father led the old horse up to the house himself and knocked on the porch floor with his pistol, and the door of the house was still open, but nobody came. We put the old horse back into the barn; the pipe was still on the ground by the overturned shoeing box. We came back to the road and father sat Jupiter in