The Unvanquished Read Online Free Page A

was growing darker and darker and then all of a sudden I wasn’t looking at it, I was there: a sort of frightened drove of little tiny figures moving on it, they were Father and Granny and Joby and Louvinia and Loosh and Philadelphy and Ringo and me and we were wandering around on it lost and it getting darker and darker and we forevermore without any home to go to because we were forever free; that’s what it was and then Ringo made a choked sound and I was looking at the road and there in the middle of it, sitting on a bright bay horse and looking at the house through a field glass, was a Yankee. For a long time we just lay there looking at him. I dont know what we had expected to see but we knew what he was at once; I remember thinking
He looks just like a man
and then Ringo and I were glaring at one another and then we were crawling backward down the hill without remembering when we started to crawl and then we were running across the pasture toward the house without remembering when we got to our feet. We seemed to run forever, with our heads back and our fists clenched before we reached the fence and fell over it and ran on into the house. Granny’s chair was empty beside the table where her sewing lay. “Quick!” I said. “Shove it up here!” But Ringo didn’t move; his eyes looked like door knobs while I dragged the chair up and climbed onto it and began to lift down the musket. It weighed about fifteen pounds, though it was not the weight so much as the length; when it came free it and the chair and all went down with a tremendous clatter; we heard Granny sit up in her bed upstairs and then we heard her voice:
    “Who is it?”
    “Quick!” I said. “Hurry!”
    “I’m scared,” Ringo said.
    “You, Bayard!” Granny said. “Louvinia!”
    We held the musket between us like a log of wood. “Do you want to be free?” I said. “Do you want to be free?”
    We carried it that way, like a log, one at each end, running. We ran through the grove toward the road and ducked down behind the honeysuckle just as the horse came around the curve. We didn’t hear anything else, maybe because of our own breathing or maybe because we were not expecting to hear anything else. We didn’t look again either; we were too busy cocking the musket. We had practiced before, once or twice when Granny was not there and Joby would come in to examine it and change the cap on the nipple. Ringo held it up and I took the barrel in both hands, high, and drew myself up and shut my legs about it and slid down over the hammer until it clicked. That’s what we were doing, we were too busy to look, the musket was already riding up across Ringo’s back as he stooped, his hands on his knees and panting “Shoot the bastud! Shoot him!” and then the sights came level and as I shut my eyes I saw the man and the bright horse vanish in smoke. It sounded like thunder and it made as much smoke as a brushfire 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 hearRingo moaning behind me and further back still the shouts and the hooves. But we reached the house at last; Louvinia was just inside the door, with Father’s old hat on her headrag 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.