Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner Read Free Book Online

snake fence along the road, and all of a sudden it began to blur, and then I realized that father and Jupiter had not moved up at all, that it was all three of us flattening out up toward the crest of the hill where the road dipped like three swallows, and I was thinking, “We’re holding Jupiter. We’re holding Jupiter,” when father looked back, and I saw his eyes and his teeth in his beard, and I knew he still had Jupiter on the bit.
    He said, “Watch out, now,” and then Jupiter shot out from between us; he went out exactly like I have seen a hawk come out of a sage field and rise over a fence.
    When they reached the crest of the hill, I could see sky under them and the tops of the trees beyond the hill like they were flying, sailing out into the air to drop down beyond the hill like the hawk; only they didn’t. It was like father stopped Jupiter in mid-air ontop of the hill; I could see him standing in the stirrups and his arm up with his hat in it, and then Ringo and I were on them before we could even begin to think to pull, and Jupiter reined back onto his haunches, and then father hit Ringo’s horse across his blind eye with the hat and I saw Ringo’s horse swerve and jump clean over the snake fence, and I heard Ringo hollering as I went on over the crest of the hill, with father just behind me shooting his pistol and hollering, “Surround them, boys! Don’t let a man escape!”
    I didn’t know how many there were; it was the fire I saw first in the dusk, and then I sort of saw it all at once: The creek running along quiet under the bridge and the muskets all stacked careful and neat, and nobody within fifty feet of them, and the men, the faces, squatting about the fire with cups in their hands and watching the crest of the hill with exactly the same expression, like dolls, and father and me coming down the hill and father jerking my bridle up, and off to the right in the trees Ringo’s horse crashing and blundering and Ringo yelling. Father’s hat was flung onto his head and his teeth were showing and his eyes were bright as a cat’s.
    “Lieutenant,” he said, loud, “ride back up the hill and close in with your troop on the left! Git!” he said, jerking my horse around and slapping him across the rump with his hand. “Make a fuss, holler! See if you can keep up with Ringo!… Boys,” he said, and they looking up at him; they hadn’t even put down the cups. “Boys, I’m John Sartoris and I’ve got you.”
    Ringo was the one that was hard to capture. The others came piling over the hill, reining back, and I reckon for a minute their faces looked about like the Yankees’ faces did, and now and then I would quit thrashing the bushes and I could hear Ringo on his side hollering and moaning and hollering again, “Marse John! You, Marse John! You come here quick!” and hollering for me, calling Bayard and Colonel and Marse John and Granny until it did sound like a company at least, and then hollering at his horse again, and it running back and forth. I reckon he had forgotten again and was trying to get up on the nigh side again, until at last father said, “All right, boys. You can come on in.”
    It was almost dark then. They had built up the fire, and the Yankees still sitting around it and father and the others standing over them with their pistols while two of them were taking the Yankees’ pants and boots off. Ringo was still hollering off in thetrees. “I reckon you better go and extricate Lieutenant Marengo,” father said. Only about that time Ringo’s horse came bursting out with his blind eye looking big as a plate and still trotting in a circle with his knees up to his chin, and then Ringo came out. He looked wilder than the horse; he was already talking, he was saying, “I’m gonter tell Granny on you, making my horse run—” when he saw the Yankees. His mouth was already open, and he kind of squatted for a second, looking at them. Then he hollered, “Look out! Ketch um!