Free The Unvanquished by William Faulkner Page A

Cant you understand that Loosh has shown them where the silver is buried? Call Joby. Hurry!” She turned Louvinia toward the cabins and hit her exactly like Father turned my horse and hit him when we rode down the hill and into the Yankees, and then Granny turned to run back toward the house, only now it was Louvinia holding her and Granny trying to get away.
    “Dont you go back there, Miss Rosa!” Louvinia said. “Bayard, hold her; help me, Bayard! They’ll kill her!”
    “Let me go!” Granny said. “Call Joby! Loosh has shown them where the silver is buried!” But we held her; she was strong and thin and light as a cat, but we held her. The smoke was boiling up now and we could hear it or them, something: maybe all of them making one sound, the Yankees and the fire. And then I saw Loosh. He was coming up from his cabin, with a bundle on his shoulder tied up in a bandanna and Philadelphy behind him, and his face looked like it had that night last summer when Ringo and I looked into the window and saw him after he came back from seeing the Yankees. Granny stopped fighting. She said, “Loosh.”
    He stopped and looked at her; he looked like he was asleep, like he didn’t even see us or was seeing something we couldn’t. But Philadelphy saw us; she cringed back behind him, looking at Granny. “I tried to stop him, Miss Rosa,” she said. “Fore God I tried.”
    “Loosh,” Granny said. “Are you going too?”
    “Yes,” Loosh said. “I going. I done been freed; God’s own angel proclamated me free and gonter general me to Jordan. I dont belong to John Sartoris now; I belongs to me and God.”
    “But the silver belongs to John Sartoris,” Granny said. “Who are you to give it away?”
    “You ax me that?” Loosh said. “Where John Sartoris? Whyn’t he come and ax me that? Let God ax John Sartoris who the man name that give me to him. Let the man that buried me in the black dark ax that of the man what dug me free.” He wasn’t looking at us; I dont think he could even see us. He went on.
    “Fore God, Miss Rosa,” Philadelphy said. “I tried to stop him. I done tried.”
    “Dont you go, Philadelphy,” Granny said. “Dont you know he’s leading you into misery and starvation?”
    Philadelphy began to cry. “I knows hit. I knows whut they tole him cant be true. But he my husband. I reckon I got to go with him.”
    They went on. Louvinia had come back; she and Ringo were behind us. The smoke boiled up, yellow and slow and turning coppercolored in the sunset like dust; it was like dust from a road above the feet that made it and then went on, boiling up slow and hanging and waiting to die away. “The bastuds, Granny!” I said. “The bastuds!” Then we were all three saying it, Granny and me and Ringo, saying it together: “The bastuds!” we cried. “The bastuds! The bastuds!”

Raid
1.
    G ranny wrote the note with pokeberry juice. “Take it straight to Mrs Compson and come straight back,” she said. “Dont you all stop anywhere.”
    “You mean we got to
walk
?” Ringo said. “You gonter make us walk all them four miles to Jefferson and back, with them two horses standing in the lot doing nothing?”
    “They are borrowed horses,” Granny said. “I’m going to take care of them until I can return them.”
    “I reckon you calls starting out to be gone you dont know where and you dont know how long taking care of——” Ringo said.
    “Do you want me to whup you?” Louvinia said.
    “Nome,” Ringo said.
    We walked to Jefferson and gave Mrs Compson the note and got the hat and the parasol and the hand mirror and walked back home. That afternoon we greased the wagon and that night after supper Granny got the pokeberry juice again and wrote on a scrap of paper
Colonel Nathaniel G. Dick. —th Ohio Cavalry
and folded it and pinned it inside her dress. “Now I wont forget it,” she said.
    “If you was to, I reckon these hellion boys can remind you,” Louvinia said. “I reckon they