The Unvanquished by William Faulkner Page A

chant and the feet whispering fast in the deep dust. I could hear women too and then all of a sudden I began to smell them. “Niggers,” I whispered.
    “Shhhhhh,” I whispered. We couldn’t see them and they did not see us; maybe they didn’t even look, just walking fast in the dark with that panting hurrying murmuring, going on. And then the sun rose and we went on too, along that big broad empty road between the burned houses and gins and fences. Before it had been like passing through a country where nobody had ever lived; now it was like passing through one whereeverybody had died at the same moment. That night we waked up three times and sat up in the wagon in the dark and heard niggers pass in the road. The last time it was after dawn and we had already fed the horses. It was a big crowd of them this time and they sounded like they were running, like they had to run to keep ahead of daylight. Then they were gone. Ringo and I had taken up the harness again when Granny said, “Wait. Hush.” It was just one; we could hear her panting and sobbing, and then we heard another sound. Granny began to get down from the wagon. “She fell,” she said. “You all hitch up and come on.”
    When we turned into the road the woman was kind of crouched beside it, holding something in her arms and Granny standing beside her. It was a baby, a few months old; she held it like she thought maybe Granny was going to take it away from her. “I been sick and I couldn’t keep up,” she said. “They went off and left me.”
    “Is your husband with them?” Granny said.
    “Yessum,” the woman said. “They’s all there.”
    “Who do you belong to?” Granny said. Then she didn’t answer. She squatted there in the dust, crouched over the baby. “If I give you something to eat, will you turn around and go back home?” Granny said. Still she didn’t answer. She just squatted there. “You see you cant keep up with them and that they aint going to wait for you,” Granny said. “Do you want to die here in the road for buzzards to eat?” But she didn’t even look at Granny, she just squatted there.
    “Hit’s Jordan we coming to,” she said. “Jesus gonter see me that far.”
    “Get in the wagon,” Granny said. She got in, she squatted again just like she had in the road, holding the baby and not looking at anything, just hunkered down and swaying on her hams as the wagon rocked and jolted. The sun was up, we went down a long hill and began to cross a creek bottom.
    “I’ll get out here,” she said. Granny stopped the wagon and she got out. There was nothing at all but the thick gum and cypress and thick underbrush still full of shadow.
    “You go back home, girl,” Granny said. She just stood there. “Hand me the basket,” Granny said. I handed it to her and she opened it and gave the woman a piece of bread and meat. We went on; we began to mount the hill. When I looked back she was still standing there, holding the baby and the bread and meat Granny had given her. She was not looking at us. “Were the others there in that bottom?” Granny asked Ringo.
    “Yessum,” Ringo said. “She done found um. Reckon she gonter lose um again tonight though.”
    We went on; we mounted the hill and crossed the crest of it. When I looked back this time the road was empty. That was the morning of the sixth day.
2.
    Late that afternoon we were descending again; we came around a curve in the late level shadows and ourown quiet dust and I saw the graveyard on the knoll and the marble shaft at Uncle Dennison’s grave; there was a dove somewhere in the cedars. Ringo was asleep again under his hat in the wagon bed but he waked as soon as I spoke, even though I didn’t speak loud and didn’t speak to him. “There’s Hawkhurst,” I said.
    “Hawkhurst?” he said, sitting up. “Where’s that railroad?” on his knees now and looking for something which he would have to find in order to catch up with me and which he would have to