Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner by William Faulkner

then, and now I could feel the wagon bed tilt and slide as they caught at it. Granny was kneeling beside me now, hitting at the screaming faces with Mrs. Compson’s parasol. Behind us they were still marching down the bank and into the river, singing.
       A Yankee patrol helped Ringo and me cut the drowned horses out of the harness and drag the wagon ashore. We sprinkled water on Granny until she came to, and they rigged harness with ropes and hitched up two of their horses. There was a road on top of the bluff, and then we could see the fires along the bank. They were still singing on the other side of the river, but it was quieter now. But there were patrols still riding up and down the cliff on this side, and squads of infantry down at the water where the fires were. Then we began to pass between rows of tents, with Granny lying against me, and I could see her face then; it was white and still, and her eyes were shut. She looked old and tired; I hadn’t realized how old and little she was. Then we began to pass big fires, with niggers in wet clothes crouching around them and soldiers going among them passing out food; then we came to a broad street, and stopped before a tent with a sentry at the door and a light inside. The soldiers looked at Granny.
    “We better take her to the hospital,” one of them said.
    Granny opened her eyes; she tried to sit up. “No,” she said. “Just take me to Colonel Dick. I will be all right then.”
    They carried her into the tent and put her in a chair. She hadn’t moved; she was sitting there with her eyes closed and a strand of wet hair sticking to her face when Colonel Dick came in. I had never seen him before—only heard his voice while Ringo and Iwere squatting under Granny’s skirt and holding our breath—but I knew him at once, with his bright beard and his hard bright eyes, stooping over Granny and saying, “Damn this war. Damn it. Damn it.”
    “They took the silver and the darkies and the mules,” Granny said. “I have come to get them.”
    “Have them you shall,” he said, “if they are anywhere in this corps. I’ll see the general myself.” He was looking at Ringo and me now. “Ha!” he said. “I believe we have met before also.” Then he was gone again.
    It was hot in the tent, and quiet, with three bugs swirling around the lantern, and outside the sound of the army like wind far away. Ringo was already asleep, sitting on the ground with his head on his knees, and I wasn’t much better, because all of a sudden Colonel Dick was back and there was an orderly writing at the table, and Granny sitting again with her eyes closed in her white face.
    “Maybe you can describe them,” Colonel Dick said to me.
    “I will do it,” Granny said. She didn’t open her eyes. “The chest of silver tied with hemp rope. The rope was new. Two darkies, Loosh and Philadelphy. The mules, Old Hundred and Tinney.”
    Colonel Dick turned and watched the orderly writing. “Have you got that?” he said.
    The orderly looked at what he had written. “I guess the general will be glad to give them twice the silver and mules just for taking that many niggers,” he said.
    “Now I’ll go see the general,” Colonel Dick said.
    Then we were moving again. I don’t know how long it had been, because they had to wake me and Ringo both; we were in the wagon again, with two Army horses pulling it on down the long broad street, and there was another officer with us and Colonel Dick was gone. We came to a pile of chests and boxes that looked higher than a mountain. There was a rope pen behind it full of mules and then, standing to one side and waiting there, was what looked like a thousand niggers, men, women and children, with their wet clothes dried on them. And now it began to go fast again; there was Granny in the wagon with her eyes wide open now and the lieutenant reading from the paper and the soldiers jerking chests and trunks out of the pile. “Ten chests tied with hemp