Colonel Sartoris' Troop

"The men who were Father's troop," as Bayard calls them, served with John Sartoris in the irregular Confederate cavalry unit that he organized after withdrawing from the Army of Northern Virginia (59). Though Bayard says that "they had surrendered" (58) and never fire another shot, the story depicts them still fighting for him, against the "Yankees" who try to elect a former slave as town marshal and against the "ladies" who force Sartoris and Drusilla to marry. The note the story ends on is their rebel yell, "high and thin and ragged and fierce, like when the Yankees used to hear it out of the smoke and the galloping" (73).