Grumby

Grumby is the leader of Grumby's Independents, an irregular group intent on terrorizing the Mississippi countryside. As described in "The Unvanquished," although Grumby carries a commission allegedly signed by the Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, he is in fact interested only in wreaking havoc to his and his company's own gain. In "Vendee," Bayard, Ringo, and Uncle Buck are in pursuit of him to avenge Granny's murder in a horsetrading scheme gone bad. When they catch him, Bayard describes him as "a thick-built man with a reddish stubble and pale eyes, in a faded Confederate uniform coat and Yankee boots, bareheaded, with a long smear of dried blood on his cheek and one side of his coat caked with dried mud and the sleeve ripped away at the shoulder" (112).