Unnamed Bandits

The bandits in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun are "a gang - three or four - of Natchez Trace bandits" captured in the woods and confined in the settlement jail just long enough to stage an escape that adds a kind of shine to their image (201, 4-5). Local rumor suggests they may be associated with such historically famous bandits as the Harpes or Mason or Murrell, but the narrator seems to believe they were simply part of the "fraternity of rapine" that was a common element on the frontier (201).