Unnamed Wilderness Outlaws

In "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun, these "Natchez Trace bandits" threaten all who pass through the wilderness between Nashville and the Mississippi settlement (200, 4). Pettigrew's bravery is demonstrated as he carries the mail pouch without firearms through "a region where for no more than the boots on his feet, men would murder a traveler and gut him like a bear or deer or fish and fill the cavity with rocks and sink the evidence in the nearest water" (204, 9).