This icon represents the "men, blue or gray," who were Ab Snopes' adversaries during the Civil War (7). Faulkner's fictions usually distinguish Union from Confederate soldiers, but Ab's war-time activities often made that distinction irrelevant - he had to dodge soldiers in both armies on his private, self-serving missions as a horse thief.
There is no definitive way to tell which way Ab and his family go in their wagon after the justice of the peace orders them to leave the county before nightfall, but since they are moving toward the de Spain plantation in Yoknapatawpha, it seems probable that they go north, perhaps on the road heading out of Frenchman's Bend that Faulkner himself drew on his maps.
After Ab Snopes and his family are ordered out of another county by the justice at the beginning of "Barn Burning," they make their way across Yoknapatawpha to the De Spain plantation. The route they take cannot be definitively established, but they travel north, and perhaps on the road heading out of Frenchman's Bend that Faulkner himself drew on his maps. Our own map assumes that, but it's entirely speculative.
Many of the many Snopeses who appear in the fictions are "descendants" of Ab Snopes (6), but in the story this group is made up of the unnamed Snopeses who are alive in "later years," later, that is to say, than the first introduction of automobiles into Yoknapatawpha - i.e. sometime after about 1920 (6). The narrative notes that the "same quality" that makes Ab handle his mules badly with characterize the way these future Snopeses try to "put a motor car into motion" (6).
While inside the general store at Ab Snopes' trial are the "grim-faced men" (along with Ab's two sons), just outside on the porch are various "dogs" and this group of "half-grown boys" (5), with one of whom Sarty fights.
In attendance at Ab Snopes' trial are a group of men from the neighborhood. The narrative only describes them (three times in two pages) as a set of "grim faces," but their hostility to Snopes is unmistakable (4-5).
There are an unspecified number of these "very old men," at least some of whom fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, at Emily Grierson's funeral (129).
