The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

An unnamed Union colonel with "a bright short beard and hard bright gray eyes," whose name is revealed in a later story in the series to be Colonel Nathaniel G. Dick, in command of an unspecified Ohio cavalry regiment. In "Ambuscade," his cordial encounter with Granny Rosa Millard following the shooting of a Union horse, and his choice to accept her claim that no children were present on the premises, contrasts with Sergeant Harrison, who is intent to find and punish the boys responsible for the shooting.

When Ringo sees this calvary unit riding up to the plantation, he exclaims them to be "the whole [Union] army" (10), but it's more likely they comprise a single regiment (or less). After Bayard and Ringo fire a shot in their direction, an unspecified number of these soldiers follow the two boys back to the Sartoris plantation and even enter the house in search of them.

This unnamed Union general is merely referred to in "Ambuscade" by Sergeant Harrison, who heard the general say "if he had enough horses, he wouldn’t always care whether there was anybody to ride them or not" (13). No other details about the general are mentioned in the story.

Bayard Sartoris is the twelve-year-old narrator of "Ambuscade," though he is telling the story some years later (as other stories in the series and in The Unvanquished make clear). The only son of a prominent planter who has gone off to fight the Civil War as a Confederate Colonel, he admires his father extravagantly. At the time of this story, the hardships and realities of the Civil War have not yet hit home to him or his companion and slave, Ringo. The two boys' innocence and naivete are highlighted throughout the story, in small ways as well as large.

Rosa Millard is the mother-in-law of Col. John Sartoris and the grandmother of Bayard Sartoris. No details of her earlier life are revealed in this story, but she lives at the Sartoris plantation and is responsible for managing things while her son-in-law is away fighting in the Civil War. She is referred to as "Granny" both by her grandson Bayard and by Ringo, a family slave. She is responsible for the moral upbringing of both boys, punishing them, for instance, when they utter profanity, but as the story depicts, she herself is willing to lie to protect them from Union soldiers.