A slave named Loosh smugly interrupts their game, hinting that Union armies have entered northeastern Mississippi, near their town of Jefferson.

The boys do not fully understand, but when Bayard's father, Colonel John Sartoris, returns home from the front that day, they overhear him telling Granny Millard that Vicksburg has fallen.

The boys grab a musket off the wall and shoot at the soldier, then run into the house as a fist pounds on the front door.

The scam is quickly repeated, and after a year, Granny and Ringo have built a thriving trade in smuggled mules with the help of Ab Snopes, a poor local white.

Her hesitation is justified: the Union army has issued a memo to be on the lookout for scams, and shortly after they leave camp the soldiers ride back to confront them.

At Christmas 1864, Ab tells Granny about a group of bandits led by an ex- Confederate named Grumby who are terrorizing the countryside.

They know they are getting closer when a well-dressed stranger who turns out to be one of Grumby's men shoots at them, wounding Uncle Buck; the next day they find Ab Snopes tied up in the road as a kind of sacrifice.

That spring, Drusilla has returned home from the war and is living in Jefferson with the Sartorises, dressing and acting mannish as she did while serving in the troops.

However, she has planned the wedding for the same day as a hotly contested election in Jefferson, in which Colonel Sartoris is attempting to stop a carpetbagger victory in the town.

The day of the wedding, Drusilla rides into town to get married but ends up helping Colonel Sartoris face off against the two carpetbaggers, whom he shoots and kills.

Drusilla, the colonel and the townspeople ride to the Sartoris plantation to resume the election; not surprisingly, the Republican candidate, an ex-slave, loses.

One night Ringo rides to the university to tell him Colonel Sartoris has been killed by an ex-business partner and rival, Ben Redmond.

A crowd gathers as he prepares to enter Redmond's office, but Bayard refuses offers of assistance from Ringo and of a pistol from a friend of his father's, George Wyatt.

The townspeople think Bayard has been killed; in fact, he has chosen to confront Redmond unarmed, breaking the cycle of violence without sacrificing his honor.