Grumby

Grumby is the leader of Grumby's Independents, a irregular group - or more accurately, a gang - that terrorizes the Mississippi countryside amid the chaos of the Civil War. Although Grumby carries a commission allegedly signed by General Nathan Bedford Forrest, he and his gang serve only themselves. Bayard, Ringo, and Uncle Buck pursue him to get vengeance for his murdering Granny in a horsetrading scheme gone bad. When they catch him, Bayard describes him as "a thick-built man with a reddish stubble and pale eyes, in a faded Confederate uniform coat and Yankee boots, bareheaded, with a long smear of dried blood on his cheek and one side of his coat caked with dried mud and the sleeve ripped away at the shoulder" (178). While people in the county are scared of his brutality, he seems to be a cowardly, insecure leader as one of his gang member suggests when they turn on him: "And all because you got scared and killed an old woman you never saw before" (180).