Unnamed Confederate Picket

In the novel's second account of Ab Snopes' 'war wound," he is shot by "somebody who didn't even own the horses" he was trying to steal (32). That is all the novel says here, but it seems likely that Faulkner is thinking of a Confederate who was standing guard over the horses, the kind of task a 'picket' might have been assigned - in The Town it is a "picket" who shoots him (5). On the other hand, in "Barn Burning," where Ab's wound first appears in the canon, he is shot by a "Confederate provost's man" (5). ('That is all the novel says here,' because only a few pages earlier it says that Ab was shot by Colonel Sartoris while trying to steal the Colonel's own horse, 18.)