Section 1
- Ringo, Joby, and Bayard build a pen for their new livestock, and Ab Snopes takes nine mules into town to sell. He and Granny argue over the price. They've got a nice business going, selling mules that they got with the letter back to the Yankees.
- Ab Snopes leaves; Granny tells the boys to go to bed.
- The next day, Ab Snopes comes by to help build the fence. Granny and Ringo draft a new letter, with a forged signature, that they'll use to trick the Yankees into giving them more mules. It turns out they've been running this scam for months, sometimes stealing and selling back the same mules over and over.
- For this letter Granny calls herself Plurella Harris, and signs it as General Smith. In the morning they ride out, with Ab Snopes behind them, to a Yankee camp. She presents the letter to the commanding officer, who grumbles but gives her the mules she says she's entitled to.
- They hand the mules over to Ab, who's waiting in the woods, and head off in separate directions. Unfortunately the officer they tricked comes riding after them, looking for the mules. He says that there's an order out to watch out for Granny because she's made quite a dent in the Union's mule stock. He gets really irritated when she claims not to know what he's talking about.
- Ringo, thinking quickly, yells from the woods in the opposite direction that Snopes went to call the Yankees off his trail, and it works.
- Granny and Bayard head out on the double, leaving the wagon behind and hiding in the woods. Once the Union soldiers come back, see that they're gone, and leave again (with their wagon), they start walking. Ringo shows up in a stolen buggy and takes everyone home.
- And with that, the jig is up.
Section 2
- The next day is Sunday, and at church Granny stands up and announces publicly that she has sinned. She asks everyone there to pray for her.
- Then she goes to the front of the church, opens up her big account book, and opens the tin can where she keeps her money.
- She gets everyone to come forward, one at a time, and account for the money she had given them or the mules she had loaned them. Sometimes she'd have one person give their mule to another, just to even things up. It was a complicated business, yo.
- Brother Fortinbride, the soldier-turned-preacher, says he doesn't need any money, even though Granny insists.
- Ab Snopes comes over the next morning and complains that the Yankees have all gone, and there's no one to sell the last batch of stolen mules to.
Section 3
- Later on a group of Union officers shows up and sees Ringo drawing a picture of the house before it was burned down. He's looking for Granny, and also knows that the pen is down at the creek bottom. He sends his soldiers there to get the stolen livestock.
- As he's leaving, the officer gives Granny a ten-dollar voucher for damage done to her fence. He begs her not to forge his signature on a thousand-dollar voucher it because he would be held responsible and she could ruin him. Guess he knows her tactics. Anyway, she promises not to.
- Afterward Granny takes the boys to church and makes them kneel while she prays for forgiveness one more time.
- Ringo realizes that Ab Snopes was the one who told so that he could get the last of the money with the payoff. Traitor!
Section 4
- Ab Snopes tries to get Granny to forge another letter, and the boys tell her it's a bad idea.
- It turns out that there is a group called Grumby's Independents that are terrorizing the south. They're Southerners who are taking advantage of the fact that the Yankees are gone and that most of the women are living on their own with their kids, so they're all about stealing and torturing people.
- Snopes's idea is to forget a letter from a Confederate general this time, General Forrest, ordering Grumby to give up the four nice horses he's using in his raids. Sounds tricky.
- They ride to where Grumby is hiding out, and Granny makes the boys stay in the wagon because she says they won't hurt a woman, but might hurt them because they "look like men."
- Bayard tries to hold her back, not letting her go, but she just looks at him and makes him cry like a little boy.
- Granny explains that she's taking the risk so that they'll have some money when John gets home.
- After a while they can't stand it anymore and go running after her. The boys go into an abandoned compress (a place where cotton is baled), and find Granny there, murdered.