«Red Leaves» (1930) is unanimously recognized as one of William Faulkner's finest short-form works. The story narrates a harrowing tale of pursuit. When the chief of a Native American tribe in Yoknapatawpha dies, custom dictates that he be buried along with his horse, dog, and black slave. However, the slave escapes. Faulkner describes the manhunt that ensues with both realism and an epic tone, giving it a ritualistic character, and turns the fugitive's sacrifice into an allegory for the common human fate. At the same time, he addresses for the first time, in a biting manner, the issue of slavery in the American South and the moral decline of the natives, who, imitating the whites, own black slaves.

A characteristic example of Faulkner's modernist writing in the 1930s, «Red Leaves» is, despite the violence that permeates it, a poetic text dense with symbolism, capturing the terror of man in the face of death and his unquenchable thirst for life.