They ran on, Mrs. Hait in grim and unflagging silence, old Het with the eager and happy amazement of a child. But when they gained the front again they saw only Snopes. He lay flat on his stomach, his head and shoulders upreared by his outstretched arms, his coat tail swept forward by its own arrested momentum about his head so that from beneath it his slack-jawed face mused in wild repose like that of a burlesqued nun.
“Whar’d dey go?” old Het shouted at him. He didn’t answer.
“Dey tightenin’ on de curves!” she cried. “Dey already in de back again!” That’s where they were. The cow made a feint at running into her shed, but deciding perhaps that her speed was too great, she whirled in a final desperation of despair-like valor. But they did not see this, nor see the mule, swerving to pass her, crash and blunder for an instant at the open cellar door before going on. When they arrived, the mule was gone.
The scuttle was gone too, but they did not notice it; they saw only the cow standing in the centre of the yard as before, panting, rigid, with braced forelegs and lowered head facing nothing, as if the child had returned and removed one of the book ends for some newer purpose or game.
They ran on. Mrs. Hait ran heavily now, her mouth too open, her face putty-colored and one hand pressed to her side. So slow was their progress that the mule in its third circuit of the house overtook them from behind and soared past with undiminished speed, with brief demon thunder and a keen ammonia-sweet reek of sweat sudden and sharp as a jeering cry, and was gone.
Yet they ran doggedly on around the next corner in time to see it succeed at last in vanishing into the fog; they heard its hoofs, brief, staccato, and derisive, on the paved street, dying away.
“Well!” old Het said, stopping. She panted, happily. “Gentlemen, hush! Ain’t we had—” Then she became stone still; slowly her head turned, high-nosed, her nostrils pulsing; perhaps for the instant she saw the open cellar door as they had last passed it, with no scuttle beside it. “Fo God I smells smoke!” she said. “Chile, run, git yo money.”
That was still early, not yet ten o’clock. By noon the house had burned to the ground. There was a farmers’ supply store where Snopes could be usually found; more than one had made a point of finding him there by that time.
They told him about how when the fire engine and the crowd reached the scene, Mrs. Hait, followed by old Het carrying her shopping-bag in one hand and a framed portrait of Mr. Hait in the other, emerged with an umbrella and wearing a new, dun-colored, mail-order coat, in one pocket of which lay a fruit jar filled with smoothly rolled banknotes and in the other a heavy, nickel-plated pistol, and crossed the street to the house opposite, where with old Het beside her in another rocker, she had been sitting ever since on the veranda, grim, inscrutable, the two of them rocking steadily, while hoarse and tireless men hurled her dishes and furniture and bedding up and down the street.
“What are you telling me for?” Snopes said. “Hit warn’t me that set that ere scuttle of live fire where the first thing that passed would knock hit into the cellar.”
“It was you that opened the cellar door, though.”
“Sho. And for what? To git that rope, her own rope, where she told me to git it.”
“To catch your mule with, that was trespassing on her property. You can’t get out of it this time, I. O. There ain’t a jury in the county that won’t find for her.”
“Yes. I reckon not. And just because she is a woman. That’s why. Because she is a durn woman. All right. Let her go to her durn jury with hit. I can talk too; I reckon hit’s a few things I could tell a jury myself about—” He ceased. They were watching him.
“What? Tell a jury about what?”
“Nothing. Because hit ain’t going to no jury. A jury between her and me? Me and Mannie Hait? You boys don’t know her if you think she’s going to make trouble over a pure acci-dent couldn’t nobody help. Why, there ain’t a fairer, finer woman in the county than Miz Mannie Hait.
I just wisht I had a opportunity to tell her so.” The opportunity came at once. Old Het was behind her, carrying the shopping-bag. Mrs. Hait looked once, quietly, about at the faces, making no response to the murmur of curious salutation, then not again. She didn’t look at Snopes long either, nor talk to him long.
“I come to buy that mule,” she said.
“What mule?” They looked at one another. “You’d like to own that mule?” She looked at him. “Hit’ll cost you a hundred and fifty, Miz Mannie.”
“You mean dollars?”
“I don’t mean dimes nor nickels neither, Miz Mannie.”
“Dollars,” she said. “That’s more than mules was in Hait’s time.”
“Lots of things is different since Hait’s time. Including you and me.”
“I reckon so,” she said. Then she went away. She turned without a word, old Het following.
“Maybe one of them others you looked at this morning would suit you,” Snopes said. She didn’t answer. Then they were gone.
“I don’t know as I would have said that last to her,” one said.
“What for?” Snopes said. “If she was aiming to law something outen me about that fire, you reckon she would have come and offered to pay me money for hit?” That was about one o’clock. About four o’clock he was shouldering his way through a throng of Negroes before a cheap grocery store when one called his name. It was old Het, the now bulging shopping-bag on her arm, eating bananas from a paper sack.
“Fo God I wuz jest dis minute huntin fer you,” she said. She handed the banana to a woman beside her and delved and fumbled in the shopping-bag and extended a greenback. “Miz Mannie gimme dis to give you; I wuz jest on de way to de sto whar you stay at. Here.” He took the bill.
“What’s this? From Miz Hait?”
“Fer de mule.” The bill was for ten dollars. “You don’t need to gimme no receipt. I kin be de witness I give hit to you.”
“Ten dollars? For that mule? I told her a hundred and fifty dollars.”
“You’ll have to fix dat up wid her yo’self. She jest gimme dis to give ter you when she sot out to fetch de mule.”
“Set out to fetch — She went out there herself and taken my mule outen my pasture?”
“Lawd, chile,” old Het said, “Miz Mannie ain’t skeered of no mule. Ain’t you done foun dat out?”
And then it became late, what with the yet short winter days; when she came in sight of the two gaunt chimneys against the sunset, evening was already finding itself. But she could smell the ham cooking before she came in sight of the cow shed even, though she could not see it until she came around in front where the fire burned beneath an iron skillet set on bricks and where nearby Mrs. Hait was milking the cow. “Well,” old Het said, “you is settled down, ain’t you?” She looked into the shed, neated and raked and swept even, and floored now with fresh hay.
A clean new lantern burned on a box, beside it a pallet bed was spread neatly on the straw and turned neatly back for the night. “Why, you is fixed up,” she said with pleased astonishment. Within the door was a kitchen chair. She drew it out and sat down beside the skillet and laid the bulging shopping-bag beside her.
“I’ll tend dis meat whilst you milks. I’d offer to strip dat cow fer you ef I wuzn’t so wo out wid all dis excitement we been had.” She looked around her. “I don’t believe I sees yo new mule, dough.” Mrs. Hait grunted, her head against the cow’s flank. After a moment she said,
“Did you give him that money?”
“I give um ter him. He ack surprise at first, lak maybe he think you didn’t aim to trade dat quick. I tole him to settle de details wid you later. He taken de money, dough. So I reckin dat’s offen his mine en yo’n bofe.” Again Mrs. Hait grunted.
Old Het turned the ham in the skillet. Beside it the coffee pot bubbled and steamed. “Cawfee smell good too,” she said. “I ain’t had no appetite in years now. A bird couldn’t live on de vittles I eats.
But jest lemme git a whiff er cawfee en seem lak hit always whets me a little. Now, ef you jest had nudder little piece o dis ham, now — Fo God, you got company aready.” But Mrs. Hait did not even look up until she had finished. Then she turned without rising from the box on which she sat.
“I reckon you and me better have a little talk,” Snopes said. “I reckon I got something that belongs to you and I hear you got something that belongs to me.” He
