Spotted Horses, William Faulkner

Spotted Horses

Scribner’s, June 1931. Later revised for ‘The Hamlet’

I

YES, SIR. FLEM Snopes has filled that whole country full of spotted horses. You can hear folks running them all day and all night, whooping and hollering, and the horses running back and forth across them little wooden bridges ever now and then kind of like thunder. Here I was this morning pretty near half way to town, with the team ambling along and me setting in the buckboard about half asleep, when all of a sudden something come swurging up outen the bushes and jumped the road clean, without touching hoof to it. It flew right over my team, big as a billboard and flying through the air like a hawk. It taken me thirty minutes to stop my team and untangle the harness and the buckboard and hitch them up again.

That Flem Snopes. I be dog if he ain’t a case, now. One morning about ten years ago, the boys was just getting settled down on Varner’s porch for a little talk and tobacco, when here come Flem out from behind the counter, with his coat off and his hair all parted, like he might have been clerking for Varner for ten years already. Folks all knowed him; it was a big family of them about five miles down the bottom. That year, at least. Share-cropping. They never stayed on any place over a year. 

Then they would move on to another place, with the chap or maybe the twins of that year’s litter. It was a regular nest of them. But Flem. The rest of them stayed tenant farmers, moving ever year, but here come Flem one day, walking out from behind Jody Varner’s counter like he owned it. 

And he wasn’t there but a year or two before folks knowed that, if him and Jody was both still in that store in ten years more, it would be Jody clerking for Flem Snopes. Why, that fellow could make a nickel where it wasn’t but four cents to begin with. He skun me in two trades, myself, and the fellow that can do that, I just hope he’ll get rich before I do; that’s all.

All right. So here Flem was, clerking at Varner’s, making a nickel here and there and not telling nobody about it. No, sir. Folks never knowed when Flem got the better of somebody lessen the fellow he beat told it. He’d just set there in the store-chair, chewing his tobacco and keeping his own business to hisself, until about a week later we’d find out it was somebody else’s business he was keeping to hisself — provided the fellow he trimmed was mad enough to tell it. That’s Flem.

We give him ten years to own ever thing Jody Varner had. But he never waited no ten years. I reckon you-all know that gal of Uncle Billy Varner’s, the youngest one; Eula. Jody’s sister. Ever Sunday ever yellow-wheeled buggy and curried riding horse in that country would be hitched to Bill Varner’s fence, and the young bucks setting on the porch, swarming around Eula like bees around a honey pot. 

One of these here kind of big, soft-looking gals that could giggle richer than plowed new-ground. Wouldn’t none of them leave before the others, and so they would set there on the porch until time to go home, with some of them with nine and ten miles to ride and then get up tomorrow and go back to the field. So they would all leave together and they would ride in a clump down to the creek ford and hitch them curried horses and yellow-wheeled buggies and get out and fight one another. Then they would get in the buggies again and go on home.

Well, one day about a year ago, one of them yellow-wheeled buggies and one of them curried saddle-horses quit this country. We heard they was heading for Texas. The next day Uncle Billy and Eula and Flem come in to town in Uncle Bill’s surrey, and when they come back, Flem and Eula was married. And on the next day we heard that two more of them yellow-wheeled buggies had left the country. They mought have gone to Texas, too. It’s a big place.

Anyway, about a month after the wedding, Flem and Eula went to Texas, too. They was gone pretty near a year. Then one day last month, Eula come back, with a baby. We figgured up, and we decided that it was as well-growed a three-months-old baby as we ever see. It can already pull up on a chair. I reckon Texas makes big men quick, being a big place. Anyway, if it keeps on like it started, it’ll be chewing tobacco and voting time it’s eight years old.

And so last Friday here come Flem himself. He was on a wagon with another fellow. The other fellow had one of these two-gallon hats and a ivory-handled pistol and a box of gingersnaps sticking out of his hind pocket, and tied to the tail-gate of the wagon was about two dozen of them Texas ponies, hitched to one another with barbed wire. They was colored like parrots and they was quiet as doves, and ere a one of them would kill you quick as a rattlesnake. 

Nere a one of them had two eyes the same color, and nere a one of them had ever see a bridle, I reckon; and when that Texas man got down offen the wagon and walked up to them to show how gentle they was, one of them cut his vest clean offen him, same as with a razor.

Flem had done already disappeared; he had went on to see his wife, I reckon, and to see if that ere baby had done gone on to the field to help Uncle Billy plow maybe. It was the Texas man that taken the horses on to Mrs. Littlejohn’s lot. He had a little trouble at first, when they come to the gate, because they hadn’t never see a fence before, and when he finally got them in and taken a pair of wire cutters and unhitched them and got them into the barn and poured some shell corn into the trough, they durn nigh tore down the barn. I reckon they thought that shell corn was bugs, maybe. So he left them in the lot and he announced that the auction would begin at sunup to-morrow.

That night we was setting on Mrs. Littlejohn’s porch. You-all mind the moon was nigh full that night, and we could watch them spotted varmints swirling along the fence and back and forth across the lot same as minnows in a pond. And then now and then they would all kind of huddle up against the barn and rest themselves by biting and kicking one another. We would hear a squeal, and then a set of hoofs would go Bam! against the barn, like a pistol. It sounded just like a fellow with a pistol, in a nest of cattymounts, taking his time.

II

It wasn’t ere a man knowed yet if Flem owned them things or not. They just knowed one thing: that they wasn’t never going to know for sho if Flem did or not, or if maybe he didn’t just get on that wagon at the edge of town, for the ride or not. Even Eck Snopes didn’t know, Flem’s own cousin. But wasn’t nobody surprised at that. We knowed that Flem would skin Eck quick as he would ere a one of us.

They was there by sunup next morning, some of them come twelve and sixteen miles, with seed-money tied up in tobacco sacks in their overalls, standing along the fence, when the Texas man come out of Mrs. Littlejohn’s after breakfast and clumb onto the gate post with that ere white pistol butt sticking outen his hind pocket. He taken a new box of gingersnaps outen his pocket and bit the end offen it like a cigar and spit out the paper, and said the auction was open. And still they was coming up in wagons and a horse- and mule-back and hitching the teams across the road and coming to the fence. Flem wasn’t nowhere in sight.

But he couldn’t get them started. He begun to work on Eck, because Eck holp him last night to get them into the barn and feed them that shell corn. Eck got out just in time. He come outen that barn like a chip on the crest of a busted dam of water, and clumb into the wagon just in time.

He was working on Eck when Henry Armstid come up in his wagon. Eck was saying he was skeered to bid on one of them, because he might get it, and the Texas man says, “Them ponies? Them little horses?” 

He clumb down offen the gate post and went toward the horses. They broke and run, and him following them, kind of chirping to them, with his hand out like he was fixing to catch a fly, until he got three or four of them cornered. Then he jumped into them, and then we couldn’t see nothing for a while because of the dust. 

It was a big cloud of it, and them blare-eyed, spotted things swoaring outen it twenty foot to a jump, in forty directions without counting up. Then the dust settled and there they was, that Texas man and the horse. He had its head twisted clean around like a owl’s head. Its legs was braced and it was trembling like a new bride and groaning like a saw mill, and him holding its head wrung clean around on its neck so it was snuffing sky. 

“Look it over,” he says, with his heels dug too and that white pistol sticking outen his pocket and his neck swole up like a spreading adder’s until you could just tell what he was saying, cussing the horse and talking to us all at once: “Look him over, the fiddle-headed son of fourteen fathers. 

Try him, buy him; you will get the best—” Then it was all dust again, and we couldn’t see nothing but spotted hide and mane, and that ere Texas man’s boot-heels like a couple of walnuts on two strings, and after a while that two-gallon hat come sailing out like a fat old hen crossing a fence.

When the dust settled again, he was just getting outen the far fence corner, brushing himself off. He come and got his hat and brushed it off and come and clumb onto the gate post again. He was breathing hard. He taken the gingersnap box outen his pocket and et one, breathing hard. 

The hammer-head horse was still running round and round the lot like a merry-go-round at a fair. That was when Henry Armstid come shoving up to the gate in them patched overalls and one of them dangle-armed shirts of hisn. 

Hadn’t nobody noticed him until then. We was all watching the Texas man and the horses. Even Mrs. Littlejohn; she had done come out and built a fire under the wash-pot in her back yard, and she would stand at the fence a while and then go back into the house and come out again with a arm full of wash and stand at the fence again. Well, here come Henry shoving up, and then we see Mrs. Armstid right behind him, in that ere faded wrapper and sunbonnet and them tennis shoes. “Git on back to that wagon,” Henry says.

“Henry,” she says.
“Here, boys,” the Texas man says; “make room for missus to git up and see. Come on, Henry,” he says; “here’s your chance to buy that saddle-horse missus has been wanting. What about ten dollars, Henry?”

“Henry,” Mrs. Armstid says. She put her hand on Henry’s arm. Henry knocked her hand down.
“Git on back to that wagon, like I told you,” he says.

Mrs. Armstid never moved. She stood behind Henry, with her hands rolled into her dress, not looking at nothing. “He hain’t no more despair than to buy one of them things,” she says. “And us not five dollars ahead of the pore house, he hain’t no more despair.” It was the truth, too. They ain’t never made more than a bare living offen that place of theirs, and them with four chaps and the very clothes they wears she earns by weaving by the firelight at night while Henry’s asleep.

“Shut your mouth and git on back to that wagon,” Henry says. “Do you want I taken a wagon stake to you here in the big road?”
Well, that Texas man taken one look at her. Then he begun on Eck again, like Henry wasn’t even there. But Eck was skeered. “I can git me a snapping turtle or a water moccasin for nothing. I ain’t going to buy none.”

So the Texas man said he would give Eck a horse. “To start the auction, and because you holp me last night. If you’ll start the bidding on the next horse,” he says, “I’ll give you that fiddle-head horse.”

I wish you could have seen them, standing there with their seed-money in their pockets, watching that Texas man give Eck Snopes a live horse, all fixed to call him a fool if he taken it or not. Finally Eck says he’ll take it. 

“Only I just starts the bidding,” he says. “I don’t have to buy the next one lessen I ain’t overtopped.” The Texas man said all right, and Eck bid a dollar on the next one, with Henry Armstid standing there with his mouth already open, watching Eck and the Texas man like a mad-dog or something. “A dollar,” Eck says.

The Texas man looked at Eck. His mouth was already open too, like he had started to say something and what he was going to say had up and died on him. “A dollar?” he says. “One dollar? You mean, one dollar, Eck?”
“Durn it,” Eck says; “two dollars, then.”

Well, sir, I wish you could a seen that Texas man. He taken out that gingersnap box and held it up and looked into it, careful, like it might have been a diamond ring in it, or a spider. Then he throwed it away and wiped his face with a bandanna. “Well,” he says. “Well. Two dollars. Two dollars. Is your pulse all right, Eck?” he says. “Do you have ager-sweats at night, maybe?” he says. “Well,” he says, “I got to take it. But are you boys going to stand there and see Eck get two horses at a dollar a head?”

That done it. I be dog if he wasn’t nigh as smart as Flem Snopes. He hadn’t no more than got the words outen his mouth before here was Henry Armstid, waving his hand. “Three dollars,” Henry says. Mrs. Armstid tried to hold him again. He knocked her hand off, shoving up to the gate post.

“Mister,” Mrs. Armstid says, “we got chaps in the house and not corn to feed the stock. We got five dollars I earned my chaps a-weaving after dark, and him snoring in the bed. And he hain’t no more despair.”

“Henry bids three dollars,” the Texas man says. “Raise him a dollar, Eck, and the horse is yours.”
“Henry,” Mrs. Armstid says.
“Raise him, Eck,” the Texas man says.
“Four dollars,” Eck says.

“Five dollars,” Henry says, shaking his fist. He shoved up right under the gate post. Mrs. Armstid was looking at the Texas man too.
“Mister,” she says, “if you take that five dollars I earned my chaps a-weaving for one of them things, it’ll be a curse onto you and yourn during all the time of man.”

But it wasn’t no stopping Henry. He had shoved up, waving his fist at the Texas man. He opened it; the money was in nickels and quarters, and one dollar bill that looked like a cow’s cud. “Five dollars,” he says. “And the man that raises it’ll have to beat my head off, or I’ll beat hisn.”
“All right,” the Texas man says. “Five dollars is bid. But don’t you shake your hand at me.”

III

It taken till nigh sundown before the last one was sold. He got them hotted up once and the bidding got up to seven dollars and a quarter, but most of them went around three or four dollars, him setting on the gate post and picking the horses out one at a time by mouth-word, and Mrs. Littlejohn pumping up and down at the tub and stopping and coming to the fence for a while and going back to the tub again. She had done got done too, and the wash was hung on the line in the back yard, and we could smell supper cooking. Finally they was all sold; he swapped the last two and the wagon for a buckboard.

We was all kind of tired, but Henry Armstid looked more like a mad-dog than ever. When he bought, Mrs. Armstid had went back to the wagon, setting in it behind them two rabbit-sized, bone-pore mules, and the wagon itself looking like it would fall all to pieces soon as the mules moved. Henry hadn’t even waited to pull it outen the road; it was still in the middle of the road and her setting in it, not looking at nothing, ever since this morning.

Henry was right up against the gate. He went up to the Texas man. “I bought a horse and I paid cash,” Henry says. “And yet you expect me to stand around here until they are all sold before I can get my horse. I’m going to take my horse outen that lot.”

The Texas man looked at Henry. He talked like he might have been asking for a cup of coffee at the table. “Take your horse,” he says.
Then Henry quit looking at the Texas man. He begun to swallow, holding onto the gate. “Ain’t you going to help me?” he says.
“It ain’t my horse,” the Texas man says.

Henry never looked at the Texas man again, he never looked at nobody. “Who’ll help me catch my horse?” he says. Never nobody said nothing. “Bring the plowline,” Henry says. Mrs. Armstid got outen the wagon and brought the plowline. The Texas man got down offen the post. The woman made to pass him, carrying the rope.
“Don’t you go in there, missus,” the Texas man says.

Henry opened the gate. He didn’t look back. “Come on here,” he says.
“Don’t you go in there, missus,” the Texas man says.
Mrs. Armstid wasn’t looking at nobody, neither, with her hands across her middle, holding the rope. “I reckon I better,” she says. Her and Henry went into the lot. The horses broke and run. Henry and Mrs. Armstid followed.

“Get him into the corner,” Henry says. They got Henry’s horse cornered finally, and Henry taken the rope, but Mrs. Armstid let the horse get out. They hemmed it up again, but Mrs. Armstid let it get out again, and Henry turned and hit her with the rope. “Why didn’t you head him back?” Henry says. He hit her again. “Why didn’t you?” It was about that time I looked around and see Flem Snopes standing there.

It was the Texas man that done something. He moved fast for a big man. He caught the rope before Henry could hit the third time, and Henry whirled and made like he would jump at the Texas man. But he never jumped. The Texas man went and taken Henry’s arm and led him outen the lot. Mrs. Armstid come behind them and the Texas man taken some money outen his pocket and he give it into Mrs. Armstid’s hand. “Get him into the wagon and take him on home,” the Texas man says, like he might have been telling them he enjoyed his supper.
Then here come Flem. “What’s that for, Buck?” Flem says.

“Thinks he bought one of them ponies,” the Texas man says. “Get him on away, missus.”
But Henry wouldn’t go. “Give him back that money,” he says. “I bought that horse and I aim to have him if I have to shoot him.”
And there was Flem, standing there with his hands in his pockets, chewing, like he had just happened to be passing.
“You take your money and I take my horse,” Henry says. “Give it back to him,” he says to Mrs. Armstid.
“You don’t own no horse of mine,” the Texas man says. “Get him on home, missus.”

Then Henry seen Flem. “You got something to do with these horses,” he says. “I bought one. Here’s the money for it.” He taken the bill outen Mrs. Armstid’s hand. He offered it to Flem. “I bought one. Ask him. Here. Here’s the money,” he says, giving the bill to Flem.

When Flem taken the money, the Texas man dropped the rope he had snatched outen Henry’s hand. He had done sent Eck Snopes’s boy up to the store for another box of gingersnaps, and he taken the box outen his pocket and looked into it. It was empty and he dropped it on the ground. “Mr. Snopes will have your money for you to-morrow,” he says to Mrs. Armstid. “You can get it from him to-morrow. He don’t own no horse. You get him into the wagon and get him on home.” Mrs. Armstid went back to the wagon and got in. “Where’s that ere buckboard I bought?” the Texas man says. It was after sundown then. And then Mrs. Littlejohn come out on the porch and rung the supper bell.

IV

I come on in and et supper. Mrs. Littlejohn would bring in a pan of bread or something, then she would go out to the porch a minute and come back and tell us. The Texas man had hitched his team to the buckboard he had swapped them last two horses for, and him and Flem had gone, and then she told that the rest of them that never had ropes had went back to the store with I. O. Snopes to get some ropes, and wasn’t nobody at the gate but Henry Armstid, and Mrs. Armstid setting in the wagon in the road, and Eck Snopes and that boy of hisn. 

“I don’t care how many of them fool men gets killed by them things,” Mrs. Littlejohn says, “but I ain’t going to let Eck Snopes take that boy into that lot again.” So she went down to the gate, but she come back without the boy or Eck neither.

“It ain’t no need to worry about that boy,” I says. “He’s charmed.” He was right behind Eck last night when Eck went to help feed them. The whole drove of them jumped clean over that boy’s head and never touched him. It was Eck that touched him. Eck snatched him into the wagon and taken a rope and frailed the tar outen him.

So I had done et and went to my room and was undressing, long as I had a long trip to make next day; I was trying to sell a machine to Mrs. Bundren up past Whiteleaf; when Henry Armstid opened that gate and went in by hisself. They couldn’t make him wait for the balance of them to get back with their ropes. Eck Snopes said he tried to make Henry wait, but Henry wouldn’t do it. 

Eck said Henry walked right up to them and that when they broke, they run clean over Henry like a hay-mow breaking down. Eck said he snatched that boy of hisn out of the way just in time and that them things went through that gate like a creek flood and into the wagons and teams hitched side the road, busting wagon tongues and snapping harness like it was fishing-line, with Mrs. Armstid still setting in their wagon in the middle of it like something carved outen wood. Then they scattered, wild horses and tame mules with pieces of harness and single trees dangling offen them, both ways up and down the road.

“There goes ourn, paw!” Eck says his boy said. “There it goes, into Mrs. Littlejohn’s house.” Eck says it run right up the steps and into the house like a boarder late for supper. I reckon so. Anyway, I was in my room, in my underclothes, with one sock on and one sock in my hand, leaning out the window when the commotion busted out, when I heard something run into the melodeon in the hall; it sounded like a railroad engine. 

Then the door to my room come sailing in like when you throw a tin bucket top into the wind and I looked over my shoulder and see something that looked like a fourteen-foot pinwheel a-blaring its eyes at me. It had to blare them fast, because I was already done jumped out the window.

I reckon it was anxious, too. I reckon it hadn’t never seen barbed wire or shell corn before, but I know it hadn’t never seen underclothes before, or maybe it was a sewing-machine agent it hadn’t never seen. Anyway, it swirled and turned to run back up the hall and outen the house, when it met Eck Snopes and that boy just coming in, carrying a rope. 

It swirled again and run down the hall and out the back door just in time to meet Mrs. Littlejohn. She had just gathered up the clothes she had washed, and she was coming onto the back porch with a armful of washing in one hand and a scrubbing-board in the other, when the horse skidded up to her, trying to stop and swirl again. It never taken Mrs. Littlejohn no time a-tall.

“Git outen here, you son,” she says. She hit it across the face with the scrubbing-board; that ere scrubbing-board split as neat as ere a axe could have done it, and when the horse swirled to run back up the hall, she hit it again with what was left of the scrubbing-board, not on the head this time. “And stay out,” she says.

Eck and that boy was half-way down the hall by this time. I reckon that horse looked like a pinwheel to Eck too. “Git to hell outen here, Ad!” Eck says. Only there wasn’t time. Eck dropped flat on his face, but the boy never moved. The boy was about a yard tall maybe, in overhalls just like Eck’s; that horse swoared over his head without touching a hair. 

I saw that, because I was just coming back up the front steps, still carrying that ere sock and still in my underclothes, when the horse come onto the porch again. It taken one look at me and swirled again and run to the end of the porch and jumped the banisters and the lot fence like a hen-hawk and lit in the lot running and went out the gate again and jumped eight or ten upside-down wagons and went on down the road. It was a full moon then. Mrs. Armstid was still setting in the wagon like she had done been carved outen wood and left there and forgot.

That horse. It ain’t never missed a lick. It was going about forty miles a hour when it come to the bridge over the creek. It would have had a clear road, but it so happened that Vernon Tull was already using the bridge when it got there. He was coming back from town; he hadn’t heard about the auction; him and his wife and three daughters and Mrs. Tull’s aunt, all setting in chairs in the wagon bed, and all asleep, including the mules. 

They waked up when the horse hit the bridge one time, but Tull said the first he knew was when the mules tried to turn the wagon around in the middle of the bridge and he seen that spotted varmint run right twixt the mules and run up the wagon tongue like a squirrel. He said he just had time to hit it across the face with his whip-stock, because about that time the mules turned the wagon around on that ere one-way bridge and that horse clumb across one of the mules and jumped down onto the bridge again and went on, with Vernon standing up in the wagon and kicking at it.

Tull said the mules turned in the harness and clumb back into the wagon too, with Tull trying to beat them out again, with the reins wrapped around his wrist. After that he says all he seen was overturned chairs and womenfolks’ legs and white drawers shining in the moonlight, and his mules and that spotted horse going on up the road like a ghost.

The mules jerked Tull outen the wagon and drug him a spell on the bridge before the reins broke. They thought at first that he was dead, and while they was kneeling around him, picking the bridge splinters outen him, here come Eck and that boy, still carrying the rope. They was running and breathing a little hard. “Where’d he go?” Eck says.

V

I went back and got my pants and shirt and shoes on just in time to go and help get Henry Armstid outen the trash in the lot. I be dog if he didn’t look like he was dead, with his head hanging back and his teeth showing in the moonlight, and a little rim of white under his eyelids. We could still hear them horses, here and there; hadn’t none of them got more than four-five miles away yet, not knowing the country, I reckon. So we could hear them and folks yelling now and then: “Whooey. Head him!”

We toted Henry into Mrs. Littlejohn’s. She was in the hall; she hadn’t put down the armful of clothes. She taken one look at us, and she laid down the busted scrubbing-board and taken up the lamp and opened a empty door. “Bring him in here,” she says.

We toted him in and laid him on the bed. Mrs. Littlejohn set the lamp on the dresser, still carrying the clothes. “I’ll declare, you men,” she says. Our shadows was way up the wall, tiptoeing too; we could hear ourselves breathing. “Better get his wife,” Mrs. Littlejohn says. She went out, carrying the clothes.
“I reckon we had,” Quick says. “Go get her, somebody.”
“Whyn’t you go?” Winterbottom says.

“Let Ernest git her,” Durley says. “He lives neighbors with them.”

Ernest went to fetch her. I be dog if Henry didn’t look like he was dead. Mrs. Littlejohn come back, with a kettle and some towels. She went to work on Henry, and then Mrs. Armstid and Ernest come in. Mrs. Armstid come to the foot of the bed and stood there, with her hands rolled into her apron, watching what Mrs. Littlejohn was doing, I reckon.
“You men git outen the way,” Mrs. Littlejohn says. “Git outside,” she says. “See if you can’t find something else to play with that will kill some more of you.”
“Is he dead?” Winterbottom says.

“It ain’t your fault if he ain’t,” Mrs. Littlejohn says. “Go tell Will Varner to come up here. I reckon a man ain’t so different from a mule, come long come short. Except maybe a mule’s got more sense.”

We went to get Uncle Billy. It was a full moon. We could hear them, now and then, four mile away: “Whooey. Head him.” The country was full of them, one on ever wooden bridge in the land, running across it like thunder: “Whooey. There he goes. Head him.”

We hadn’t got far before Henry begun to scream. I reckon Mrs. Littlejohn’s water had brung him to; anyway, he wasn’t dead. We went on to Uncle Billy’s. The house was dark. We called to him, and after a while the window opened and Uncle Billy put his head out, peart as a peckerwood, listening. 

“Are they still trying to catch them durn rabbits?” he says.
He come down, with his britches on over his night-shirt and his suspenders dangling, carrying his horse-doctoring grip. “Yes, sir,” he says, cocking his head like a woodpecker; “they’re still a-trying.”

We could hear Henry before we reached Mrs. Littlejohn’s. He was going Ah-Ah-Ah. We stopped in the yard. Uncle Billy went on in. We could hear Henry. We stood in the yard, hearing them on the bridges, this-a-way and that: “Whooey. Whooey.”

“Eck Snopes ought to caught hisn,” Ernest says.
“Looks like he ought,” Winterbottom said.

Henry was going Ah-Ah-Ah steady in the house; then he begun to scream. “Uncle Billy’s started,” Quick says. We looked into the hall. We could see the light where the door was. Then Mrs. Littlejohn come out.

“Will needs some help,” she says. “You, Ernest. You’ll do.” Ernest went into the house.
“Hear them?” Quick said. “That one was on Four Mile bridge.” We could hear them; it sounded like thunder a long way off; it didn’t last long:
“Whooey.”

We could hear Henry: “Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah.”
“They are both started now,” Winterbottom says. “Ernest too.”

That was early in the night. Which was a good thing, because it taken a long night for folks to chase them things right and for Henry to lay there and holler, being as Uncle Billy never had none of this here chloryfoam to set Henry’s leg with. So it was considerate in Flem to get them started early. And what do you reckon Flem’s com-ment was?
That’s right. Nothing. Because he wasn’t there. Hadn’t nobody see him since that Texas man left.

VI

That was Saturday night. I reckon Mrs. Armstid got home about daylight, to see about the chaps. I don’t know where they thought her and Henry was. But lucky the oldest one was a gal, about twelve, big enough to take care of the little ones. Which she did for the next two days. Mrs. Armstid would nurse Henry all night and work in the kitchen for hern and Henry’s keep, and in the afternoon she would drive home (it was about four miles) to see to the chaps. She would cook up a pot of victuals and leave it on the stove, and the gal would bar the house and keep the little ones quiet. I would hear Mrs. Littlejohn and Mrs. Armstid talking in the kitchen. “How are the chaps making out?” Mrs. Littlejohn says.

“All right,” Mrs. Armstid says.
“Don’t they git skeered at night?” Mrs. Littlejohn says.
“Ina May bars the door when I leave,” Mrs. Armstid says. “She’s got the axe in bed with her. I reckon she can make out.”

I reckon they did. And I reckon Mrs. Armstid was waiting for Flem to come back to town; hadn’t nobody seen him until this morning; to get her money the Texas man said Flem was keeping for her. Sho. I reckon she was.

Anyway, I heard Mrs. Armstid and Mrs. Littlejohn talking in the kitchen this morning while I was eating breakfast. Mrs. Littlejohn had just told Mrs. Armstid that Flem was in town. “You can ask him for that five dollars,” Mrs. Littlejohn says.

“You reckon he’ll give it to me?” Mrs. Armstid says.
Mrs. Littlejohn was washing dishes, washing them like a man, like they was made out of iron. “No,” she says. “But asking him won’t do no hurt. It might shame him. I don’t reckon it will, but it might.”

“If he wouldn’t give it back, it ain’t no use to ask,” Mrs. Armstid says.
“Suit yourself,” Mrs. Littlejohn says. “It’s your money.”
I could hear the dishes.

“Do you reckon he might give it back to me?” Mrs. Armstid says. “That Texas man said he would. He said I could get it from Mr. Snopes later.”
“Then go and ask him for it,” Mrs. Littlejohn says.
I could hear the dishes.
“He won’t give it back to me,” Mrs. Armstid says.
“All right,” Mrs. Littlejohn says. “Don’t ask him for it, then.”

I could hear the dishes; Mrs. Armstid was helping. “You don’t reckon he would, do you?” she says. Mrs. Littlejohn never said nothing. It sounded like she was throwing the dishes at one another. “Maybe I better go and talk to Henry about it,” Mrs. Armstid says.

“I would,” Mrs. Littlejohn says. I be dog if it didn’t sound like she had two plates in her hands, beating them together. “Then Henry can buy another five-dollar horse with it. Maybe he’ll buy one next time that will out and out kill him. If I thought that, I’d give you back the money, myself.”

“I reckon I better talk to him first,” Mrs. Armstid said. Then it sounded like Mrs. Littlejohn taken up all the dishes and throwed them at the cook-stove, and I come away.

That was this morning. I had been up to Bundren’s and back, and I thought that things would have kind of settled down. So after breakfast, I went up to the store. And there was Flem, setting in the store-chair and whittling, like he might not have ever moved since he come to clerk for Jody Varner. I. O. was leaning in the door, in his shirt sleeves and with his hair parted too, same as Flem was before he turned the clerking job over to I. O. It’s a funny thing about them Snopes: they all looks alike, yet there ain’t ere a two of them that claims brothers. 

They’re always just cousins, like Flem and Eck and Flem and I. O. Eck was there too, squatting against the wall, him and that boy, eating cheese and crackers outen a sack; they told me that Eck hadn’t been home a-tall. And that Lon Quick hadn’t got back to town, even. 

He followed his horse clean down to Samson’s Bridge, with a wagon and a camp outfit. Eck finally caught one of hisn. It run into a blind lane at Freeman’s and Eck and the boy taken and tied their rope across the end of the lane, about three foot high. The horse come to the end of the lane and whirled and run back without ever stopping. Eck says it never seen the rope a-tall. He says it looked just like one of these here Christmas pinwheels. “Didn’t it try to run again?” I says.

“No,” Eck says, eating a bite of cheese offen his knife blade. “Just kicked some.”
“Kicked some?” I says.
“It broke its neck,” Eck says.

Well, they was squatting there, about six of them, talking, talking at Flem; never nobody knowed yet if Flem had ere a interest in them horses or not. So finally I come right out and asked him. “Flem’s done skun all of us so much,” I says, “that we’re proud of him. Come on, Flem,” I says, “how much did you and that Texas man make offen them horses? You can tell us. Ain’t nobody here but Eck that bought one of them; the others ain’t got back to town yet, and Eck’s your own cousin; he’ll be proud to hear, too. How much did you-all make?”

They was all whittling, not looking at Flem, making like they was studying. But you could a heard a pin drop. And I. O. He had been rubbing his back up and down on the door, but he stopped now, watching Flem like a pointing dog. Flem finished cutting the sliver offen his stick. He spit across the porch, into the road. “ ‘Twarn’t none of my horses,” he says.

I. O. cackled, like a hen, slapping his legs with both hands. “You boys might just as well quit trying to get ahead of Flem,” he said.
Well, about that time I see Mrs. Armstid come outen Mrs. Littlejohn’s gate, coming up the road. I never said nothing. I says, “Well, if a man can’t take care of himself in a trade, he can’t blame the man that trims him.”

Flem never said nothing, trimming at the stick. He hadn’t seen Mrs. Armstid. “Yes, sir,” I says. “A fellow like Henry Armstid ain’t got nobody but hisself to blame.”
“Course he ain’t,” I. O. says. He ain’t seen her, neither. “Henry Armstid’s a born fool. Always is been. If Flem hadn’t a got his money, somebody else would.”
We looked at Flem. He never moved. Mrs. Armstid come on up the road.

“That’s right,” I says. “But, come to think of it, Henry never bought no horse.” We looked at Flem; you could a heard a match drop. “That Texas man told her to get that five dollars back from Flem next day. I reckon Flem’s done already taken that money to Mrs. Littlejohn’s and give it to Mrs. Armstid.”

We watched Flem. I. O. quit rubbing his back against the door again. After a while Flem raised his head and spit across the porch, into the dust. I. O. cackled, just like a hen. “Ain’t he a beating fellow, now?” I. O. says.

Mrs. Armstid was getting closer, so I kept on talking, watching to see if Flem would look up and see her. But he never looked up. I went on talking about Tull, about how he was going to sue Flem, and Flem setting there, whittling his stick, not saying nothing else after he said they wasn’t none of his horses.

Then I. O. happened to look around. He seen Mrs. Armstid. “Psssst!” he says. Flem looked up. “Here she comes!” I. O. says. “Go out the back. I’ll tell her you done went in to town to-day.”
But Flem never moved. He just set there, whittling, and we watched Mrs. Armstid come up onto the porch, in that ere faded sunbonnet and wrapper and them tennis shoes that made a kind of hissing noise on the porch. She come onto the porch and stopped, her hands rolled into her dress in front, not looking at nothing.

“He said Saturday,” she says, “that he wouldn’t sell Henry no horse. He said I could get the money from you.”
Flem looked up. The knife never stopped. It went on trimming off a sliver same as if he was watching it. “He taken that money off with him when he left,” Flem says.

Mrs. Armstid never looked at nothing. We never looked at her, neither, except that boy of Eck’s. He had a half-et cracker in his hand, watching her, chewing.
“He said Henry hadn’t bought no horse,” Mrs. Armstid says. “He said for me to get the money from you today.”

“I reckon he forgot about it,” Flem said. “He taken that money off with him Saturday.” He whittled again. I. O. kept on rubbing his back, slow. He licked his lips. After a while the woman looked up the road, where it went on up the hill, toward the graveyard. She looked up that way for a while, with that boy of Eck’s watching her and I. O. rubbing his back slow against the door. Then she turned back toward the steps.

“I reckon it’s time to get dinner started,” she says.
“How’s Henry this morning, Mrs. Armstid?” Winterbottom says.
She looked at Winterbottom; she almost stopped. “He’s resting, I thank you kindly,” she says.

Flem got up, outen the chair, putting his knife away. He spit across the porch. “Wait a minute, Mrs. Armstid,” he says. She stopped again. She didn’t look at him. Flem went on into the store, with I. O. done quit rubbing his back now, with his head craned after Flem, and Mrs. Armstid standing there with her hands rolled into her dress, not looking at nothing. 

A wagon come up the road and passed; it was Freeman, on the way to town. Then Flem come out again, with I. O. still watching him. Flem had one of these little striped sacks of Jody Varner’s candy; I bet he still owes Jody that nickel, too. He put the sack into Mrs. Armstid’s hand, like he would have put it into a hollow stump. He spit again across the porch. “A little sweetening for the chaps,” he says.

“You’re right kind,” Mrs. Armstid says. She held the sack of candy in her hand, not looking at nothing. Eck’s boy was watching the sack, the half-et cracker in his hand; he wasn’t chewing now. He watched Mrs. Armstid roll the sack into her apron. “I reckon I better get on back and help with dinner,” she says. She turned and went back across the porch. Flem set down in the chair again and opened his knife. He spit across the porch again, past Mrs. 

Armstid where she hadn’t went down the steps yet. Then she went on, in that ere sunbonnet and wrapper all the same color, back down the road toward Mrs. Littlejohn’s. You couldn’t see her dress move, like a natural woman walking. She looked like a old snag still standing up and moving along on a high water. We watched her turn in at Mrs. Littlejohn’s and go outen sight. Flem was whittling. I. O. begun to rub his back on the door. Then he begun to cackle, just like a durn hen.
“You boys might just as well quit trying,” I. O. says. “You can’t git ahead of Flem. You can’t touch him. Ain’t he a sight, now?”

I be dog if he ain’t. If I had brung a herd of wild cattymounts into town and sold them to my neighbors and kinfolks, they would have lynched me. Yes, sir.


The End