Uncollected Stories of William Faulkner (27 page)

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.”

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.

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.

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.”