Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“I dont know as I would put it just that way,” Ratliff said, repeated. “I would just put it that that same night Major de Spain’s barn taken fire and was a total loss. Only somehow or other De Spain got there on his mare about the same time, because somebody heard him passing in the road. I dont mean he got there in time to put it out but he got there in time to find something else already there that he felt entitled to consider enough of a foreign element to justify shooting at it, setting there on the mare and blasting away at it or them three or four times until it run into a ditch on him where he couldn’t follow on the mare. And he couldn’t say neither who it was because any animal can limp if it wants to and any man is liable to have a white shirt, withhe exception that when he got to Ab’s house (and that couldn’t a been long, according to the gait the fellow heard him passing in the road) Ab and Flem wasn’t there, wasn’t nobody there but the four women and De Spain never had time to look under no beds and such because there was a cypress-roofed corn crib right next to that barn. So he rid back to where his niggers had done fetched up the water barrels and was soaking tow-sacks to lay on the crib, and the first person he see was Flem standing there in a white-colored shirt, watching it with his hands in his pockets, chewing tobacco. ‘Evening,’ Flem says. ‘That ere hay goes fast’ and De Spain setting on the horse hollering ‘Where’s your paw? Where’s that—’ and Flem says, ‘If he aint here somewhere he’s done went back home. Me and him left at the same time when we see the blaze.’ And De Spain knowed where they had left from too and he knowed why too. Only that wasn’t neither here nor there neither because, as it was just maintained, any two fellows anywhere might have a limp and a white shirt between them and it was likely the coal oil can he seen one of them fling into the fire when he shot the first time. And so here the next morning he’s setting at breakfast with a right smart of his eyebrows and hair both swinged off when the nigger comes in and says it’s a fellow to see him and he goes to the office and it’s Ab, already in the preacher hat and coat and the wagon done already loaded again too, only Ab aint brought that into the house where it could be seen. ‘It looks like me and you aint going to get along together,’ Ab says, ‘so I reckon we better quit trying before we have a misunderstanding over something. I’m moving this morning.’ And De Spain says, ‘What about your contract?’ And Ab says, ‘I done cancelled it.’ and De Spain setting there saying ‘Cancelled. Cancelled’ and then he says, ‘I would cancel it and a hundred more like it and throw in that barn too just to know for sho if it was you I was shooting at last night.’ And Ab says, ‘You might sue me and find out. Justices of the Peace in this country seems to be in the habit of finding for plaintiffs.’ ”

“Hell fire,” Varner said quietly again. “Hell fire.”

“So Ab turned and went stomping out on that stiff foot and went back ”

“And burnt the tenant house,” Varner said.

“No no. I aint saying he might not a looked back at it with a certain regret, as the fellow says, when he druv off. But never nothing else taken all of a sudden on fire. Not right then, that is. I dont—”

“That’s so,” Varner said. “I recollect you did say he had to throw the balance of the coal oil into the fire when De Spain started shooting at him. Well well well,” he said, bulging, slightly apoplectic. “And now, out of all the men in this country, I got to pick him to make a rent contract with.” He began to laugh. That is, he began to say “Ha. Ha. Ha.” rapidly, but just from the teeth, the lungs: no higher, nothing of it in the eyes. Then he stopped. “Well, I cant be setting here, no matter how pleasant it is. Maybe I can get there in time to get him to cancel with me for just a old cottonhouse.”

“Or at least maybe for a empty barn,” Ratliff called after him.