Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

“You got twelve miles to drive to get home tonight,” Snopes said. “Go on, now.” Grimm looked at him a moment longer. Then he rose and descended the steps and went on up the road. Ratliff was no longer watching him. He was looking at Snopes.

“Eustace eating with you during his visit?” he said.

“He happens to be eating at Winterbottom’s where I happen to be boarding,” Snopes said harshly. “Where a few other folks happens to be eating and paying board too.”

“Sho now,” Ratliff said. “You hadn’t ought to druv him away like that. Likely Eustace dont get to town very often to spend a day or two examining the country and setting around store.”

“He’ll have his feet under his own table tonight,” Snopes said. “You can go down there and look at him. Then you can be in his back yard even before he opens his mouth.”

“Sho now,” Ratliff said, pleasant, bland, inscrutable, with his spent and sleepless face. “When you expecting Flem back?”

“Back from where?” Snopes said, in that harsh voice. “From laying up yonder in that barrel-slat hammock, taking time about with Will Varner, sleeping? Likely never.”

“Him and Will and the womenfolks was in Jefferson yesterday,” Freeman said. “Will said they was coming home this morning.”

“Sho now,” Ratliff said. “Sometimes it takes a man even longer than a year to get his new wife out of the idea that money was just made to shop with.” He stood above them, leaning against a gallery post, indolent and easy, as if he had not everrd even beeard of haste. So Flem Snopes has been in Jefferson since yesterday, he thought. And Lump Snopes didn’t want it mentioned. And Eustace Grimm—again his mind clicked; still it would be three days before he would know what had clicked, because now he believed he did know, that he saw the pattern complete—and Eustace Grimm has been here since last night, since we heard that galloping horse anyway. Maybe they was both on the horse. Maybe that’s why it sounded so loud. He could see that too—Lump Snopes and Grimm on the single horse, fleeing, galloping in the dark back to Frenchman’s Bend where Flem Snopes would still be absent until sometime in the early afternoon. And Lump Snopes didn’t want that mentioned either, he thought, and Eustace Grimm had to be sent home to keep folks from talking to him. And Lump Snopes aint just worried and mad: he’s scared. They might even have found the hidden buckboard. They probably had, and so knew at least one of those who were digging in the garden; now Snopes would not only have to get hold of his cousin first through his agent, Grimm, he might even then become involved in a bidding contest for the place against someone who (Ratliff added this without vanity) had more to outbid him with; he thought, musing, amazed as always though still impenetrable, how even a Snopes was not safe from another Snopes. Damn quick, he thought. He stood away from the post and turned back toward the steps. “I reckon I’ll get along,” he said. “See you boys tomorrow.”

“Come home with me and take dinner,” Freeman said.