Snopes: The Hamlet, The Town, The Mansion

I dont mean a mistake in killing Houston. He knowed what he aimed to do then. Jack was a proud man to begin with, but solitary too: a bad combination; solitary because he had already lost his young wife that taken him a considerable getting to get in the first place, and that he hadn’t even had her a whole year when he lost her; and too proud to let hisself get over it even after four years. Or maybe that was why: them six or seven months he had her measured against them six or seven or whatever they was years it had taken him to get her to marry him. And even then he had to lose her hard, the hardest way: that same blood stallion killed her with his feet in the stall one day that Mink shot Houston off of that morning—and that made him a little extra morose because he was unhappy. So between being proud to begin with and then unhappy on top of that, he was a little overbearing. But since most of the folks around Frenchman’s Bend knowed he was proud and knowed how hard he had to work to persuade the folks that had raised Lucy Pate to let her marry him, he would a still been all right if he hadn’t tangled with Mink Snopes.

Because Mink Snopes was mean. He was the only out-and-out mean Snopes we ever experienced. There was mad short-tempered barn-burners like old Ab, and there was the mild innocent ones like Eck that not only wasn’t no Snopes, no matter what his maw said, he never had no more business being born into a Snopes nest than a sparrow would have in a hawk’s nest; and there was the one pure out-and-out fool like I.O. But we never had run into one before that was just mean without no profit consideration or hope atall.

Maybe that was why he was the only mean Snopes: there wasn’t no sign of any profit in it. Only he was bound or anyway must a had a little of his cousin I.O.’s foolishness too or he wouldn’t have made his mistake. I mean, the mistake not of shooting Houston but of when he picked out to do it; picking out the time to do it while Flem was still off on his Texas honeymoon. Sholy he knowed that Flem hadn’t got back yet. Or maybe the night before he had got the Snopes grapevine word that he had been waiting for, that Flem would reach Frenchman’s Bend tomorrow, and it was only then that he taken that old wore-out ten-gauge britch-loader and hid in that thicket and bushwhacked Houston off the horse when he rid past. But then I dont know. Maybe by that time nothing else mattered to him but seeing Houston over the end of them barrels then feeling that stock jolt back against his shoulder.

Anyhow, that9;s what he done. And likely it wasn’t until Houston was laying in the mud in the road and that skeered stallion with the loose reins and the empty saddle and flapping stirrups already tearing on to Varner’s store to spread the news, that he realised with whatever horror it was, that he had done too soon something it was long since too late to undo. Which was why he tried to hide the body and then dropped the gun into that slough and come on to the store, hanging around the store ever day while the sheriff was still hunting for Houston, not to keep up with whether the sheriff was getting warm or not but waiting for Flem to get back from Texas and save him; right up to the time when Houston’s hound led them to the body and some fish grabblers even found the gun in the slough that ever body knowed was hisn because wouldn’t nobody else own it.

And that was when the rage and the outrage and the injustice and the betrayal must a got unbearable to him, when he decided or realized or whatever it was, that Flem by now must a heard about the killing and was deliberately keeping away from Frenchman’s Bend or maybe even all Mississippi so he wouldn’t have to help him, get him out of it. Not even despair: just simple anger and outrage: to show Flem Snopes that he never give a durn about him neither: handcuffed now and in the sheriff’s surrey on the way in to the jail when he seen his chance right quick and wedged his neck tight into the V of the top stanchion and tried to fling his legs and body over the side until they caught him back.

But it was just the initial outrage and hurt and disappointment; it couldn’t last. Which likely his good sense told him it wouldn’t, and probably he was glad in a way he had got shut of it so calm good sense could come back. Which it did, since now all he had to do was just to be as comfortable as he could in jail and wait until Flem did get home since even Flem Snopes couldn’t stay forever even on a honeymoon even in Texas.