have to give to Houston as an earnest that until that moment he really believed he had sold the animal—or at least had established eight dollars as its value—when he went to Houston and told him how the purchaser had come to him, Mink, only that morning and told him the cow had escaped from the lot the same night he had bought it and brought it home, and so reclaimed the eight dollars he had paid for it, thus establishing the cow not only in Houston’s arrogant contempt but in the interested curiosity of the rest of Frenchman’s Bend too, as having now cost him, Mink, sixteen dollars to reclaim his own property.
That was the outrage: the eight dollars. The fact that he could not even have wintered the cow for eight dollars, let alone put on it the weight of flesh he could see with his own eyes it now carried, didn’t count. What mattered was, he would have to give Houston, who didn’t need it and wouldn’t even miss the feed the cow had eaten, the eight dollars with which he, Mink, could have bought a gallon of whiskey for Christmas, plus a dollar or two of the gewgaw finery his wife and his two daughters were forever whining at him for.
But there was no help for it. And even then, his pride was that he was not reconciled. Not he to be that meager and niggling and puny as meekly to accept something just because he didn’t see yet how he could help it. More, since this too merely bolstered the anger and rage at the injustice: that he would have to go fawning and even cringing a little when he went to recover his cow; would have to waste a lie for the privilege of giving eight dollars which he wanted, must sacrifice to spare, to a man who didn’t even need them, would not even miss their lack, did not even know yet that he was going to receive them. The moment, the day at last at the end of winter when by local custom the livestock which had run loose in the skeletoned cornfields since fall, must be taken up by their owners and put inside fences so the land could be plowed and planted again; one afternoon, evening rather, waiting until his cow had received that final feeding with the rest of Houston’s herd before he approached the feed lot, the worn plowline coiled over his arm and the meager lump of worn dollar bills and nickels and dimes and quarters wadded into his overall pocket, not needing to fawn and cringe yet because only the Negro with his hayfork would be in the lot now, the rich man himself in the house, the warm kitchen, with in his hand a toddy not of the stinking gagging homemade corn such as he, Mink, would have had to buy with his share of the eight dollars if he could have kept them, but of good red chartered whiskey ordered out of Memphis. Not having to fawn and cringe yet: just saying, level and white-man, to the nigger paused in the door to the feeding shed to look back at him:
“Hidy. I see you got my cow there. Put this rope on her and I’ll get her outen your way,” the Negro looking back at him a second longer then gone, on through the shed toward the house; not coming back to take the rope, which he, Mink, had not expected anyway, but gone first to tell the white man, to know what to do. Which was exactly what he, Mink, had expected, leaning his cold-raw, cold-reddened wrists which even the frayed slicker sleeves failed to cover, on the top rail of the white-painted fence. Oh yes, Houston with the toddy of good red whiskey in his hand and likely with his boots off and his stocking feet in the oven of the stove, warming for supper, who now, cursing, would have to withdraw his feet and drag on again the cold wet muddy rubber and come back to the lot.
Which Houston did: the very bang of the kitchen door and the squish and slap of the gum boots across the backyard and into the lot sounding startled and outraged. Then he came on through the shed too, the Negro about ten feet behind him. “Hidy, Jack,” Mink said. “Too bad to have to roust you out into the cold and wet again. That nigger could have tended to it. I jest learned today you wintered my cow for me. If your nigger’ll put this plowline on her, I’ll get her out of your way.”
“I thought you sold that cow to Nub Gowrie,” Houston said.
“So did I,” Mink said. “Until Nub rid up this morning on a mule and said that cow broke out of his lot the same night he got her home and he aint seen her since, and collected back the eight dollars he paid me for her,” already reaching into his pocket, the meager wad of frayed notes and coins in his hand. “So, since eight dollars seems to be the price of this cow, I reckon I owe you that for wintering her. Which makes her a sixteen-dollar cow now, dont it, whether she knows it or not. So here. Take your money and let your nigger put this plowline on her and I’ll—”
“That cow wasn’t worth eight dollars last fall,” Houston said. “But she’s worth a considerable more now. She’s eaten more than sixteen dollars’ worth of my feed. Not to mention my young bull topped her last week. It was last week, wasn’t it, Henry?” he said to the Negro.
“Yes sir,” the Negro said. “Last Tuesday. I put it on the book.”
“If you had jest notified me sooner I’d have saved the strain on your bull and that nigger and his pitchfork too,” Mink said. He sad to the Negro: “Here. Take this rope—”
“Hold it,” Houston said; he was reaching into his pocket too. “You yourself established the price of that cow at eight dollars. All right. I’ll buy her.”
“You yourself jest finished establishing the fact that she has done went up since then,” Mink said. “I’m trying right now to give the rest of sixteen for her. So evidently I wouldn’t take sixteen, let alone jest eight. So take your money. And if your nigger’s too wore out to put this rope on her, I’ll come in and do it myself.” Now he even began to climb the fence.
“Hold it,” Houston said again. He said to the Negro: “What would you say she’s worth now?”
“She’d bring thirty,” the Negro said. “Maybe thirty-five.”
“You hear that?” Houston said.
“No,” Mink said, still climbing the fence. “I dont listen to niggers: I tell them. If he dont want to put this rope on my cow, tell him to get outen my way.”
“Dont cross that fence, Snopes,” Houston said.
“Well well,” Mink said, one leg over the top rail, the coil of rope dangling from one raw-red hand, “dont tell me you bring a pistol along ever time you try to buy a cow. Maybe you even tote it to put a cottonseed or a grain of corn in the ground too?” It was tableau: Mink with one leg over the top rail, Houston standing inside the fence, the pistol hanging in one hand against his leg, the Negro not moving either, not looking at anything, the whites of his eyes just showing a little. “If you had sent me word, maybe I could a brought a pistol too.”
“All right,” Houston said. He laid the pistol carefully on the top of the fence post beside him. “Put that rope down. Get over the fence at your post. I’ll back off one post and you can count three and we’ll see who uses it to trade with.”
“Or maybe your nigger can do the counting,” Mink said. “All he’s got to do is say Three. Because I aint got no nigger widi me neither. Evidently a man needs a tame nigger and a pistol both to trade livestock with you.” He swung his leg back to the ground outside the fence. “So I reckon I’ll jest step over to the store and have a word with Uncle Billy and the constable. Maybe I ought to done that at first, saved a walk up here in the cold. I would a suh-gested leaving my plowline here, to save toting it again, only likely you would be charging me thirty-five dollars to get it back, since that seems to be your bottom price for anything in your lot that dont belong to you.” He was leaving now. “So long then. In case you do make any eight-dollar stock deals, be sho you dont take no wooden nickels.”
He walked away steadily enough but in such a thin furious rage that for a while he couldn’t even see, and with
