Bilbo Gowrie

In Intruder in the Dust Bilbo Gowrie and his brother Vardaman are identical twins, "identical as two clothing store dummies" (159) or "two clothes pins on a line" (160). The novel consistently treats them identically too. "About thirty, a head taller than their father," their faces are "surly quick-tempered and calm" (160), though they act together with energy in the search for their murdered brother's body. Like his brother, Bilbo is named after a noted Mississippi governor, but together they spend their nights hunting and "their days sleeping flat on the naked planks" of the front porch at home (162). (There is one other namesake of Governor Bilbo, a Snopes, in the fictions; there are three Vardamans.)