A "cotton house" is a simple structure built to store harvested cotton before it goes to a gin (232). At the time the story takes place, August, it would be empty, so it can be used instead to store a stolen mule.
This "sort of glade" four miles away from the Edmonds place is where Lucas expects to find buried treasure (230). It is a wild place, next to a creek bottom full of "brier and undergrowth and rotting logs and branches" (230).
In this story the house where Edmonds lives is mentioned only in passing, when Edmonds himself, pursuing his missing mule through a dark and tangled landscape, thinks about "returning home" and telephoning the sheriff (230).
Cotton is the principal crop raised on the Edmonds' place, and the route of the story's narrative goes through two of the fields in which it is grown. Edmonds notes that his tenants are "laid by" at the time of the story, which means they have already planted the cotton (231). This is the first field mentioned, next to the pasture.
Cotton is the principal crop raised on the Edmonds' place, and the route of the story's narrative goes through two of the fields in which it is grown. Edmonds notes that his tenants are "laid by" at the time of the story, which means they have already planted the cotton (231). This is the second field mentioned, on the other side of the road from the rest of the plantation.
Although Lucas calls it "my barn," the barn or stable on the plantation (like just about everything else, including the mule that Lucas also calls his) belongs to Roth Edmonds (229). It is where the livestock is kept.
The main gate to the Edmonds plantation is on one of Yoknapatawpha county's main roads. In other texts it is called the northeast road; in this story it is called "the highroad" (228). Despite that name, however, like all the roads outside Jefferson, it is unpaved.
The commissary on the Edmonds' property is the plantation office, where the landlord keeps his records, and the company store, where his tenant farmers buy most of their supplies on credit, against his share of their crop. When Lucas enters the commissary, the narrative calls attention to the "tinned food and tobacco and patent medicines" on its shelves and the "trace chains and collars and hames" that hang from hooks, and the "roll-top desk beside the front window" where Edmonds sits (226).
