This "Negro girl" is shot by Boon on Courthouse Square when he is trying to shoot Ludus (14). Her wound seems serious - not only is she "screaming" but also "bleeding like a stuck pig" - but the Sheriff decides Boon's white friends can resolve the situation by giving her father five dollars and her "a new dress . . . and a bag of candy" (14-15). When he mentions the new dress, Lucius as narrator notes that "there wasn't anything under" the dress she was wearing when she was shot (15).
The Stevenses are one of the oldest and most prominent families in Jefferson, and the office in which "Judge Stevens" appears in this novel is an important setting in other Faulkner fictions (14). The patriarchal way in which he and Maury Priest settle the business of Boon's gunfire without recourse to the legal system or concern for the rights of the black girl Boon shoots is a good example of how the good old boy network functions.
Doctor Peabody is the only character who appears in all of the first three Yoknapatawpha fictions, where he looms large as 'the fattest man in the county.' He remains offstage in The Reivers, but it is to his office on the Square that the "Negro girl" whom Boon shoots is taken (14).
As he tells the story in 1961, Lucius Priest notes that the "Little Hub" Hampton "who is sheriff now" is the grandson of the Hampton who is sheriff in 1905 (14). Faulkner may have lost track of his Hamptons, however; the Sheriff Hope Hampton who appears in the later Yoknapatawpha fictions is nicknamed "Hub"; in The Mansion "Little Hub" is his son, and so the great-grandson of the man who was sheriff in 1905.
The "Mr Hampton" who is the county sheriff in 1905 is the grandfather of Hope Hampton, who is county sheriff while Lucius Priest is telling the story in 1961. He makes sure the "Negro girl" whom Boon shoots by mistake gets to the doctor's, but then tells Maury Priest that "a new dress," "a bag of candy" and "ten dollars" for her father is enough to "settle" her claim against Boon (15).
"Mack Winbush's" is where one can buy the moonshine whiskey that Cal Bookwright makes (12), but the text does not say if Winbush's is a farm or juke joint or something else.
"Uncle Cal Bookwright" makes illegal moonshine whiskey that can be bought at Mack Winbush's for two dollars a gallon (12). Apparently his whiskey is much better than the "rotgut" liquor Ludus buys instead (12).
At the time the story begins, Ludus is romancing "a new girl, daughter (or wife: we didn't know which) of a tenant" farmer who lives six miles from town (10). Apparently she likes "peppermint candy" (11).
Ludus works as a driver for the livery stable, but is well known for his "tomcatting" - having affairs with local black women, single and married (13). When he "borry"s a team and wagon from the stable overnight to visit "a new girl" six miles out of town, he gets into trouble with Boon (10). (Faulkner had told this story before, in "Lion" and Go Down, Moses; there the man Boon shoots is unnamed.)
