Unnamed People at Ballenbaugh's

After Ballenbaugh takes over Wyott's store in The Reivers, it becomes a stop-over place for the "hard-mouthed hard-souled" men who carry merchandise to and from Memphis (72). But until the 1870s the people at Ballenbaugh's were "just tough men," i.e. no women (72). When the railroad took over the freight traffic in the 1880s, however, Ballenbaugh's becomes a destination point. The narrative enumerates the men and women who live at or patronize Ballenbaugh's between the 1870s and 1886 as "drunks and fiddlers and gamblers and girls" (74), and also as "brigands and murderers" (77). The criminal activities in which they are engaged include prostitution, making illegal whiskey, selling and buying stolen horses and cattle, and harboring fugitives from justice.