The "Crossing" at the Tallahatchie River where General Forrest's troops engage General Smith's Union forces may refer to a ford or a ferry at the time of the story(689). In the Yoknapatawpha saga it is the point to which steamboats could once navigate, and later the site of a ferry, and eventually the site of an "iron bridge." In this story it is the site of a battle which, unlike the one in the story's title, actually takes place, though not according to Forrest's plan.
The "creek" that flows behind the Sartoris place and toward the Tallahatchie River appears in several other texts, but is only given a name in this story. Actually, two names - "Hurricane Creek" is its official designation, but as Bayard says, except for Rosa "not even the white people" use that name (697). To the local population, and in the report of the "battle" that General Forrest invents, it is "Harrykin Creek" (697).
The "lot" where Ab Snopes puts the horses he takes away from the Yankees and where Rosa locks them away from Ab would be contiguous to a barn (685). It would be near enough to the big house to keep the family's riding and carriage horses close at hand.
The "Square" - or as it is most often called, Courthouse Square - is at the center of Jefferson, and of Yoknapatawpha, and of much of what happens in Faulkner's fictions (675).
The "garden" at the Sartoris place is behind the house, and close enough for Rosa to speak to Lucius from the back porch when he is working in it (669). The story mentions the ornamental "flower beds" in front of the house (674), but it is likely that this garden in the back contains mainly vegetables and herbs.
The orchard where Rosa buries the Sartoris family valuables would be, like the garden, close to the big house. It was both a decorative sign of status and a functional source of fruit like apples or pears.
The original purpose of the pasture behind the Sartoris mansion where John Sartoris "drills his troop" of irregular cavalry was to provide food for the family's horses and other livestock (677). Hurricane Creek runs through it.
The "cabin" where Lucius talks about being free "for the first time" is the slave cabin in which he lives with Philadelphia (and perhaps Louvinia as well) behind the Sartoris mansion (669).
The Compsons are one of the oldest families in Yoknapatawpha, and their place - big house, cabins, carriage house, barn, etc. - appears in a number of Yoknapatawpha fictions. But this story is the only one to mention the Compsons' "outhouse" (675; scenes in The Sound and the Fury indicate that the family had indoor plumbing by the first decade of the 20th century).
During most of the 19th century, even wealthy southerners went to the bathroom in a small outside building, known by a number of different names, including "outhouse" (as Bayard's narrative calls it) and "privy" (as Rosa calls it, 675) and, unfortunately for Melisandre and Philip, "backhouse." As described by Bayard - "the little tall narrow flimsy sentry-box" (676) - the Sartoris outhouse is typical. Although indoor plumbing became common throughout the U.S. during the 20th century, outhouses remained a feature of rural landscapes and poor communities for many decades.
