The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

One of the men standing around on Mrs. Littlejohn's lot the evening of the auction. He is the one who suggests that Ernest should track down Mrs. Armstid to tell her that her husband has been injured (177).

Bids on one of the Texas ponies that Flem brought to Frenchman's bend. Follows "his horse clean down to Samson’s Bridge, with a wagon and a camp outfit" (180).

Mrs. Tull's aunt is one of the Tull women in the wagon when the runaway pony overruns it.

Mrs. Tull is returning to Frenchman's Bend with her husband, her aunt and three daughters on a one-lane bridge when their wagon was overrun by one of the wild ponies.

A Frenchman's Bend farmer who reappears in a number of Faulkner's fiction, Vernon Tull arrives in this story just in time to be run over by Eck's pony while returning from town with his family of women. Tull holds on to his wagon's reins and is "drug" off the wagon and along the ground until they break (176).

A "Mrs. Bundren" is mentioned twice in the story by its narrator, Suratt, whose effort to sell her a sewing machine overlaps the appearance, auction and escape of the Texas horses. She never makes an appearance in the story, but presumably this is Addie Bundren, who plays such a major role in the novel As I Lay Dying, also published in 1931.

Flem Snopes' cousin to whom Flem turns over his clerking job at Jody Varner's store. I.O. admires his cousin and proudly "cackles, like a hen" at the way Flem swindles the men of Frenchman's Bend. I.O exclaims "You boys might just as well quit trying to get ahead of Flem" (181).

Eck Snopes young son, referred to as "Ad" by his father and as "Eck’s boy" by everyone else in the story, runs around trying to help his father catch their spotted pony. When the horse is trying to escape from Mrs. Littlejohn's boardinghouse, Ad stands "a yard tall maybe" and "that horse swoared over his head without touching a hair" (175).

The Armstid's oldest daughter, Ina May, is "about twelve" (178). She takes care of the rest of her siblings while Mrs. Armstid is shuttling back and forth to Mrs. Littlejohn's. According to Mrs. Armstid "Ina May bars the door" and keeps "the axe in bed with her" while her mother is away (179).

Mrs. Armstid is mistreated and abused by her husband, Henry, who bids on a spotted pony using her hard-earned five dollars after she repeatedly pleads with him not to. We hear both her desperation and resolved self-effacement when she implores the Texan to keep Henry from doing it: "Mister, . . . we got chaps in the house and not corn to feed the stock. We got five dollars I earned my chaps a-weaving after dark, and him snoring in the bed" (171). After Henry breaks his leg trying to keep the horse from running away, Mrs. Armstid shuttles back and forth between nursing him at Mrs.