In "Gold Is Not Always" and again in Go Down, Moses Dan is the head stableman on the McCaslin-Edmonds' place, and is one of the two Negroes who help Roth search for "Alice Ben Bolt," the valuable mule who has gone missing. Dan immediately recognizes the mule's footprint and (as Roth "would realize" later) also recognizes the footprints of the man who led Alice away (229, 81). The fact that Dan doesn't tell Roth about the man puts black employee and his white boss on opposite sides of the color line.
The unnamed county sheriff who appears in "A Point of Law" is not described in any detail. In the companion short story "Gold Is Not Always," the sheriff is only mentioned. When Faulkner combined these stories into the chapter in Go Down, Moses called "The Fire and the Hearth," he describes the sheriff who plays the same roles as "a tremendous man, fat" (62). We assume these are all the same character in Faulkner's imagination.
After Joe Christmas' arrest in Light in August, the unnamed sheriff of the county that includes Mottstown encourages the crowd outside the jail to respect the law.
In "Uncle Willy" the sheriff, the county's chief law enforcement officer, locks Willy's drugstore after the clerk has stolen most of its stock and disappeared. (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions. Obviously in some of these cases - at least when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment - Faulkner may be thinking of the same unnamed character, or one of the half dozen "Sheriff Hampton"s who also appear in the fictions, but from the texts themselves there is no way to establish that.)
The unnamed sheriff of the county that includes Mottstown in "That Will Be Fine" is going to question Uncle Rodney about the bond theft and forgery. He later watches for Uncle Rodney's attempt to abscond with Grandpa's neighbor's wife and "all the jewelry" (281).
At the end of "Hand upon the Waters" the "sheriff of the county" visits Stevens to wrap up the details of Stevens' unofficial investigation. He tries to get Stevens to confirm that Joe murdered Boyd Ballenbaugh. Stevens does not take the bait. (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions.
The sheriff never appears in "Dry September," but is mentioned by Hawkshaw when he tries to prevent the lynching: "Let's get the sheriff and do this thing right" (172). (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions. Obviously in some of these cases - at least when the stories are set at more or less the same historical moment - Faulkner may be thinking of the same unnamed character, or one of the half dozen "Sheriff Hampton"s who also appear in the fictions, but from the texts themselves there is no way to establish that.)
In both versions of "Go Down, Moses" - the short story and the chapter of that name in the novel Go Down, Moses - Gavin Stevens briefly considers consulting "the sheriff" for help locating Mollie Beauchamp's grandson. There are three 'sheriff's in the novel, two unnamed ones (in "The Fire and the Hearth" and "Go Down, Moses"), and Sheriff Maydew in "Pantaloon in Black." They are essentially contemporaneous, but the text does not suggest any connection between any of them - so we have created three separate "Sheriff" entries.
While the sheriff of Yoknapatawpha never appears in person in "Knight's Gambit," Robert Markey mentions him when he tells Gavin Stevens that "your sheriff will have to send someone" to help take Max Harriss into custody (232). Later Stevens mentions a different officer of the law when he instructs his nephew to send a message to the Memphis police that includes this phrase: "use police per request Jefferson chief if necessary” (214). While the county sheriff is a familiar character in the Yoknapatawpha fictions, there is no other mention in them of a "chief" of police.
In "Monk," the county sheriff is mentioned by negation, as a way to characterize the hill country in the eastern part of the county from which Monk hails: according to the narrator, the area is so dangerous to outsiders that not even the sheriff will go there. (Unnamed county sheriffs appear in fifteen different Yoknapatawpha fictions.
