Then he looks away.
He looked out across the field, his face still as a rode, like it was somebody else talking about somebody else's horse and him not even listening.
Then he spit; slow, and said
"Hell" and he turned and went on to the gate and unhitched the horse and got on it.
It was moving when he come into the saddle and by the time he was on it they was tearing down the road like the Law might have been behind them.
They went out of sight that way, the two of them looking like some kind of a spotted cyclone.
"Well," I says.
"You take my team," I said.
But he wouldn't do it And they wouldn't even stay, and that boy chasing them buzzards all day in the hot sun until he was nigh as crazy as the rest of them.
"Leave Cash here, anyway," I said.
But they wouldn't do that.
They made a pallet for him with quilts on top of the coffin and laid him on it and set his tools by him, and we put my team in and hauled the wagon about a mile down the road.
“If we’ll bother you here," Anse says, "just say so."
"Sho," I said.
"It'll be fine here.
Safe, too.
Now let's go back and eat supper."
"I thank you," Anse said.
"We got a little something in the basket.
We can make out."
"Where'd you get it?" I said.
"We brought it from home."
"But it'll be stale now," I said.
"Come and get some hot victuals."
But they wouldn't come.
“I reckon we can make out," Anse said.
So I went home and et and taken a basket back to them and tried again to make them come back to the house.
"I thank you," he said.
"I reckon we can make out."
So I left them there, squatting around a little fire, waiting; God knows what for.
I come on home. I kept thinking about them there, and about that fellow tearing away on that horse.
And that would be the last they would see of him.
And I be durn if I could blame him.
Not for wanting to not give up his horse, but for getting shut of such a durn fool as Anse.
Or that's what I thought then.
Because be durn if there aint something about a durn fellow like Anse that seems to make a man have to help him, even when he knows hell be wanting to kick himself next minute.
Because about a hour after breakfast next morning Eustace Grimm that works Snopes place come up with a span of mules, hunting Anse.
"I thought him and Anse never traded," I said.
"Sho," Eustace said.
"All they liked was the horse.
Like I said to Mr Snopes, he was letting this team go for fifty dollars, because if his uncle Flem had a just kept them Texas horses when he owned them, Anse wouldn't a never—"
"The horse?" I said.
"Anse's boy taken that horse and cleared out last night, probably halfway to Texas by now, and Anse—“
“I didn't know who brung it," Eustace said.
"I never see them.
I just found the horse in the barn this morning when I went to feed, and I told Mr Snopes and he said to bring the team on over here."
Well, that'll be the last they'll ever see of him now, sho enough.
Come Christmas time they'll maybe get a postal -card from nim in Texas, I reckon.
And if it hadn't a been Jewel, I reckon it'd a been me; I owe him that much, myself.
I be durn if Anse dont conjure a man, some way.