Reivers, The - William Faulkner [119]
"Here," I said, holding out the big roll of money. "Sam said this is yours." He took it. "Aint you going to count it?" I said.
"I reckon he counted it," Ned said. I took the little one from my pocket. Ned looked at it. "Did he give you that too?"
"Miss Reba did. She bet for me."
"It's gambling money," Ned said. "You're too young to have anything to do with gambling money. Aint nobody ever old enough to have gambling money, but you sho aint." And I couldn't tell him either. Then I realised that I had expected him, Ned anyway, to already know without having to be told. And in the very next breath he did know. "Because we never done it for money," he said.
"You aint going to keep yours either?"
"Yes," he said. "It's too late for me. But it aint too late for you. I'm gonter give you a chance, even if it aint nothing but taking a chance away from you."
"Sam said I could give it to Uncle Parsham. But he wouldn't take gambling money either, would he?"
"Is that what you want to do with it?"
"Yes," I said.
"All right," he said. He took the little roll too and took out his snap purse and put both the rolls into it and now it was almost dark but I could certainly hear the supper bell here.
"How did you get the tooth back?" I said.
"It wasn't me," he said. "Lycurgus done it. That first morning, when I come back to the hotel to get you. It wasn't no trouble. The hounds had already treed him once, and Lycurgus said he thought at first he would just use them, put him up that gum sapling again and not call off the hounds until Whistle-britches wropped the tooth up in his cap or something, and dropped it. But Lycurgus said he was still a little rankled up over the upstarty notions Whistle-britches had about horses, mainly about Lightning. So, since Lightning was gonter have to run a race that afternoon and would need his rest, Lycurgus said he decided to use one of the mules. He said how Whistle-britches drawed a little old bitty pocketknife on him, but Lycurgus is gonter take good care of it until he can give it back to some of them." He stopped. He still looked bad. He still hadn't had any sleep. But maybe it is a relief to finally meet doom and have it set a definite moment to start worrying at.
"Well?" I said. "What?"
"I just told you. The mule done it."
"How?" I said.
"Lycurgus put Whistle-britches on the mule without no bridle or saddle and tied his feet underneath and told him any time he decided to wrop that tooth up in his cap and drop it off, he would stop the mule. And Ly-curgus give the mule a light cut, and about halfway round the first circle of the lot Whistle-britches dropped the cap, only there wasn't nothing in it that time. So Lycurgus handed the cap back up to him and give the mule another cut and Lycurgus said he had disremembered that this was the mule that jumped fences until it had already jumped that four-foot bobwire and Lycurgus said it looked like it was fixing to take Whistle-britches right on back to Possum. But it never went far until it turned around and come back and jumped back into the lot again so next time Whistle-britches dropped the cap the tooth was in it. Only he might as well kept it, for all the good it done me. She went back to Memphis too, huh?"
"Yes," I said.
"That's what I figgered. Likely she knows as good as I do it's gonter be a long time before Memphis sees me or Boon Hogganbeck either again. And if Boon's back in jail again, I dont reckon Jefferson, Missippi's gonter see us tonight neither."
I didn't know either; and suddenly I knew that I didn't want to know; I not only didn't want to have to make any more choices, decisions, I didn't even want to know the ones being made for me until I had