Jim Gant was a stock-trader. He bought horses and mules in 3 adjoining counties, and with a hulking
half-witted boy to help him, drove them overland to the Memphis market 75 miles away. They carried
a camping outfit with them in a wagon, passing only one night under a roof during each trip. That was
toward the end of the journey, where at nightfall they would reach - the first mark of man's hand in
more than 5 miles of cypress-and-cane river jungle - a rambling log house with stout walls and a
broken roof and no trace or [inference?] of husbandry - plow or cultivator or such - anywhere near it. There
would be usually anywhere from one to a dozen wagons standing before it and in a corral of split rails nearby the
mules stamped and munched, usually with sections of harness still unremoved: about the whole place lay an
air of transience and sinister dilapidation. Here Gant would meet and mingle with the other caravans similar
to his own or at times more equivocal still, of rough, unshaven, overalled men, and they would eat coarse
food and drink pale, virulent corn whiskey and sleep in their muddy overalls and boots on the pun-
cheon floor before the log fire. The place was conducted by a youngish woman with cold eyes and a
hard infrequent tongue. There was in the background a man, oldish, with
[margin: cunning reddish pigs-eyes and]
matted hair and beard <and>
which lent a kind of ferocity to his weak [tan?] face. He was usually befuddled with whiskey to a state of
morose idiocy, though now and then they would hear him and the woman cursing one another, the woman's voice
cold and level, his alternating between a rumbing bass and the querulous treble of a child.
[margin: Their name was Vinson]

After Gant sold his stock he would return to the settlement where his wife and baby lived. It was
less than a village, 20 miles from the railroad in a remote section of a remote county. Mrs Gant and the
2 year old girl lived alone in the small house while Gant was away, which was most of the time. He
would be at home perhaps a week out of every 8. Mrs Gant would never know just what day or hour he
would return. Often it would be between midnight and dawn. One morning about dawn she was awakened
by someone standing in front of the house, shouting "Hello. Hello" at measured intervals. She opened the
window and looked out. It was the half-wit boy.

"Yes?" she said. "What is it?"

"Hello," the halfwit bawled.

"Hush your yelling," Mrs Gant said. "Where's Jim?"

"Jim says to tell you he aint coming home no more," the halfwit said. "Him and Mrs Vinson <have> taken and
went off in the waggin. Jim says to tell you not to expect him back." Mrs Vinson was the woman at
the tavern, and the halfwit stood in the making light while Mrs Gant in a white cotton night-cap leaned
on the window and cursed him with the gross violence of a man. Then she banged the window shut.

"Jim owes me a dollar and 6 bits," the halfwit bawled. "He said you'd give it to me." But the window
was shut, the house silent again; no light had ever shown. Yet still the halfwit stood before it, shouting
"Hello. Hello" at the blank front until the door opened and Mrs Gant came out in her nightdress with
a shotgun and cursed him again. Then he retreated to the road and stopped again in the dawn,
shouting "Hello. Hello" at the blank house until he tired himself out at last and went away.

<The next day Mrs Gant left her daughter with a neighbor and borrowed a pistol and departed. The halfwit had
already spread the tale; rather, [they dug it?] out of his voluable frustration regarding the dollar and seventy-five cents
which Gant had borrowed from him and told him Mrs Gant would repay, and they awaited his return with in-
terest rather than speculation.>

<"I'd hate to be in Gant's pants right now," they said. It no more occurred to them that she would not find>