Will Legate

Will Legate appears in four fictions, primarily as an accomplished hunter. He is a member of the Yoknapatawpha hunting party in "Delta Autumn" and again in Go Down, Moses, a son of one of Ike's "old companions, whom he had taught" the discipline of hunting (268, 320). As a member of this newest generation of hunters, Legate is protective of Ike as "a man your age," but shows only a little concern when another young hunter violates the code Ike taught him by killing a doe, and no concern at all for the "pretty light-colored" two-legged "doe" with whom that other hunter has an affair with (268-69, 321). He plays a more admirable part in Intruder in the Dust, when the sheriff turns to him as "one of the best woodsmen, the finest shot, and the best deer-hunter in the county" (50) for help protecting Lucas Beauchamp from a possible lynching (51). In that story he is identified as a farmer"who lived on a small farm two miles from town" (50). His last appearance is in "Race at Morning," where he is again on a hunting trip; called "Willy Legate," he is the first character to call attention to the illiteracy of the narrator.