"Me， walk up， weighing two hundred and twenty-Five pounds?" I say "Walk up that durn wall?" He stands there beside a tree. Too bad the Lord made the mistake of giving trees roots and gwing the Anse Bundrens He makes feet and legs. If He'd just swapped them， there wouldn't ever be a worry about this country being deforested someday Or any other country. "What do you zum for me to do?" I say "Stay here and get blowed clean out of the county when that cloud breaks?" Even with the horse it would take me fifteen minutes to ride up across the pasture to the top of the ridge and reach the house. The path looks like a crooked limb blown against the bluff. Anse has not been in town in twelve years. And how his mother ever got up there to bear him， he being his mother's son. 

　　"Vardaman's gittin the rope，" he says. 

　　After a while Vardaman appears with the plowline. He gives the end of it to Anse and comes down the path， uncoiling it. 

　　"You hold it tight，" I say "I done already wrote this visit onto my books， so I'm going to charge you just the same， whether I get there or not." 

　　"I got hit，" Anse says. "You kin come on up." 

　　I'I1 be damned ifl can see why I don't quit. A man seventy years old， weighing two hundred and odd pounds， being hauled up and down a damn mountain on a rope. I reckon it's because I must reach the fifty thousand dollar mark of dead accounts on my books before I can quit. 

　　"What the hell does your wife mean，" I say， "taking sick on top of a durn mountain?" 

　　"I'm right sorry， he says. He let the rope go， just dropped it， and he has turned toward the house. There is a little daylight up here still， of the color of sulphur matches. The boards look like strips of sulphur. 

　　Cash does not look back. Vernon Tull says he brings each board up to the window for her to see it and say it is all right. The boy overtakes us. 

　　……