'This boy here,' Ned said. 'He a one-handed horse.'
'Heh heh heh,' Butch said; he was laughing this time. 'I seen this horse run here last winter. If one hand can even wake him up, it will take more hands than a spider or a daddy longlegs to get him out in front of that horse of Colonel Linscomfo's.'
'Maybe you right,' Ned said. 'That's what we gonter find out now. Son,' he said to Lycurgus, 'hand me my coat.' I had not even noticed the coat yet, but now Lycurgus had it; also the peeled switch. Ned took both and put the coat on. He said to Boon and Butch: 'Yawl stand over yonder under them trees with Uncle Possum where you'll be in the shade and wont distract his mind. Hand me your foot,' he told me. We did so. I mean, Ned threw me up and Boon and Butch and Lycurgus went back to the tree where Uncle Parsham was already standing. Even though we had made only three trips around the pasture this morning, we had a vestigial path which Lightning would remember whether I could see it or not. Ned led him out to what had been our old starting point this morning. He spoke, quiet and succinct. He was not Uncle Remus now. But then, he never was when it was just me and members of his own race around:
'That track tomorrow aint but a half a mile, so you gonter go around it twice. Make like this is it, so when he sees that real track tomorrow, he'll already know beforehand what to expect and to do. You understand?'
'Yes,' I said. 'Ride him around it twice—' He handed me the switch. 'Get him going quick and hard. Cut him once with this before he even knows it. Then dont touch him again with it until I tells you to. Keep him going as fast as you can with your heels and talking to him but dont bother him: just set there. Keep your mind on it that you're going around twice, and try to think his mind onto that too, like you done with them colts out at McCaslin. You cant do it, but you got the switch this time. But dont touch him with it until I tells you to.' He turned his back; he was doing something now inside the shelter of his coat—something infinitesimal with his hidden hands; suddenly I smelled something, faint yet sharp; I realise now that I should have recognised it at once but I didn't have time then. He turned back; as when he had coaxed the horse into the boxcar this morning, his hand touched, caressed Lightning's muzzle for maybe a second, then he stepped back, Lightning already trying to follow him had I not reined him back. 'Go!' Ned said. 'Cut him!'
I did. He leapt, sprang, out of simple fright: nothing else; it took a half-stride to get his head back and another stride before he realised we wanted to follow the track, path again, at full gallop now, on just enough outside rein to hold him on the course; I already heeling him as hard as I could even before the fright began to fade. Only, there we were again, just like this morning: going good, obedient enough, plenty of power, but once more with that sense that his head didn't really want to go anywhere; until we entered the back stretch and he saw Ned again on the opposite side of the ring. It was the explosion again; he had taken the bit away from me; he had already left the path and was cutting straight across to Ned before I got balance enough to reach my good hand down and take the rein short and haul, wrench him angling back into the track, going hard now; I had to hold him on the outside to make the back turn and into the stretch where he could see Ned again and once more reached for the bit to go straight to him; I was using the cut hand too now to hold him onto the track; it seemed forever until Ned spoke. 'Cut him,' he said. 'Then throw the switch away.'
I did so and flung the switch backward; the leap again but I had him now since it only took one rein, the outside one, to keep him on the course, going good now, around the first turn and I was ready for him this time when he would see Ned, on through the back stretch still going, into and around the last turn, still going, Ned standing now about twenty yards beyond where our finish line would be, speaking just exactly loud enough for Lightning to hear him and just exactly as he had spoken to him in the boxcar door last night—and I didn't need the switch now; I wouldn't have had time to use it if I had had it and I thought until then that I had ridden at least one horse that I called hot anyway: a half-bred colt of Cousin Zack's with Morgan on the bottom: but nothing like this, this burst, surge, as if until now we had been dragging a rope with a chunk of wood at the end of it behind us and Ned's voice had cut the rope: 'Come on, son. I got it.'
So we were standing there, Lightning's muzzle buried to the nostrils in Ned's hand, though all I could smell now was horse-reek and all I could see was the handful of grass which Lightning was eating; Ned himself saying 'Hee hee hee' so gentle and quiet that I whispered too:
'What?' I said. 'What?' But Boon didn't whisper, coming up.
'I'll be God damned. What the hell did you tell him?'
'Nothing,' Ned said. 'Just if he want his supper, to come on and get it.' And not Butch either: bold, confident, unconvinceable, without scruple or pity.
'Well, well,' he said. He didn't draw Lightning's head up out of Ned's hand: he jerked it up, then rammed the bit home when Lightning started back.
'Lemme do it,' Ned said quickly. 'What you want to find out?'
'Any time I need help handling horses around here, I'll holler,' Butch said. 'And not for you. I'll save you to holler for down in Missippi.' He lifted Lightning's lip and looked at his gums, then at his eyes. 'Dont you know it's against the law to dope a horse for a race? Maybe you folks down there in them swamps aint heard about it, but it's so.'
'We got horse doctors in Missippi though,' Ned said. 'Send for one of them to come and see if he been doped.'
'Sure, sure,' Butch said. 'Only, why did you give it to him a day ahead of the race? to see if it would work?'
'That's right,' Ned said. 'If I give him nothing. Which I aint. Which if you knows horses, you already knows.'
'Sure, sure,' Butch said again. 'I don't interfere with no man's business secrets—providing they work. Is this horse going to run like that again tomorrow? I dont mean once: I mean three times.'
'He dont need to do it but twice,' Ned said. 'All right,' Butch said. 'Twice. Is he?'
'Ask Mr Hogganbeck there if he hadn't better do it twice,' Ned said.
'I aint asking Mr Sugar Boy,' Butch said. 'I'm asking you,
'I can make him do it twice,' Ned said. 'Fair enough,' Butch said. 'In fact, if all you got is three more doses, I wouldn't even risk but twice. Then if he misses the second one, you can use the last one to get back to Missippi on.'
'I done thought of that too,' Ned said. 'Walk him back to the barn,' he said to me. 'Cool him out. Then we'll bath him.'
Butch watched that too, some of it. We went back to the barn and untacked and Lycurgus brought a bucket and a rag and Lycurgus washed him down and dried him with crokersacks before stalling and feeding him—or had
