The Reivers

in with a tray of dirty dishes—the brown calm tragic hungry and inconsolable mask. 'Come on,' Ned told her, 'gimme that smile again so I'll have the right measure to fit that tooth when I brings it back tonight.' _ 'Dont do it, girl,' the fat cook said. 'Maybe that Mis-sippi sugar will spend where it come from, but it wont buy nothing up here in Tennessee. Not in this kitchen, nohow.'

'But wait,' Boon said.

'You wait for Mr Sam,' Ned said. 'He can tell you. In fact, whilst me and Lucius are winning this race, maybe you and Mr Sam can locate around amongst the folks for Whistle-britches and that tooth.' He had Uncle Parsham's buggy this time, with one of the nv'es. And he was right: the little hamlet had changed ovcrni ht. It was not that there were so many people in sight, any more than yesterday. It was the air itself—an exhilaration, almost; for the first time I really realised that I was going to ride in a horse race before many more hours, and I could taste my spit sudden and sharp around my tongue.

'I thought you said last night that Otis would be gone when you got back from town,' I said.

'He was,' Ned said. 'But not far. He aint got nowhere to go neither. The hounds give mouth twice during the night back toward the barn; them hounds taken the same quick mislike to him that human folks does. Likely soon as I left this morning, he come up for his breakfast.'

'But suppose he sells the tooth before we can catch him.'

'I done fixed that,' Ned said. 'He aint gonter sell it. He aint gonter find nobody to buy it. If he aint come up for breakfast, Lycurgus gonter take the hounds and tree him again, and tell him that when I come back from Parsham last night, I said a man in Memphis offered that gal twenty-eight dollars for that tooth, cash. He'll believe that. If it had been a hundred dollars or even fifty, he wouldn't believe it. But hell believe a extra number like twenty-eight dollars, mainly because he'll think it aint enough: that that Memphis man was beating Minnie down. And when he tries to sell it at that race track this evening, wont nobody give him even that much, so wont be nothing left for him to do but wait until he can get back to Memphis with it So you get your mind off that tooth and put it on this horse race. On them last two heats, I mean. We gonter lose the first one, so you dont need to worry about that—'

'What?' I said. 'Why?'

'Why not?' Ned said. 'All we needs to win is two of them.'

'But why lose the first one? Why dont we win that one, get that much ahead as soon as we can—' He drove on, maybe a half a minute.

'The trouble with this race, it's got too many different things mixed up in it.'

'Too many what?' I said.

'Too many of everything,' he said. 'Too many folks. But mainly, too many heats. If it was just one heat, one run, off in the bushes somewhere and not nobody around but me and you and Lightning and that other horse and whoever gonter ride him, we would be all right. Because

we found out yestiddy we can make Lightning run one time. Only, now he got to run three of them.'

'But you made that mule run every time,' I said.

'This horse aint that mule,' Ned said. 'Aint no horse ever foaled was that mule. Or any other mule. And this horse we got to depend on now aint even got as much sense as some horses. So you can see what your fix is. We knows I can make him run once, and we hopes I can make him run twice. But that's all. We just hopes. So we cant risk that one time we knows I can make him run, until we got to have it. So the most we got at the best, is two times. And since we got to lose one of them, no matter what, we gonter lose the one we can maybe learn something from to use next time. And that's gonter be the first one.'

'Have you told Boon that? so he wont—'

'Let him lose on the first heat, providing he dont put up all the money them ladies scraps up for him to bet. Which, from what I seen of that Miss Reba, he aint gonter do. That will make the odds that much better for them next two. Besides, we can tell him all he needs to know when the time comes. So you just—'

'I didn't mean that,' I said. 'I meant Boss's—'

'Didn't I tell you I was tending to that?' he said. 'Now you quit worrying. I dont mean quit thinking about the race, because you cant do that. But quit worrying about winning it. Just think about what Lightning taught you yesterday about riding him. That's all you got to do. I'll tend to all the rest of it. You got your sock, aint you?'

'Yes,' I said. Only we were not going back to Uncle Parsham's; we were not even going in that direction now.

'We got our own private stable for this race,' Ned said. 'A spring branch in a hollow that belongs to one of Possum's church members, where we can be right there not half a quarter from the track without nobody knowing to bother us until we wants them. Lycurgus and Uncle Possum went on with Lightning right after breakfast.'

'The track,' I said. Of course, there would have to be a track. I had never thought of that. If I thought at all, I reckon I simply assumed that somebody would ride or lead the other horse up, and we should run the race right there in Uncle Parsham's pasture.

'That's right,' Ned said. 'A regular track, just like a big one except it's just a half a mile and aint got no grandstands and beer-and-whiskey counters like anybody that wants to run horse racing right ought to have. It's right there in Colonel Linscomb's pasture, that owns the other >horse. Me and Lycurgus went and looked at it last night. I mean the track, not the horse. I aint seen the horse yet. But we gonter have a chance to look at him today, leastways, one end of him. Only what we want is to plan for that horse to spend the last half of two of these heats looking at that end of Lightning. So I need to talk to the boy that's gonter ride him. A colored boy; Lycurgus knows him. I want to talk to him in a way that he wont find out until afterward that I talked to him.'

'Yes,' I said. 'How?'

'Let's get there first,' Ned said. We went on; it was new country to me, of course. Obviously we were now crossing Colonel Linscomb's plantation, or anyway somebody's— big neat fields of sprouting cotton and corn, and pastures with good fences and tenant cabins and cotton houses at the turnrow ends; and now I could see the bams and stables and sure enough, there was the neat white oval of the small track; we—Ned—turning now, following a faint road, on into a grove; and there it was, isolate and secure, even secret if we wished: a grove of beeches about a spring, Lightning standing with Lycurgus at his head, groomed and polished and even glowing faintly in the dappled light, the other mule tied in the background and Uncle Parsham, dramatic in black and white, even regal, prince and martinet in the dignity of solvent and workless age, sitting on the saddle which Lycurgus had propped against a tree into a sort of chair for him, all waiting for us. And then in the next instant I knew what was wrong; they were all waiting for me. And that was the real moment -when—Lightning and me standing in (not to mention