The Reivers

be in front. He wants to run right behind up until he can see the finish line, and have something to run at. I aint seem him race yet, but I'd be willing to bet that the slower the horse in front of him goes, the more carefuller he is not to get out in front where he aint got no company—until he can see the finish line and find out it's a race he's in and run at it. All anybody got to do to beat him is to keep his mind so peaceful that when he does notice he's in a race, it's too late. Some day somebody gonter let him get far enough behind to scare him, then look out. But it wont be this race. The trouble is, the onliest one around here that knows that too, is the wrong one.'

'Who's that?' McWillie said.

Ned took another bite. 'Whoever's gonter ride that other horse today.'

'That's me,' McWillie said. 'Dont tell me Uncle Posum and Lycurgus both aint already told you that.'

'Then you oughter be talking to me instead,' Ned said. 'Set down and eat; Uncle Possum got plenty here.'

'Much obliged,' McWillie said again. 'Well,' he said. 'Mr Walter'll be glad to know it aint nobody but Coppermine. We was afraid we would have to break in a new one. See yawl at the track.' Then he was gone. But I waited another minute.

'But why?' I said.

'I dont know,' Ned said. 'We may not even need it. But if we does, we already got it there. You mind I told you this morning how the trouble with this race was, it had too many different things all mixed up in it? Well, this aint our track and country, and it aint even our horse except just in a borried manner of speaking, so we cant take none of them extra things out. So the next best we can do is, to put a few extry ones into it on our own account. That's what we just done. That horse up yonder is a thoroughbred paper horse; why aint he in Memphis or Louisville or Chicago running races, instead of back here in a homemade country pasture running races against whoever can slip in the back way, like us? Because why, because I felt him last night and he's weedy, like a horse that cant nothing catch for six furlongs, but fifty foot more and he's done folded up right under you before you knowed it. And so far, all that boy—'

'McWillie,' I said.

'—McWillie has had to worry about is just staying on top of him and keeping him headed in the right direction; he's won twice now and likely he thinks if he just had the chance, he would run Earl Sande and Dan Patch both clean outen the horse business. Now we've put something else in his mind; he's got two things in it now that dont quite fit one another. So well just wait and see. And whilst we're waiting, you go over behind them bushes yonder and lay down and rest. Word's out now, and folks gonter start easing in and out of here to see what they can find out, and over there they wont worry you.'

Which I did. Though not always asleep; I heard the voices: I wouldn't have needed to see them even if I had raised onto one elbow and opened one eye past a bush: the same overalls, tieless, the sweated hats, the chewing tobacco, squatting, unhurried, not talking very much, looking inscrutably at the horse. Nor always awake, because Lycurgus was standing over me and time had passed; the very light looked postmeridian. 'Time to go,' he said. There was nobody with Lightning now but Ned and Uncle Parsham; if they were all up at the track already, it must be even later still. I had expected Boon and Sam and probably Everbe and Miss Reba too. (But not Butch. I hadn't even thought of him; maybe Miss Reba had really got rid of him for good, back up to Hardwick or wherever it was the clerk said last night he really belonged. I had forgotten him; I realised now what the morning's peace actually was.) I said so.

'Haven't they come yet?'

'Aint nobody told them where to come yet,' Ned said. 'We dont need Boon Hogganbeck now. Come on. You can walk him up and limber him on the way.' I got up: the worn perfectly cared-for McClellan saddle and the worn perfectly cared-for cavalry bridle which was the other half of Uncle Parsham's (somebody's) military loot from that Cause which, the longer I live the more convinced I am, your spinster aunts to the contrary, that whoever lost it, it wasn't us.

'Maybe they're looking for Otis,' I said. 'Maybe they are,' Ned said. 'It's a good place to hunt for him, whether they finds him or not.' We went on, Uncle Parsham and Ned walking at Lightning's head; Lycurgus would bring the buggy and the other mule around by the road, provded he could find enough clear space to hitch them in. Because already the pasture next to the track was filled up—wagons, the teams unhitched and reversed and tied to the stanchions and tail gates; buggies, saddle-horses and -mules hitched to the fence itself; and now we—I—could see the people, black and white, the tieless shirts and the overalls, already dense along the rail and around the paddock. Because this race was homemade, remember; this was democracy, not triumphant, because anything can be triumphant provided it is tenderly and firmly enough protected and guarded and shielded in its innocent fragility, but democracy working: Colonel Linscomb, the aristocrat, the baron, the suzerain, was not even present. As far as I knew, nobody knew where he was. As far as I knew, nobody cared. He owned one of the horses (I still didn't know for certain just who owned the one I was sitting on) and the dirt we were going to race on and the nice white rail enclosing it and the adjacent pasture which the tethered wagons and buggies were cutting up and the fence one entire panel of which a fractious or frightened saddle-horse had just wrenched into kindling, but nobody knew where he was or seemed to bother or care.

We went to the paddock. Oh yes, we had one; we had everything a race track should have except, as Ned said, grandstands and stalls for beer and whiskey; we had everything else that any track had, but we had democracy too: the judges were the night telegraph operator at the depot and Mr McDiarmid, who ran the depot eating room, who, the legend went, could slice a ham so thin that his entire family had made a summer trip to Chicago on the profits from one of them; our steward and marshal was a dog trainer who shot quail for the market and was now out on bond for his part in (participation in or maybe just his presence at) a homicide which had occurred last winter at a neighboring whiskey still; did I hot tell you this was free and elective will,and choice and private enterprise at its purest? And there were Boon and Sam waiting for us. 'I cant find him,' Boon said. 'Aint you seen him?'

'Seen who?' Ned said. 'Jump down,' he told me. The other horse was there too, still nervous, still looking what I would have called bad but that Lycurgus said Ned said was afraid. 'Now, what did this horse—'

'That damn boy!' Boon said. 'You said this morning he would be out here.'

'Maybe he's behind something,' Ned said. He came back to me. 'What did this horse learn you yesterday? You was on a twice-around track that time too. What did he learn you? Think.' I thought hard. But there still wasn't anything.

'Nothing,' I said. 'All I did was to keep him from going straight to you whenever he saw you.'

'And that's exactly what you want to do this first heat: just keep him in the middle of the track and keep him going and then dont bother him. Dont bother nohow; we gonter lose this first heat anyway and get shut of it —'

'Lose it?' Boon said. 'What the hell—'