'Do you want to run this horse race, or do you want me to?' Ned asked him.
'AH right,' Boon said. 'But, God damn it—' Then he said: 'You said that damn boy—'
'Lemme ask you another way then,' Ned said. 'Do you want to run this horse race and lemme go hunt for that tooth?'
'Here they come,' Sam said. 'We aint got time now. Gimme your foot.' He threw me up. So we didn't have time, for Ned to instruct me further or for anything else. But we didn't need it; our victory in the first heat (we didn't win it; it was only a dividend which paid off later) was not due to me or even to Lightning, but to Ned and McWillie; I didn't even really know what was happening until afterward. Because of my (indubitable) size and (more than indubitable) inexperience, not to mention the unmanageable state toward which the other horse was now well on his way, it was stipulated and agreed that we should be led up to the wire by grooms, and there released at the word Go. Which we did (or were), Lightning behaving as he always did when Ned was near enough for him to nuzzle at his coat or hand, Acheron behaving as (I assumed, having seen him but that once) he always did when anyone was near his head, skittering, bouncing, snatching the groom this way and that but gradually working up to the wire; it would be any moment now; it seemed to me that I actually saw the marshal-murderer fill his lungs to holler Go! when I dont know what happened, I mean the sequence: Ned said suddenly:
'Set tight,' and my head, arms, shoulders and all, snapped; I dont know what it was he used—awl, ice pick, or maybe just a nail in his palm, the spring, the leap; the voice not hollering Go! because it never had, hollering instead:
'Stop! Stop! Whoa! Whoa!' which we—Lightning and me—did, to see Acheron's groom still on his knees where Acheron had flung him, and Acheron and McWillie already at top speed going into the first turn, McWillie sawing back on him, wrenching Acheron's whole neck sideways. But he already had the bit, the marshal and three or four spectators cutting across the ring to try to stop him in the back stretch, though they might as well have been hollering at Sam's cannonball limited between two flag stops. But McWillie had slowed him now, though it was now a matter of mere choice: whether to come on around the track or turn and go back, the distance being equal, McWillie (or maybe it was Acheron) choosing the former, Ned murmuring-rapidly at my knee now:
'Anyhow, we got one extra half a mile on him. This time you'll have to do it yourself because them judges gon- ter—' They were; they were already approaching. Ned said: 'Just remember. This un dont matter nohow—' Then they did: disqualified him. Though they had seen nothing: only that he had released Lightning's head before the word Go. So this time I had a volunteer from the crowd to hold Lightning's head, McWillie glaring at me while Acheron skittered and plunged under him while the groom gradually worked him back toward position. And this time the palm went to McWillie. You see what I mean? Even if Non-virtue knew nothing about backcoun-try horse racing, she didn't need to: all necessary was to supply me with Sam, to gain that extra furtherance in evil by some primeval and insentient process like osmosis or maybe simple juxtaposition. I didn't even wait for Lightning to come in to the bridle, I didn't know why: I brought the bit back to him and (with no little, in fact considerable, help from the volunteer who was mine and Lightning's individual starter) held so, fixed; and sure enough, I saw the soles of Acheron's groom's feet and Acheron himself already two leaps on his next circuit of the track, Lightning and me still motionless. But McWillie was on him this time, before he reached the turn, so that the emergency squad not only reached the back stretch first but even stopped and caught Acheron and led him back. So our—mine and Ned's—net was only six furlongs, and the last one of them debatable. Though our main gain was McWillie; he was not just mad now, he was scared too, glaring at me again but with more than just anger in it, two grooms holding Acheron now long enough for us to be more or less in position, Lightning and me well to the outside to give them room, when the word Go came.
And that's all. We were off, Lightning strong and willing, every quality you could want in fact except eagerness, his brain not having found out yet that this was a race, McWillie holding Acheron back now so that we were setting the pace, on around the first lap, Lightning moving slower and slower, confronted with all that solitude, until Acheron drew up and passed us despite all McWillie could do; whereupon Lightning also moved out again, with companionship now, around the second lap and really going now, Acheron a neck ahead and our crowd even beginning to yell now as though they were getting their money's worth; the wire ahead now and McWillie, giving Acheron a terrific cut with his whip, might as well have hit Lightning too; twenty more feet, and we would have passed McWillie on simple momentum. But the twenty more feet were not there, McWillie giving me one last glare over his shoulder of rage and fright, but triumph too now as I slowed Lightning and turned him and saw it: not a fight but rather a turmoil, a seething of heads and shoulders and backs out of the middle of the crowd around the judges' stand, out of the middle of which Boon stood suddenly up like a pine sapling out of a plum thicket, his shirt torn half off and one flailing arm with two or three men clinging to it: I could see him bellowing. Then he vanished and I saw Ned running toward me up the track. Then Butch and another man came out of the crowd toward us. 'What?' I said to Ned.
'Nemmine that,' he said. He took the bridle with one hand, his other hand already digging into his hip pocket. 'It's that Butch again; it dont matter why. Here.' He held his hand up to me. He was not rushed, hurried: he was just rapid. 'Take it. They aint gonter bother you.' It was a cloth tobacco sack containing a hardish lump about the size of a pecan. 'Hide it and keep it. Dont lose it. Just remember who it come from: Ned William McCaslin. Will you remember that? Ned William McCaslin Jefferson Missippi.'
'Yes,' I said. I put it in my hip pocket. 'But what—' He didn't even let me finish.
'Soon as you can, find Uncle Possum and stay with him. Nemmine about Boon and the rest of them. If they got him, they got all the others too. Go straight to Uncle Possum and stay with him. He will know what to do.'
'Yes,' I said. Butch and the other man had reached the gate onto the track; part of Butch's shirt was gone too. They were looking at us.
'That it?' the man with him said.
'Yep,' Butch said.
'Bring that horse here, boy,' the man said to Ned. 'I want it.'
'Set still,' Ned told me. He led the horse up to where they waited.
'Jump down, son,' the man told me, quite kindly. 'I dont want you.' I did so. 'Hand me the reins,' he told Ned. Ned did so. 'I'll take you bareback,' the man told Ned. 'You're under arrest.'
Chapter 11
We were going to have all the crowd too presently. We just stood there, facing Butch and the other man, who now held Lightning. 'What's it for, Whitefolks?' Ned said.
'It's for jail, son,' the other man said. 'That's what we call it here. I dont know what you call it where you come from.'
