The Reivers

into the bridle all the way up to my shoulders, bad hand and all. Acheron already in full run and three lengths ahead when I let Lightning go, but still kept the three-length gap, both of us 'going now but three horses apart, when I saw McWillie do what you call nowadays a double-take: a single quick glance aside, using only his eyeballs, expecting to see me of course more or less at his knee, then seeming to drive on at full speed for another stride or so before his vision told his intelligence that Lightning and I were not there. Then he turned, jerked his whole head around to look back and I remember still the whites of his eyes and 'his open mouth; I could see him sawing frantically at Acheron to slow him; I sincerely believe I even heard him yell back at me: 'Goddammit, white boy, if you gonter race, race!' the gap between us closing fast now because he now had Acheron wrenched back and crossways until he was now at right angles to the course, more or less filling the track sideways from rail to rail it looked like and facing the outside rail and for that moment, instant, second, motionless; I am convinced that McWUlie's now frantic mind actually toyed with the idea of turning and running back until he could turn again with Lightning in front. Nor no premeditation, nothing: I just said in my mind My name is Ned William McCaslin and cut Lightning as hard as I could with the switch, pulling his head over so that when he sprang for the gap between Acheron's stern and the inside rail, we would scrape Acheron; I remember I thought My leg will be crushed and I sat there, the switch poised again, in complete detachment, waiting in nothing but curiosity for the blow, shock, crack, spurt of blood and bones or whatever it would be. But we had just exactly room enough or speed enough or maybe it was luck enough: not my leg but Lightning's hip which scraped across Acheron's buttocks: at which second I cut again with the switch as hard as I could. Nor any judge or steward, dog trainer, market hunter or murderer, nor purist or stickler of the most finicking and irreproachable, to affirm it was not my own mount I struck; in fact, we were so inextricable at that second that, of the four of us, only Acheron actually knew who had been hit.

Then on. I mean, Lightning and me. I didn't—couldn't —look back yet, so I had to wait to learn what happened. They said that Acheron didn't try to jump the rail at all: he just reared and fell through it in a kind of whirling dust of white planks, but still on his feet, frantic now, running more or less straight out into the pasture, spectators scattering before him, until McWillie wrenched him around; and they said that this time McWillie actually set him quartering at the fence (it was too late now to go back to the gap in it he had already made; we—Lightning—were too far ahead by this time) as though he were a hunter. But he refused it, running instead at full speed along the rail, but still on the outside of it, the spectators hollering and leaping like frogs from in front of him as he cleared his new path or precedent. That was when I began to hear him again. He—they: McWillie and Acheron—was closing fast now, though with the outside rail between us: Lightning with the whole track to himself now and going with that same fine strong rhythm and reach and power to which it had simply not occurred yet that there was any horry about it; in the back stretch now and Acheron, who had already run at least one extra fifty yards and would have to run another one before he finished, already abreast of us beyond the rail; around the far turn of the first lap now and now I could actually see Me Willie's desperate mind grappling frantically with the rapidly diminishing choice of whether to swing Acheron wide enough to bring him back through his self-made gap and onto the track again and have him refuse its jumbled wreckage, or play safe and stay where they were in the new track which they had already cleared of obstacles.

Conservatism won (as it should and does); again the back stretch (second lap now); now the far turn (second one also) and even on the outside longer curve, they were drawing 'ahead; there was the wire and Acheron a length at least ahead and I believe I thought for an instant of going to the whip just for the looks of the thing; on, our crowd was yelling now and who could blame them? few if any had seen a heat like this before between two horses running on opposite sides of the rail; on, Acheron still at top speed along his path as empty and open for him as the path to heaven; two lengths ahead when we—Lightning— passed under the wire, and (Acheron: evidently he liked running outside) already into his third lap when McWillie dragged him by main strength away and into the pasture and into a tightening circle which even he could no longer negotiate. And much uproar behind us now: shouts: Foul! Foul! No! No! Yesl No heat! No heat! Yes it was! No it wasn't! Ask the judge! Ask Ed! What was it, Ed?'—that part of the crowd which Acheron had scattered from the outside rail now pouring across the track through the shattered gap to join the others in the infield; I was looking for Ned; I thought I saw him but it was Lycurgus, trotting up the track toward me until he could take Lightning's bit, already turning him back.

'Come on,' he said. 'You can stop. You got to cool him out. Mr McCaslin said to get him away from the track, take him over yonder to them locust trees where the buggy's at, where he can be quiet and we can rub him down.' But I tried to hold back.

'What happened?' I said. 'Is it going to count? We won, didn't we? We went under the wire. They just went around it. Here,' I said, 'you take him while I go back and see.'

'No, I tell you,' Lycurgus said. He had Lightning trotting now. 'Mr McCaslin dont want you there neither. He said for me and you to stay right with Lightning and have him ready to run again; that next heat's in less than a hour now and we got to win that one now, because if this throws this one out, we got to win the next one no matter what happens.' So he went on. He lifted down a rail at the end of the track and we went through, on to the clump of locust trees about two hundred yards away; now I could see Uncle Parsham's buggy hitched to one of them. And I could still hear the voices from the judges' stand in the infield and I still wanted to go back and find out. But Lycurgus had forestalled that too: he had the pails and sponges and clothes and even a churn of water in the buggy for us to strip Lightning and go to work on him.

So I had to get my first information about what had happened (and was still happening too) from hearsay— what little Lycurgus had seen before Ned sent him to meet me, and from others later—before Ned came up: the uproar, vociferation of protest and affirmation (oh yes, even after losing two races—heats, whatever they were— last winter, and the first beat of this one yesterday, there were still people who had bet on Lightning. Because I was only eleven; I had not learned yet that no horse ever walked to post, provided he was still on his feet when he got there, that somebody didn't bet on), coming once or twice almost to blows, with Ned in the center of it, in effect the crux of it, polite and calm but dogged and insistent too, rebutting each attack: 'It wasn't a race. It takes at least two horses to make a race, and one of these wasn't even on the track.' And Ned:

'No sir. The rule book dont mention how many horses. It just talks about one horse at a time: that if it dont commit fouls and dont stop forward motion and the jockey dont fall off and it cross the finish line first, it wins.' Then another:

'Then you just proved yourself that black won: it never fouled nothing but about twenty foot of that fence and it sho never stopped forward motion because I myself seen at least a hundred folks barely get out from under it in time and you yourself seen it pass that finish line a good two lengths ahead of that chestnut.' And Ned:

'No sir. That finish wire just runs across that track from one rail to the other. It dont run on down into Mis-sippi too. If it done that, there are horses down there been crossing it ever since sunup this morning that we aint even heard about yet. No sir. It's too bad about that little flimsy railmg, but we was too busy running our horse to have time to stop and wait for that other one to come back.' When suddenly three newcomers were on the scene, or anyway in the telling of it: not three strangers, because one of them was Colonel Linscomb himself and they all knew him since they were his neighbors. So probably what they meant was that the other two were simply his guests, city men too or very likely simply of Colonel Linscomb's age and obvious solvency and likewise wearing coats and neckties, who—one of them—seemed to take charge of the matter, coming into the crowd clamoring around Ned and the harassed officials and saying,

'Gentlemen, let me offer a solution. As this man'— meaning Ned—'says, his horse ran according to the rules and went under the wire first. Yet we all saw the other horse run the fastest race and was in the lead at the finish.