The Reivers (31 page)

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.

The owners of the horses are these gentlemen right here behind me: Colonel Linseomb, your neighbor, and Mr van Tosch from Memphis, near enough to be your neighbor too when you get to know him better. They have agreed, and your judges will approve it, to put this heat that was just run, into what the bankers call escrow. You all have done business with bankers whether you wanted to or not" —they said he even paused for the guffaw, and got it— "and you know how they have a name for everything—"

"Interest on it too," a voice said, and so he got that guffaw free and joined it.

"What escrow means this time is, suspended. Not abolished or cancelled: just suspended. The bets still stand just 'as you made them; nobody won and nobody lost; you can increase them or hedge them or whatever you want to; the stake money for the last heat still stands and the owners are already adding another fifty a side for the next heat, the winner of this next heat to be the winner of the one that was just run. Win this next heat, and win all. What do you say?"

That's what I—we—Lycurgus and me—heard later. Right now we knew nothing: just waiting for Ned or somebody to come for us or send for us, Lightning cleaned and blanketed now and Lycurgus leading him up and down, keeping him moving, and I sitting against a tree with my riding-sock off to dry out my bandage; it seemed hours, forever, then in the next thinking it seemed no time, collapsed, condensed. Then Ned came up, walking fast. I told you how he had looked terrible this morning, but that was partly because of Ms clothes. His shirt was white (or almost) again now, and his pants were clean too. But it would not have been his clothes this time, even if they were still filthy. It was his face. He didn't look like he had seen a simple and innocent hant: he looked like he had without warning confronted Doom itself, except that Doom had said to him:
Calm down. It will be thirty or forty minutes yet before I will want you. Be ready then but in the meantime stop worrying and tend to your business.
But he gave me—us—no time. He went to the buggy and took his black coat out and put it on, already talking:

"They put it in what they calls escrow. That means whoever loses this next one has done lost everything. Tack up." But Lycurgus already had the blanket off; it didn't take us long. Then I was up, Ned standing at Lightning's head, holding the bridle with one hand, his other hand in the pocket of the coat, fumbling at something. "This one is gonter be easy for you. We nudged him a little yestiddy, then you fooled him bad today. So you aint gonter trick him again. But it wont matter. We wont need to trick him now;
I'll
tend to this one myself. All you got to do is, still be on him at the finish. Dont fall off: that's all you got to do until right at the last. Just keep him between them two rails, and dont fall off of him. Remember what he taught you Monday. When you comes around the first lap, and just before he will think about where I was standing Monday, hit him. Keep him going; dont worry about that other horse, no matter where he is or what he's doing: just tend to yourn. You mind that?"

"Yes," I said.

"All right. Then here's the onliest other thing you got to do. When you comes around the last lap and around the back turn into the home stretch toward that wire, dont just believe,
know
that Lightning is where he can see the whole track in front of him. When you get there, you will know why. But before that, dont just think maybe he can, or that by now he sholy ought to, but
know
he can see that whole track right up to the wire and beyond it. If that other horse is in front of you, pull Lightning all the way across the track to the outside rail if you needs to where there wont be nothing in the way to keep him from seeing that wire and on beyond it too. Dont worry about losing distance; just have Lightning where he can see everything in front of him." His other hand was out now; Lightning was nuzzling his nose into it again and again I smelled that faint thin odor which I had smelled in Uncle Par-sham's pasture Monday, that I or anybody else should recognise at once, and that I would recognise if it would only happen when I had time. "Can you remember that?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then go on," he said. "Lead him on, Lycurgus."

"Aint you coming?" I said. Lycurgus pulled at the bridle; he had to get Lightning's muzzle out of Ned's hand by force; finally Ned had to put his hand back to his pocket.

"Go on," he said. "You knows what to do." Lycurgus led on; he had to for a while; Lightning even tried once to whirl back until Lycurgus snatched him.

"Hit him a little," Lycurgus said. "Get his mind back on what he's doing." So I did and we went on and so for the third time McWillie and I crouched our poised thunderbolts behind that wire. McWillie's starting groom having declined to be hurled to earth three times, and nobody else either volunteering or even accepting conscription, they used a piece of cotton-bagging jute stretched from rail to rail in the hands of two more democrats facing each other across the track. It was probably the best start we had had yet. Acheron, who had thought nothing of diving through a six-inch plank, naturally wouldn't go within six feet of it, and Lightning, though with his nose almost touching it, was standing as still as a cow now, I suppose scanning the crowd for Ned, when the starter hollered Gol and the string dropped and in the same second Acheron and McWillie shot past us, McWillie shouting almost in my ear:

"I'll learn you this time, white boy!" and already gone, though barely a length before Lightning pulled obediently up to McWillie's knee—the power, the rhythm, everything in fact except that still nobody bad told his head yet this was a race. And, in fact, for the first time, at least since I had participated, been a factor, we even looked like a race, the two horses as though bolted together and staggered a little, on into the back stretch of the first lap, our relative positions, in relation to our forward motion, changing and altering with almost dreamlike indolence, Acheron drawing ahead until it would look like he really was about to leave us, then Lightning would seem to no-, tice the gap and close it. It would even look like a challenge; I could hear them along the rail, who didn't really know Lightning yet: that he just didn't want to be that far back by himself; on around the back turn and into the home stretch of the first lap and I give you my word Lightning came into it already looking for Ned; I give you my word he whinnied; going at a dead run, he whinnied: the first time I ever heard a horse nicker while running. I didn't even know they could.

I cut him as hard as I could. He broke, faltered, sprang again; we had already made McWillie a present of two lengths so I cut him again; we went into the second lap two lengths back and traveling now on the peeled switch until the gap between him and Acheron replaced Ned in what Lightning called his mind, and he closed it again until his head was once more at McWillie's knee, completely obedient but not one inch more—this magnificently equipped and organised organisation whose muscles had never been informed by their brain, or whose brain had never been informed by its outposts of observation and experience, that the sole aim and purpose of this entire frantic effort was to get somewhere first. McWillie was whipping now, so I didn't need to; he could no more have drawn away from Lightning than he could have dropped behind him, through the back stretch again and around the back turn again, me still on Lightning and Lightning still between the rails, so all that remained from here out were Ned's final instructions: to pull, ease him out, presenting McWillie again with almost another length, until nothing impeded his view of the track, the wire, and beyond it. He—Lightning—even saw Ned first. The first I knew was that neck-snapping surge and lunge as though he—Lightning—had burst through some kind of invisible band or yoke. Then I saw Ned myself, maybe forty yards beyond the wire, small and puny and lonely in the track's vacancy while Acheron and McWillie's flailing arm fled rapidly back to us; then McWillie's wrung face for an instant too, then gone too; the wire flashed overhead. "Come on, son," Ned said. "I got it."

He—Lightning—almost unloaded me stopping, cutting back across the track (Acheron was somewhere close behind us, trying—I hoped—to stop too) and went to Ned at that same dead run, bit bridle and all notwithstanding, and simply stopped running, his nose already buried in Ned's hand, and me up around his ears grabbing at whatever was in reach, sore hand too. "We did it!" I said, cried. "We did it! We beat him!"

"We don't this part of it," Ned said. "Just hope to your stars it's gonter be enough." Because I had just ridden and won my first race, you see. I mean, a man-size race, with people, grown people, more people than I could remember at one time before, watching me win it and (some of them anyway) betting their money that I would. Also, I didn't have time to notice, remark anything in his face or voice or what he said, because they were already through the rail and on the track, coming toward us: the whole moil and te,em of sweated hats and tieless shirts and faces still gaped with yelling. "Look out now," Ned said; and still to me, nothing: only the faces and the voices like a sea: