Reivers, The - William Faulkner [101]
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."
"Yes sir," Ned said. "We has that back home too. Only they mentions why, even to niggers."
"Oh, a lawyer," Butch said. "He wants to see a paper. Show him one. —Never mind, I'll do it." He took something from his hip pocket: a letter in a soiled envelope. Ned took it. He stood there quietly, holding it in his hand. "What do you think of that," Butch said. "A man that cant even read, wanting to see a paper. Smell it then. Maybe it smells all right."
"Yes sir,"