Reivers, The - William Faulkner [76]
"No!" Everbe said to Butch. She still held Otis by the arm. "You're going back home on the next train!"
"Now you're tooting," Otis said. "I'd a been there right now except for you." She released him. "Go on back to the surrey," she said. "You cant risk it," Boon said rapidly to her. "You'll have to go with him." He said: "All right. You all go back to town. You can send for me and Lucius about sundown."
And I knew what that meant, what decision he had wrestled with and licked. But Butch fooled us; the confident angler was letting his fish have the backing too. "Sure," he said. "Send back for us." Everbe and Otis went on. "Now that that's settled, who is going to ride the horse?"
"This boy here," Ned said. "He a one-handed horse."
"Heh heh heh," Butch said; he was laughing this time. "I seen this horse run here last winter. If one hand can even wake him up, it will take more hands than a spider or a daddy longlegs to get him out in front of that horse of Colonel Linscomfo's."
"Maybe you right," Ned said. "That's what we gonter find out now. Son," he said to Lycurgus, "hand me my coat." I had not even noticed the coat yet, but now Lycurgus had it; also the peeled switch. Ned took both and put the coat on. He said to Boon and Butch: "Yawl stand over yonder under them trees with Uncle Possum where you'll be in the shade and wont distract his mind. Hand me your foot," he told me. We did so. I mean, Ned threw me up and Boon and Butch and Lycurgus went back to the tree where Uncle Parsham was already standing. Even though we had made only three trips around the pasture this morning, we had a vestigial path which Lightning would remember whether I could see it or not. Ned led him out to what had been our old starting point this morning. He spoke, quiet and succinct. He was not Uncle Remus now. But then, he never was when it was just me and members of his own race around:
"That track tomorrow aint but a half a mile, so you gonter go around it twice. Make like this is it, so when he sees that real track tomorrow, he'll already know beforehand what to expect and to do. You understand?"
"Yes," I said. "Ride him around it twice—" He handed me the switch. "Get him going quick and hard. Cut him once with this before he even knows it. Then dont touch him again with it until I tells you to. Keep him going as fast as you can with your heels and talking to him but dont bother him: just set there. Keep your mind on it that you're going around twice, and try to think his mind onto that too, like you done with them colts out at McCaslin. You cant do it, but you got the switch this time. But dont touch him with it until I tells you to." He turned his back; he was doing something now inside the shelter of his coat—something infinitesimal with his hidden hands; suddenly I smelled something, faint yet sharp; I realise now that I should have recognised it at once but I didn't have time then. He turned back; as when he had coaxed the horse into the boxcar this morning, his hand touched, caressed Lightning's muzzle for maybe a second, then he stepped back, Lightning already trying to follow him had I not reined him back. "Go!" Ned said. "Cut him!"
I did. He leapt, sprang, out of simple fright: nothing else; it took a half-stride to get his head back and another stride before he realised we wanted to follow the track, path again, at full gallop now, on just enough outside rein to hold him on the course; I already heeling him as hard as I could even before the fright began to fade. Only, there we were again, just like this morning: going good, obedient enough, plenty of power, but once more with that sense that his head didn't really want to go anywhere; until we entered the back stretch and he saw Ned again on the opposite side of the ring. It was the explosion again; he had taken the bit away from me; he had already left the path and was cutting straight across to Ned before I got balance enough to reach my good hand down and take the rein short and haul, wrench him angling back into the track, going hard