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By Root 4397 0

instant I knew what was wrong; they were all waiting for me. And that was the real moment -when—Lightning and me standing in (not to mention breathing it) the same air not a thousand feet from the race track and not much more than a tenth of that in minutes from the race itself—when I actually realized not only how Lightning's and my fate were now one, but that the two of us together carried that of the rest of us too, certainly Boon's and Ned's, since on us.depended under what conditions they could go back home, or indeed if they could go back home—a mystical condition which a boy of only eleven should not really be called to shoulder. Which is perhaps why I noticed nothing, or anyway missed what I did see: only that Lycurgus handed Lightning's lead rope to Uncle Parsham and came and took our bridle and Ned said, "You get that message to him all right?" and Lycurgus said Yes sir, and Ned said to me, "Whyn't you go and take Lightning offen Uncle Possum so he wont have to get up?" and I did so, leaving Ned and Lycurgus standing quite close together at the buggy; and that not long before Ned came on to us, leaving Lycurgus to take the mule out of the buggy and loop the lines and traces up and tie the mule beside its mate and come on to us, where Ned was now squatting beside Uncle Parsham. He said: "Tell again about them two races last winter. You said nothing happened. What kind of nothing?"

"Ah," Uncle Parsham said. "It was a three-heat race just like this one, only they never run but two of them. By that time there wasn't no need to run the third one. Or maybe somebody got tired."

"Tired reached into his hind pocket, maybe," Ned said.

"Maybe," Uncle Parsham said. "The first time, your horse run too soon, and the second time he run too late. Or maybe it was the whip whipped too soon the first time and not soon enough the second. Anyhow, at the first lick your horse jumped out in front, a good length, and stayed there all the way around the first lap, even after the whipping had done run out, like it does with a horse or a man either: he can take just so much whipping and after that it aint no more than spitting on him. They they came into the home stretch and it was like your horse saw that empty track in front of him and said to himself, This aint polite; I'm a stranger here, and dropped back just enough to lay his head more or less on Colonel Linscomb's boy's knee, and kept it there until somebody told him he could stop. And the next time your horse started out like he still thought he hadn't finished that first heat, his head all courteous and polite about opposite Colonel Linscomb's boy's knee, on into the back turn of the last lap, where that Memphis boy hit him the first lick, not late enough this time, because all that full-length jump done this time was to show him that empty track again."

"Not too late to scare McWillie," Lycurgus said.

"Skeer him how much?" Ned said.

"Enough," Lycurgus said. Ned squatted there. He must have got a little sleep last night, even with the hounds treeing Otis every now and then. He didn't look it too much though.

"All right," he said to me. "You and Lycurgus just stroll up yonder to that stable awhile. All you're doing is taking your natural look at the horse you gonter ride against this evening. For the rest of it, let Lycurgus do the talking, and dont look behind you on the way back." I didn't even ask him why. He wouldn't have told me. It was not far: past the neat half-mile track with its white-painted rails that it would be nice to be rich too, on to the barns, the stable that if Cousin Zack had one like it out at McCaslin,

Cousin Louisa would probably have them living in it. There was nobody in sight. I dont know what I had expected: maybe still more of the overalled and tieless aficionados squatting and chewing tobacco along the wall as we had seen them in the dining room at breakfast. Maybe it was too early yet: which, I now realised, was probably exactly why Ned had sent us; we—Lycurgus— lounging into the hallway which—the stable—was as big as our dedicated-to-a-little-profit