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By Root 1779 0

got on bareback. His flanks were warm against me. As I followed after Frank, I saw Roger separate himself from the group and begin to walk toward me, head hanging Then I heard a shot, then saw two more horses, a brown and a chestnut, gallop away from the starting line. All along their course, men called out, "Go, Lizzie!" or "Run, Hawkeye!" And Roland was at least partly right—it was a natural human act to watch them and to favor one over the other, even not knowing either. I favored the mare, the chestnut, as it turned out. Pinning her ears, she stretched out in a long, flat gallop, looking exactly like she was resolved not to lose. The other horse closed to just a neck behind her, but she pinned her ears even flatter to her head and increased her speed. He seemed to slow down, and she opened daylight between them. I looked down at Jeremiah. He was watching everything with interest, and when they passed their closest to us, he gave a little crow hop.

Frank, on the mule, hadn’t gotten very far toward town. Roger had stopped dead, gaping.

It was a beautiful sight, the sight of that gleaming mare stretched out at a full run against the white snow, and all the men, rough characters that they were, waving their hats and sticks and seegars and jugs and hands, and shouting, all senseless of themselves and abandoned to the moment. As soon as the mare won, of course, some of the items that had been thrown into the air were flung upon the ground and stomped on, and then the scene changed, and men began paying off their bets, cursing, grinning, pushing each other, slapping each other, taking pulls from their jugs, and blowing into their cold fingers. It took her rider five minutes or so to slow down the mare after they crossed the finish line, while the brown horse was ready to give it up within a few strides. The riders jumped off, and they led the horses past me. A few men glanced in my direction, sobered themselves, smiled, tipped their hats, but the others didn’t notice—possibly were not quite sure what to do with a woman at a race meet, even in K.T., where women went almost everywhere.

Frank and the mule got even farther from town—they were right beside me. I flicked the reins and turned my face resolutely toward the buildings in the distance.

"That filly an’t nothing compared to Jeremiah. He could eat her up. She just looked good because of that nag they put with her."

"I’m displeased with you, Frank."

"I was just saying. I wasn’t suggesting."

"We were very worried. You deliberately hid your intentions from us. Thomas is still worried, and I have to find him and tell him that Jeremiah hasn’t been stolen."

"Jeremiah runs like silk, or like some weasel or something. Like water. You an’t never seen nothing like it."

"Haven’t ever seen anything like it."

"Well, then, you an’t."

"I thought you rode him."

"Naw. One of the boys rode him. I an’t that good a rider. I paid him a dollar."

"You let a stranger ride Jeremiah?"

"You can’t race your own horse, Lidie. Only fools do that. It’s very poor economy, sort of like being your own lawyer."

"What do you know about being your own lawyer?"

"I got my eyes open, don’t I? Horace was his own lawyer once. He lost the money, too." This last Frank spit out as if he could barely let such words lie on his tongue. And it was true that Frank generally made a profit. He said, "Some folks think paying someone to do what they know how to do better than you is a waste of money, but I an’t of that opinion. You can’t do everything yourself."

"Frank, you are trying to pull a veil over my eyes."

"Naw, I an’t. I know you won’t punish me any, and Thomas will look at me sadly and sternly, and I’ll feel bad, but then I’ll remember how Jeremiah looked like something not of this earth when he was running along, and I won’t feel so bad anymore." He gave me a sideways look. "But you don’t even know how bad you should feel, if you never see what I saw. They was gonna give him a go against that sorrel mare, if you let him. That would of been some race."

"I can’t let you race Jeremiah. It isn’t seemly,