The Reivers

  “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:

  “That’s riding him, boy! That’s bringing him in!” but we not stopping, Ned leading Lightning on, saying,

  “Let us through, Whitefolks; let us through, White-folks,” until they gave back enough to let us go on, but still moving along with us, like the wave, until we reached the gate to the infield where the judges were waiting, and Ned said again: “Look out, now”; and now I dont remember: only the stopped horse with Ned at the bit like a tableau, and me looking past Lightning’s ears at Grandfather leaning a little on his cane (the gold-headed one) and two other people whom I had known somewhere a long time ago just behind him.

  “Boss,” I said.

  “What did you do to your hand?” he said.

  “Yes sir,” I said. “Boss.”

  “You’re busy now,” he said. “So am I.” It was quite kind, quite cold. No: it wasn’t anything. “We’ll wait until we get home,” he said. Then he was gone. Now the two people were Sam and Minnie looking up at me with her calm grim inconsolable face for it seemed to me a long time while Ned was still pawing at my leg.

  “Where’s that tobacco sack I give you to keep yes-tiddy?” he said. “You sholy aint lost it?”

  “Oh yes,” I said, reaching it from my pocket.

  Chapter 13

  “Show them,” Miss Reba told Minnie. They were in our —I mean Boon’s—no, I mean Grandfather’s—automobile: Everbe and Miss Reba and Minnie and Sam and Colonel Linscomb’s chauffeur; he was McWillie’s father; Colonel Linscomb had an automobile too. They—the chauffeur and Sam and Minnie—had gone up to Hard-wick to get Miss Reba and Everbe and Boon and bring them all back to Parsham, where Miss Reba and Minnie and Sam could take the train for Memphis. Except that Boon didn’t come back with them. He was in jail again, the third time now, and they had stopped at Colonel Linscomb’s to tell Grandfather. Miss Reba told it, sitting in the car, with Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb and me standing around it because she wouldn’t come in; she told about Boon and Butch.

  “It was bad enough in the automobile going up there. But at least we had that deputy, let alone that little old constable you folks got that dont look like much but I’d say people dont fool around with him much either. When we got to Hardwick, they at least had sense enough to lock them in separate cells. The trouble was, they never had no way to lock up Corrie’s new friend’s mouth—” and stopped; and I didn’t want to have to look at Everbe either: a big girl, too big for little things to have to happen to like the black eye or the cut mouth, whichever one she would have, unless maybe she wouldn’t, couldn’t, be content with less than both; sitting there, having to, without anywhere to go or room to do it even, with the slow painful blood staining up the cheek I could see from here. “I’m sorry, kid; forget it,” Miss Reba said. “Where was I?”

  “You were telling what Boon did this time,” Grandfather said.

  “Oh yes,” Miss Reba said. “—locked them up in separate cells across the corridor and they were taking Corrie and me—sure; they treated us fine: just like ladies—down to the jailor’s wife’s room where we were going to stay, when what’s-his-name—Butch—pipes up and says, ‘Well, there’s one thing about it: me and Sugar Boy lost some blood and skin and a couple of shirts too, but at least we got these excuse my French,” Miss Reba said, ” ‘Memphis whores off the street.’ So Boon started in right away to tear that steel door down but they had remembered to already lock it, so you would think that would have calmed him: you know: having to sit there and look at it for a while. Anyhow, we thought so. Then when Sam came with the right papers or whatever they were—and much obliged to you,” she told Grandfather. “I dont know how much you had to put up, but if you’ll send the bill to me when I get home, I’ll attend to it. Boon knows the address and knows me.”

  “Thank you,” Grandfather said. “If there’s any charge. I’ll let you know. What happened to Boon? You haven’t told me yet.”

  “Oh yes. They unlocked What’s-his-name first; that was the mistake, because they hadn’t even got the key back out of Boon’s lock before he was out of the cell and on—”

  “Butch,” I said.

  “Butch,” Miss Reba said. “—one good lick anyhow, knocked him down and was right on top of him before anybody woke up. So they never even let Boon stop; all the out he got was that trip across the corridor and back, into the cell and locked up again before they even had time to take the key out of the lock. But at least you got to admire him for it.” But she stopped.

  “For what?” I said.

  “What did you say?” she said.

  “What he did that we’re going to admire him for. You didn’t tell us that. What did he do?”

  “You think that still trying to tear that—”

  “Butch,” I said.

  “—Butch’s head off before they even let him out of jail, aint nothing?” Miss Reba said.

  “He had to do that,” I said.

  “I’ll be damned,” Miss Reba said. “Let’s get started; we got to catch that train. You wont forget to send that bill,” she told Grandfather.

  “Get out and come in,” Colonel Linscomb said. “Supper’s about ready. You can catch the midnight train.”

  “No much obliged,” Miss Reba said. “No matter how long your wife stays at Monteagle, she’ll come back home some day and you’ll have to explain it.”

  “Nonsense,” Colonel Linscomb said. “I’m boss in my house.”

  “I hope you’ll keep on being,” Miss Reba said. “Oh yes,” she said to Minnie. “Show them.” She—Minnie— didn’t smile at us: she smiled at me. It was beautiful: the even, matched and matchless unblemished porcelain march, curving outward to embrace, almost with passion, the restored gold tooth which looked
bigger than any three of the natural merely white ones possibly could. Then she closed her lips again, serene, composed, once more immune, once more invulnerable to that extent which our frail webs of bone and flesh and coincidence ever hold or claim on Invulnerability. “Well,” Miss Reba said. Mc-Willie’s father cranked the engine and got back in; the automobile moved on. Grandfather and Colonel Linscomb turned and went back toward the house and I had begun to move too when the automobile horn tooted, not loud, once, and I turned back. It had stopped and Sam was standing beside it, beckoning to me.

  “Come here,” he said. “Miss Reba wants to see you a minute.” He watched me while I came up. “Why didn’t you and Ned tell me that horse was really going to run?” he said.

  “I thought you knew,” I said. “I thought that was why we came here.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said. “Ned told me. You told me. Everybody told me. Only, why didnt somebody make me believe it? Oh sure, I never broke a leg. But if I’d just had Miss Reba’s nerve, maybe I could have got that boxcar covered too. Here,” he said. It was a tight roll of money, bills. “This is Ned’s. Tell him the next time he finds a horse that wont run, not to wait to come and get me: just telegraph me.” Miss Reba was leaning out, hard and handsome. Everbe was on the other side of her, not moving but still too big not to notice. Miss Reba said:

  “I didn’t expect to wind up in jail here too. But then, maybe I didn’t expect not to, neither. Anyway, Sam bet for me too. I put up fifty for Mr Binford and five for Minnie. Sam got three for two. I—I mean we—want to split fifty-fifty with you. I aint got that much cash now, what with this unexpected side trip I took this morning—”

  “I dont want it,” I said.

  “I thought you’d say that,” she said. “So I had Sam put up another five for you. You got seven-fifty coming. Here.” She held out her hand.

  “I dont want it,” I said. “