"That's right," Ned said. "So we has." He said to me: "Get you a long switch. They ought to be one in that hedge bush yonder." There was: a privet bush; all this was probably somebody's lawn or garden before progress, industry, commerce, railroads came. I cut the switch and came back. Ned led the horse up, facing the ramp. "Now you big folks, Mr Boon and Mr Boxcar, come up one on either side like you was the gateposts." They did so, Ned halfway up the ramp now, with the lead rope, facing the horse and talking to it. "There you is," he said. "Right straight up this here chicken walk to glory and Possum, Tennessee, by sunup tomorrow." He came back down, already turning the horse, moving fairly rapidly, speaking to me now: "He done seen the switch. Fall right in behind him. Dont touch him or pop till I tell you to." I did that, the three of us—Ned, the horse, then me—moving directly away from the ramp for perhaps twenty yards, when without stopping Ned turned and wheeled the horse, I still following, until it faced the rise of the ramp between Boon and Sam twenty yards away. When it saw the ramp, it checked. "Pop," Ned said. I made the sound, a good one; the horse sprang a little, Ned already moving on, a little faster now, back toward the ramp. "When I tells you to pop this time, touch him with the switch. Dont bit: just tap him at the root of his tail a second after you pops." He had already passed between Boon and Sam and was on the ramp. The horse was now trying to decide which to do: refuse, or run out (with the additional confusion of having to decide which of Boon and Sam would run over the easiest) or simply bolt over and through us all. You could almost see it happening: which was maybe what Ned was counting on: an intelligence panicky and timorous and capable of only one idea at a time, in which the intrusion of a second one reduces all to chaos. "Pop," Ned said. This time I tapped the horse too, as Ned had told me. It surged, leaped, its forefeet halfway up the ramp, the near hind foot (Boon's side) striking the edge of the ramp and sliding off until Boon, before Ned could speak, grasped the leg in both hands and set it back on the ramp, leaning his weight against the flank, the horse motionless now, trembling, all four feet on the ramp now. "Now," Ned said, "lay your switch right across his hocks so he'll know he got something behind him to not let him fall."
"To not let him back off the ramp, you mean," Sam said. "We need one of the crowbars. Go get it, Charley."
"That's right," Ned said. "We gonter need that crowbar in a minute. But all we needs right now is that switch. You's too little;" he told me. "Let Mr Boon and Mr Boxcar have it. Loop it behind his hocks like britching." They did so, one at each end of the Umber switch. "Now, walk him right on up. When I say pop this time, pop loud, so he will think the lick gonter be loud too." But I didn't need to pop at all again. Ned said to the horse: "Come on, son. Let's go to Possum," and the horse moved, Boon and Sam moving with it, the switch like a loop of string pressing it on, its forefeet on the solid platform now, then one final scuffling scrabbling surge, the platform resounding once as if it had leaped onto a wooden bridge.
"It's going to take more than this switch or that boy popping his tongue either, to get him into that car," Sam said.
"What gonter get him into that boxcar is that crowbar," Ned said. "Aint it come yet?" It was here now. "Prize that-ere chicken walk loose," Ned said.
"Wait," Sam said. "What for?"
"So he can walk on it into that boxcar," Ned said. "He's used to it now. He's done already found out aint nothing at the other end gonter hurt or skeer him."
"He aint smelled the inside of an empty boxcar yet though," Sam said. "That's what I'm thinking about." But Ned's idea did make sense. Besides, we had gone much too far now to boggle even if Ned had commanded us to throw down both walls of the warehouse so the horse wouldn't have to turn corners. So Boon and the railroad man prized the ramp away from the platform.
"God damn it," Sam said. "Do it quiet, cant you?"
"Aint you right here with us?" Ned said. "Sholy you can get a little more benefit outen them brass buttons than just walking around in them." Though it took all of us, including Miss Corrie, to lift the ramp onto the platform and carry it across and lay it like a bridge from the platform into the black yawn of the open car door. Then Ned led the horse up and at once I understood what Sam had meant. The horse had not only never smelled an empty boxcar before, but unlike mere humans it could see inside too; I remember thinking Now that we've torn up the ramp, we cant even get it down off the platform again before daylight catches us. But nothing like that happened. I mean, nothing happened. I mean, I dont know what happened; none of us did. Ned led the horse, its hooves ringing loud and hollow on the planks, up to the end of the ramp which now was a bridge, Ned standing on the bridge just inside the door, talking to the horse, pulling lightly on the halter until the horse put one foot forward onto the bridge and I dont know what I was thinking; a moment ago I had believed that not in all Memphis were there enough people to get that horse into that black orifice, then the next instant I was expecting that same surge and leap which would have taken the horse inside the boxcar as it had up the ramp; when the horse lifted the foot and drew it back to the platform, it and Ned facing each other like a tableau. I heard Ned breathe once. "You folks just step back to the wall," he said. We did so. I didn't know then what he did. I just saw him, one hand holding the lead rope, the other stroking, touching the horse's muzzle. Then he stepped back into the car and vanished; the lead rope tightened but only his voice came out: "Come on, son. I got it."
"I'll be God damned," Sam said. Because that was all. The loose bridge clattered a little, the cavernous blackness inside the car boomed to the hooves, but no more. We carried the lantern in; the horse's eyes glowed coldly and vanished where Ned stood with it in the corner.
"Where's them planks and nails you talked about?" he asked Sam. "Bring that chicken walk on in; that's already one whole wall."
"Hell," Sam said. "Hold on now."
"Folks coming in here tomorrow morning already missing a whole boxcar," Ned said, "aint gonter have time to be little-minded over a homemade ladder outen somebody's henhouse." So all of us again except Ned—including Miss Corrie—carried the ravished ramp into the car and set it up and held it in place while Boon and Sam and the railroad man (Sam had the planks and nails ready too) built a stall around the horse in the corner of the car; before Ned could even complain, Sam had a bucket for water and a box for grain and even a bundle of hay too; we all stood back now in the aura of the horse's contented munching. "He just the same as in Possum right this minute," Ned said.
"What you folks better wish is that he has already crossed that finish line first day after tomorrow," Sam said. "What time is it?" Then he told us himself: "Just past midnight. Time for a little sleep before the train leaves at four." He was talking to Boon now. "You and Ned will want to stay here with your horse of course; that's why I brought all that extra hay. So you bed down here and I'll take Corrie and the boys on back home and we'll all meet here at—"
"You says," Boon said, not harshly so much as with a kind of cold grimness. "You do the meeting here at four oclock. If you dont oversleep, maybe we'll see you." He was already turning. "Come on, Corrie."
"You're going go leave your boss's automobile—I mean your boss's horse—I mean this horse, whoever it really belongs to—here with nobody to watch it but this colored boy?" Sam said.
"Naw," Boon said. "That horse belongs to the railroad now. I got a baggage check to prove it. Maybe you just borrowed that railroad suit to impress women and little boys in but as long as you're in it you better use it to impress that baggage check or the railroad might not like it."
"Boon!" Miss Corrie said. "I'm not going home with anybody! Come on, Lucius, you and Otis."