"What?" I said. "Why?"
"Why not?" Ned said. "All we needs to win is two of them."
"But why lose the first one? Why dont we win that one, get that much ahead as soon as we can—" He drove on, maybe a half a minute.
"The trouble with this race, it's got too many different things mixed up in it."
"Too many what?" I said.
"Too many of everything," he said. "Too many folks. But mainly, too many heats. If it was just one heat, one run, off in the bushes somewhere and not nobody around but me and you and Lightning and that other horse and whoever gonter ride him, we would be all right. Because
we found out yestiddy we can make Lightning run one time. Only, now he got to run three of them."
"But you made that mule run every time," I said.
"This horse aint that mule," Ned said. "Aint no horse ever foaled was that mule. Or any other mule. And this horse we got to depend on now aint even got as much sense as some horses. So you can see what your fix is. We knows I can make him run once, and we hopes I can make him run twice. But that's all. We just hopes. So we cant risk that one time we knows I can make him run, until we got to have it. So the most we got at the best, is two times. And since we got to lose one of them, no matter what, we gonter lose the one we can maybe learn something from to use next time. And that's gonter be the first one."
"Have you told Boon that? so he wont—"
"Let him lose on the first heat, providing he dont put up all the money them ladies scraps up for him to bet. Which, from what I seen of that Miss Reba, he aint gonter do. That will make the odds that much better for them next two. Besides, we can tell him all he needs to know when the time comes. So you just—"
"I didn't mean that," I said. "I meant Boss's—"
"Didn't I tell you I was tending to that?" he said. "Now you quit worrying. I dont mean quit thinking about the race, because you cant do that. But quit worrying about winning it. Just think about what Lightning taught you yesterday about riding him. That's all you got to do. I'll tend to all the rest of it. You got your sock, aint you?"
"Yes," I said. Only we were not going back to Uncle Parsham's; we were not even going in that direction now.
"We got our own private stable for this race," Ned said. "A spring branch in a hollow that belongs to one of Possum's church members, where we can be right there not half a quarter from the track without nobody knowing to bother us until we wants them. Lycurgus and Uncle Possum went on with Lightning right after breakfast."
"The track," I said. Of course, there would have to be a track. I had never thought of that. If I thought at all, I reckon I simply assumed that somebody would ride or lead the other horse up, and we should run the race right there in Uncle Parsham's pasture.
"That's right," Ned said. "A regular track, just like a big one except it's just a half a mile and aint got no grandstands and beer-and-whiskey counters like anybody that wants to run horse racing right ought to have. It's right there in Colonel Linscomb's pasture, that owns the other >horse. Me and Lycurgus went and looked at it last night. I mean the track, not the horse. I aint seen the horse yet. But we gonter have a chance to look at him today, leastways, one end of him. Only what we want is to plan for that horse to spend the last half of two of these heats looking at that end of Lightning. So I need to talk to the boy that's gonter ride him. A colored boy; Lycurgus knows him. I want to talk to him in a way that he wont find out until afterward that I talked to him."
"Yes," I said. "How?"
"Let's get there first," Ned said. We went on; it was new country to me, of course. Obviously we were now crossing Colonel Linscomb's plantation, or anyway somebody's— big neat fields of sprouting cotton and corn, and pastures with good fences and tenant cabins and cotton houses at the turnrow ends; and now I could see the bams and stables and sure enough, there was the neat white oval of the small track; we—Ned—turning now, following a faint road, on into a grove; and there it was, isolate and secure, even secret if we wished: a grove of beeches about a spring, Lightning standing with Lycurgus at his head, groomed and polished and even glowing faintly in the dappled light, the other mule tied in the background and Uncle Parsham, dramatic in black and white, even regal, prince and martinet in the dignity of solvent and workless age, sitting on the saddle which Lycurgus had propped against a tree into a sort of chair for him, all waiting for us. And then in the next 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.