There is not no barrier. You just keeps back of the line as best you can. That is one way to lose a race before the gun. I has seen them do it on purpose. You know, too tight a rein, get your horse skittered, make him break three or four times, and, when the gun goes, hold him back just long enough to let him see that he is a cooked potato. Nine times out of ten you can whip him raw and he will run, but he will not run fast enough. But your nose is clean. The trainer cannot say as how you did not try.
Say, am I boring you with this? If I am—okke doke, any time you has had a sufficiency, say so.
Well, as I was saying, there is not no barrier. Outside of a little tail flicking and head tossing, Black Boy is as calm as a Jersey cow. High Jinks breaks once and Sky Eagle and some of the field prances around a bit, but Peajacket he acts like he has been fed hopped oats. In fact, there is some talk of it later on, but they cannot never prove nothing. Anyway, this here Peajacket is taking on for a fare-you-well with Jimmie trying to gentle him down and the starter getting mad and a jock, name of Happy Slauderwasser—that is a moniker for you, nice guy though—who is next to Peajacket swearing something fierce. Finally, Jimmie gets this here Peajacket backed in and he is lathered up like a ad for saddle soap, and the gun goes, and out of the tail of my eye as me and Black Boy takes off I sees Peajacket rearing up and I thinks, "Oh, Lordy," because it is a rule last one in has to pitch a buck in the kitty. And it is plain to see, in a field of fifteen, Jimmie is slated to be the last one in and then we will only have a buck apiece instead of a buck fifty.
I settles down and starts easing over to the inside track hoping for a pocket. High Jinks is up ahead and he is not anywheres near let out yet. There is three or four horses in between, then Admirella nosing up, Sky Eagle alongside, doing like me, playing a wait, and Jimmie and the rest of the field bunched in behind.
I am not thinking about Jimmie no more, though. I am concentrating on them three or four babies cutting off my view of High Jinks. I am not worried about them none, but when there is a opening I wants to be there instead of Sky Eagle. So I am concentrating, like I said, and I hear this horse coming. You do not actually hear them as much as you feel them. It is a mixture of both. It is like you got an alarm system inside of you and all of a sudden it is ringing like who popped Mollie and you know with a kind of a ... of a ... a kind of a awareness that you got heavy competition.
I remembers wondering who it could be. There is High Jinks and Admirella in plain sight. Sky Eagle and me practically pat-a-caking at each other, some of the field ahead, but they is giving by now and, so far as I know, what is left in tow is not capable of doing nothing but horse apples.
I do not take my mind off this here opening, though. It is getting ripe, I can see that, and I am bound I am going to be there when it is due before it closes in and strings out.
Then, I catches a glimpse of this here horse on the off side of Sky Eagle. A kind of consciousness it is of this here third horse and I am sort of cheered when I see it is not bothering none about no openings, nor no inside track, nor nothing like that. And, while I am being cheered and thinking what a smart guy I am, this here third horse pounds ahead past Sky Eagle, a shoulder, half a length, a length, and that opening I been hovering over swings wide as a barn door and Sky Eagle is through it because I am yawping at Jimmie Winkie with his ears skinned back crouched high on Peajacket, and if I had not of knowed better I would of swore he was scared green, and while I am yawping, Black Boy bears out so, as I said, that puts the quietus on us.
There has been better races run and bigger ones has been won by darker horses, but, off-hand, I cannot call any to mind that I got such a thrill out of. I do not know whether it is because I am so cocksure Jimmie is bringing up the rear, or because Moe Prentice—he is up on High Jinks—is took down a peg or two, or maybe because there is a certain something about the way that there horse runs with his nostrils red and wide, and his tail streaming out behind him like it has been starched, and his hoofs beating music out of that there track like a crazy drummer, and Jimmie pasted to him close as a surcingle and with a kind of a look about him like night wind sounds, if you know what I mean. A kind of a queer, wild, blowy look. But most of all I guess it is the horse.