A hand seized him by the shoulder and spun him around.
"Hey, kid," said a voice, "how you feelin'? All to the mustard, hey?"
It was Bud Noble, star jockey of the Holland stable, radiant with all the prestige that comes with twenty thousand a year and the adulation of the racing public.
"I reck'n," said Tim, and fled again.
He had no notion of flight. His feet bore him along unsentiently. Suddenly they stopped. And then he knew that he couldn't run away. He must see that race. Something within him that would not be denied commanded it. Slowly he retraced his steps, muttering unconsciously: "I gotter do it. I gotter do it."
Presently he found himself back in the top row of the grandstand. As in a dream, he watched the parade of brilliant colors to the post. As in a dream, he saw the barrier flash up. The old-time roar "They're off!" came faint and faraway to his ears. Dreamlike, the field drifted up the back stretch, rounded the turn, and straightened out for home. He dug the fingers of his one good hand into the hard wooden bench and held his eyes upon the horses.
"I gotter do it. I gotter do it," he muttered still.
They were years in reaching the wire. No mortal thoroughbreds ever ran so slowly before since time began. But at last, at the end of the world, they finished. And up on the highest bench of the grandstand a little boy, with white face and wide eyes, sat back, limp and still.
Tim's arm was still in a sling when he got back to Lexington, and it was January before he could use it to any effect. The intervening weeks he spent at home, helping his mother as best he could in the round of her hard life, running her errands and bearing to and fro the various washings by which she lived. For the first time in his life it worried him to see her work so hard.
