Free The Pistoleer by James Carlos Blake

the Reverend had stayed up half the night, talking things over. His daddy said Yankee patrols had been scouting the countryside for him all over East Texas. His mother was eaten up with worry. The Reverend still believed Wes would be acquitted in a fair trial once the Union army ended its occupation of Texas, but there was still no telling when that might be. In another few weeks the Reverend would be the new schoolmaster in Mount Calm, a little place down at the south end of Hill County, and he wanted Wes to help him get the family moved and then stay put with them for a while. He figured Wes would be safer from Yankee patrols in a tiny out-of-the-way place like that.
    Wes finally agreed to go with him, and the Reverend had been so pleased to hear it he’d said yes, of course, when Wes asked if he could borrow his horse to ride over to say Merry Christmas to me and show off the animal.
    “I told Daddy I’d go with him,” Wes said as we came in sight of the Boles Track, “but hiding out in some two-dog town for who knows how long ain’t something I hanker to do.” Then he smiled and said, “But hell, it’s nothing to worry about till tomorrow, is it? Right now I’m smelling money from that track yonder. What say we get on over there and put some of it in our pockets, John?”
    The race day had drawn its usual big crowd. Besides the aroma of money Wes mentioned, the chilly air was full of the smells of fresh fried chitlins and roast peanuts and cigar smoke and horse dung, with a tinge of whiskey weaving through it all. It’s no place on earth as exciting as a horse track on race day.
    And that Saturday was the most exciting one of them all, let me tell you. Wes paid fifty dollars to a little nigger rider named Jerome—about four feet high and weighing all of ninety pounds—to ride Copperhead in a third-of-a-mile race against Honey Boy, belonging to Dave McIntyre. Honey Boy was the favorite because he’d already won a dozen races and lost only one—to Andy Jack, Merle Hornpiper’s horse, which everybody called the fastest in the county. Hornpiper’d agreed to run Andy Jack against the winner of our race with Honey Boy.
    But goddamn, that Wes was one to run risks. He was so confident Copperhead could win that he took Jerome aside and said he’d pay him ten dollars extra if he’d make sure the race against Honey Boy was close. “You win,” he told Jerome, “just don’t win by more’n a half length or so. If you’re the rider they say you are, you ought be able to see to that.” Jerome was a strange little spook but nobody’s fool. He gave Wes a gold-tooth grin and said, “This here some hoss, cap’n—and I’s some rider. Make it close be hard work—’bout twenty more dollars hard.” Wes cussed him for a bandit but handed over the extra twenty, then gave him a boost up on Copperhead. He was a flashy little dude, Jerome. Wore a yellow silk scarf around his neck when he rode, and it streamed behind him like a flame. A few years later somebody hung him with it from a stable rafter.
    But by damn, he was some rider. I swear I thought we were going to lose that first race right up to the last twenty yards—and then Jerome eased Copperhead up by Honey Boy and crossed the finish first by a neck. He came trotting back to us over by the corrals and leaned down in the saddle to whisper to Wes, “That be close enough, cap’n?” Besides the two-hundred-dollar stake we won from McIntyre, we pulled in nearly three hundred in side bets.
    Because we’d barely beat Honey Boy, but Andy Jack had beat him by three lengths in their race the month before, the odds were heavy on Andy Jack over Copperhead—just the way Wes planned. Hornpiper put up a stake of four hundred dollars against our two hundred, and we laid out about two hundred more in side bets at good odds. Then Jerome brought Copperhead home a half length ahead of Andy Jack and, by God, we were rich.
    We kept slapping each other on the back and laughing