"Here he goes
from town to town and from race track to race track all through the spring,
summer and fall, and he never loses his head, never gets excited. To win
horse races is the same as winning battles. When I'm at home plowing corn
on summer afternoons, this Geers is away somewhere at some track with all
the people gathered about and waiting. To me it would be like being drunk
all the time, but you see he isn't drunk. Whisky could make him stupid. It
couldn't make him drunk. There he sits hunched up like a sleeping dog. He
looks as though he cared about nothing on earth, and he'll sit like that
through three-quarters of the hardest race, waiting, taking advantage of
every little stretch of firm hard ground on the track, saving his horse,
watching, watching his horse too, waiting. What a man! He works the horse
into fourth place, into third, into second. The crowd in the grand stand,
such fellows as Tom Butterworth, have not seen what he's doing. He sits
still. By God, what a man! He waits. He looks half asleep. If he doesn't
have to do it, he makes no effort. If the horse has it in him to win
without help he sits still. The people are shouting and jumping up out of
their seats in the grand stand, and if that Bud Doble has a horse in the
race he's leaning forward in the sulky, shouting at his horse and making a
holy show of himself.
"Ha, that Geers! He waits.
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