He doesn't think of the people but of the horse
he's driving. When the time comes, just the right time, that Geers, he lets
the horse know. They are one at that moment, like Grant and I were over
that bottle of whisky. Something happens between them. Something inside the
man says, 'now,' and the message runs along the reins to the horse's brain.
It flies down into his legs. There is a rush. The head of the horse has
just worked its way out in front by inches--not too soon, nothing wasted.
Ha, that Geers! Bud Doble, huh!"
On the night of Clara's marriage after she and Hugh had disappeared down
the county seat road, Jim hurried into the barn and, bringing out a horse,
sprang on his back. He was sixty-three but could mount a horse like a young
man. As he rode furiously toward Bidwell he thought, not of Clara and her
adventure, but of her father. To both men the right kind of marriage meant
success in life for a woman. Nothing else really mattered much if that were
accomplished. He thought of Tom Butterworth, who, he told himself, had
fussed with Clara just as Bud Doble often fussed with a horse in a race. He
had himself been like Pop Geers. All along he had known and understood the
mare colt, Clara. Now she had come through; she had won the race of life.
"Ha, that old fool!" Jim whispered to himself as he rode swiftly down the
dark road. When the horse ran clattering over a small wooden bridge and
came to the first of the houses of the town, he felt like one coming to
announce a victory, and half expected a vast shout to come out of the
darkness, as it had come in the moment of Grant's victory over Lee.
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