that won the race and made the record. He lied and bragged like a fool.
I never heard such silly talk.

And then, what do you suppose he did! He looked at the woman in there,
the one that was lean and hard-mouthed and looked a little like the
gelding Middlestride, but not clean like him, and his eyes began to
shine just as they did when he looked at me and at Sunstreak in the
paddocks at the track in the afternoon. I stood there by the window--
gee!--but I wished I hadn't gone away from the tracks, but had stayed
with the boys and the niggers and the horses. The tall rotten looking
woman was between us just as Sunstreak was in the paddocks in the
afternoon.

Then, all of a sudden, I began to hate that man. I wanted to scream and
rush in the room and kill him. I never had such a feeling before. I was
so mad clean through that I cried and my fists were doubled up so my
finger nails cut my hands.

And Jerry's eyes kept shining and he waved back and forth, and then he
went and kissed that woman and I crept away and went back to the tracks
and to bed and didn't sleep hardly any, and then next day I got the
other kids to start home with me and never told them anything I seen.

I been thinking about it ever since. I can't make it out. Spring has
come again and I'm nearly sixteen and go to the tracks mornings same as
always, and I see Sunstreak and Middlestride and a new colt named
Strident I'll bet will lay them all out, but no one thinks so but me
and two or three niggers.

But things are different. At the tracks the air don't taste as good or