They entered the gate to find the grounds thronged with happy, eager, black faces, shiny with sweat. The band was playing, the peanut roasters were shrieking, and dozens of apron-clad, thunder-voiced negroes waved long-handled forks and howled like a wolf-pack. “Hot--hot--hot-dog!”
“Lawdy,” Shin sighed. “My empty stomick is wrapped aroun’ my backbone like a wet dishrag aroun’ a dryin’-pole. I feel like I ain’t et fer fawty days!”
He promptly separated himself from Skeeter Butts and lost no time in finding Whiffle Boone.
“Is you had somepin to eat sence you got out here, Whiffle?” he asked eagerly.
“I ain’t got nothin’ but a smell of dem hot dogs,” she smiled.
“Dis is whar we chews a few,” Shin declared, as he led her away from the grandstand.
“Whut wus you so snippy about when I met you uptown?” Whiffle inquired as they consumed the sausage which Shin purchased with the money he had begged from the white folks of Tickfall.
“I wus figgerin’ on how to git a bet down on a winnin’ hoss, honey,” Shin laughed. “It ’peared like I couldn’t make de riffle, an’ when I seed you I had on one of dese here grouches.”
“Ain’t it about time you wus bustin’ de news?” Whiffle asked. “Cain’t you tell me de name of de hoss?”
“No’m,” Shin grinned. “I done promise I wouldn’t say no words. But ef you wait fer me atter de races is over I’ll take you to a real eatin’-house an’ us’ll celebrate our winnin’s. We ain’t fur from gittin’ married now an’ I’s savin’ somepin fer a surprise.”
The gong sounded at the starter’s shed, and Whiffle and Shin walked toward the grandstand, eating hot sausage as they went.
“Whut race is dis, Whiffle?” Shin inquired.
“Dis is de fourth,” Whiffle told him. “My uncle Pap Curtain is got a couple hosses in dis race.”
“Lawd,” he exclaimed. “I asked Skeeter Butts to put a few money on dis race fer me. I hope he is got time.”
“Plenty time,” Whiffle declared. “De ponies ain’t come out on de track yit.”
At that moment Shin saw Skeeter Butts sliding eel-like through a dense crowd without touching an elbow. A few minutes later he saw Skeeter again, talking earnestly to certain dressy, furtive persons, bearing every evidence of being visitors from New Orleans, and these men displayed tiny celluloid slates on which were penciled various fractions after the name of each horse.
