“He had no money and no home; he lived entirely on the road of the racing circuit, sleeping in empty stalls, carrying with him only a saddle, his rosary, and his books...The books were the closest things he had to furniture, and he lived in them the way other men live in easy chairs.”
“When the handbill says ‘dead or alive’, the rest of us just shoot you in the back from up on top a perch somewhere and bring you in dead over a saddle. But when John Ruth ‘The Hangman’ catches you... You hang!”