The Race (Isaac Bell 4)

Bell beckoned Andy. Andy said, “Best I could do was synchronize’em for a few minutes before they started running haywire again. But even if we could keep ’em synchronized, the motors are shot. He won’t make it over the mountains.”

“Tell him.”

“Would you come with me, Mr. Bell? In case he gets mad.”

Bell stood by as Andy explained the situation to Steve Stevens.

Stevens planted his hands on his hips and turned red in the face.

Andy said, “I’m real sorry, Mr. Stevens. But I’m just telling you what’s true. Those motors will kill you.”

Stevens said, “Boy, there is no way Ah’m goin’ home to Mississippi with my tail between my legs. Ah’m goin’ home with the Whiteway Cup or Ah ain’t goin’.” He looked at Bell. “Go ahead, speak your piece. You think Ah’m crazy.”

“I think,” said Bell, “there’s a difference between bravery and foolishness.”

“And now you’re goin’ to tell me what that difference is?”

“I won’t do that for another man,” said Bell.

Stevens stared at his big white biplane.

“Was you ever fat, Bell, when you was a little boy?”

“Not that I recall.”

“You would,” Stevens chuckled bleakly. “It’s not somethin’ you’d ever forget. . Ah been a fat man my whole life. And a fat boy before that.”

He walked in front of the biplane, trailed a plump hand over the taut fabric and stroked one of the big propellers.

“My daddy used to tell me no one will ever love a fat man. Turned out, he was right as rain. .” Stevens swallowed hard. “Ah know damned well when Ah go home, they still won’t love me. But they’re sure as hell goin’ to respect me.”

36

JOSEPHINE WAS SPOOKED BY THE MOUNTAIN AIR. It felt thin, particularly in the hottest part of the day, and not as strong as she was used to even at speed. She watched her barometer, hardly believing her eyes, as she circled in the bluest sky she had ever seen, trying to work on altitude above the railroad city of Deming, New Mexico Territory. The makeshift altimeter seemed stuck. She tapped it hard with her finger, but the needle didn’t move. When she looked down, the Union Depot and its Harvey’s Restaurant, which sat between the parallel Atchison, Topeka amp; Santa Fe and Southern Pacific tracks, appeared no smaller, and she realized that her machine was climbing as slowly as the instrument indicated.

Steve Stevens and Joe Mudd were far below her, and she could only wonder how they were faring. She at least had mountain experience, flying in the Adirondacks. Though, to tell the truth, it wasn’t much help when Wild West crosscurrents grabbed her wings, updrafts kicked like a mule, and the same air that knocked her down seemed unwilling to pick her up again. She looked over her shoulder. Isaac’s Eagle, on faithful station above and behind her, was bouncing up and down like it was on an elastic string.

At last she worked up to three thousand feet, gave up on any more, and headed for Lordsburg, hoping to keep climbing high enough to clear the mountains. She followed the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks and soon overtook an express train that had left Deming thirty minutes ahead of her. The locomotive was spewing smoke straight up, slowly climbing a heavy grade, clear warning that the land was still rising, and she had to climb with it.

Grim thoughts of Marco suddenly wrenched at her concentration.

She did not fear that he had actually died in Platov guise. He had warned her in Fort Worth that he would “disappear.” But when he reappeared in whatever form he conjured next time, the first question she had to ask was, who had died in the fire in his place? It was a terrible question. She could not think of an answer she could accept. Thank goodness, she had her hands full for now, trying to get over the Continental Divide, and she had to shove all of that out of her mind.

Ahead she saw the rails enter a pass between two mountain peaks. Despite the pure blue sky everywhere else, a thick cloud bank hung over the pass. It looked like someone had stuffed cotton between the mountains and railroad-tunneled through it. She had to climb even higher to stay above the clouds. If she got inside them, she would get lost and have no clue where the peaks were until she ran into one.

But hard as she tried manipulating her elevator and alettoni, and coaxing effort out of her straining Antoinette, she found herself enveloped by cold mist. Sometimes it was so thick that she couldn’t see the propeller. Then, for a moment, it thinned. She spotted the peaks, corrected her course, and braced for the next blinding. All the way, she had to coax the monoplane to climb. Again the mist thinned. She saw that she had steered to the right, not even realizing it. She corrected hastily. The cloud closed around her. She was blind again. But, at the same time, she felt something in the cloud that made the air stronger.

Suddenly she was above it all, higher than the pass, higher than the cloud, even higher than the peaks, and the sky was as blue as she had ever seen in her whole life in every direction.

“Good girl, Elsie!”

For a crazy moment, she thought she could see the Pacific Ocean. But that was still seven hundred miles ahead. She looked back. Isaac Bell was above her, and she swore that when she won the race the first dollar she would spend of the prize money would be to buy a Gnome rotary.

Farther back, Joe Mudd’s sturdy red tractor biplane was flying in circles as he patiently fought for altitude before tackling the pass. Steve Stevens soared under Mudd, passed him, and shot for the pass, using the power of his two engines to force his machine higher. It dove into the cloud bank straight in line with the railroad tracks. Josephine looked back repeatedly to see him emerge.

But instead of the white biplane suddenly boring out of the cloud, a bright red flower of fire suddenly erupted from the bank. She heard no explosion over the roar of her engine, and it took her a moment to realize what had happened. Josephine’s breath caught in her throat. Steve Stevens had smashed into the mountain. His biplane was burning, and he was dead.

Two terrible thoughts pierced her heart.