SPECIAL BOOK BONUS

How Morgan Graduated From Millworker to Street Fighter to TransAm Runner. Part 4.

The first six chapters of Flanagan’s Run were published in our last three issues.

Chapter 7 MORGAN’S STORY

The winter of 1929 in Bethel had been a hard time. For three months the sullen black mills had been still, the roaring furnaces silent. The great dark town had been gripped with frost, powdered with black snow, its grimy streets as sullen as the striking steelworkers who lived there.

It had been unanimous. Italians, Scots, Poles, Irishmen: all had been part of the forest of arms that had stabbed the winter air when Morgan had finally put the strike to the vote. They had asked for just five cents more an hour, yet they had been refused outright. Morgan had been there at the negotiations, among the plump, soft-handed men who had never in their lives sweated behind a shovel feeding greedy, belching furnaces.

He had repeated his arguments about sick pay, about insurance, about the injuries suffered in the mills, the appalling infant mortality in the town; but it was no use. These men were not concerned. They listened, but Morgan felt his helplessness even as he spoke. The only answer had been to strike.

Morgan had planned the men’s protest like a battle campaign. Food supplies had been bought months before and were stored in the Mission Hall. A strike fund had been set up in good time and families with special needs had been satisfied. A communications system of telephones and relays of children kept three thousand families in constant touch.

But they had not planned for such a fierce winter, and the owners knew it. By January many children had become sick; by February six of them had died, and by March mothers who had denied themselves food were also beginning to fade.

Morgan watched his men wither, first in their muscles, finally in their minds. Daily he would look in the mirror and see a physique fashioned by years of hard work losing not fat but solid tissue. His body was consuming itself, drawing upon its last reserves, and he could feel his own resolve weaken. After all, even without the five cents extra pay they had lived: perhaps not well, but it had been a life.

Ruth, his wife, though in her early months of pregnancy, had stood with him. The dark days bound them more closely together than all the happy times they had known. When the owners’ strikebreakers—a hundred men drafted in from the slums of New York’s East Side—had finally attacked the Mission she had been there, as had all the women. The men had stood four deep in the frozen, corrugated mud with nothing but fists and fence posts. Facing them, a hundred yards away, in front of the buses which had brought them, stood the owners’ men. Each was armed with a nightstick.

The battle had been brief and bloody. The first rush on the union lines left twenty thugs stranded on the iron ground between the strikers and the buses. But the union line had been broken, and many of the steelworkers lay unconscious or groaning on the hard ground.

Morgan looked around him and sucked his bloody knuckles. Up the road the owners’ men had regrouped and had taken three heavy wooden boxes from the trucks. It was impossible at first to see what was in them, but Morgan felt a sickness in the pit of his stomach. This was going to be no stand-up fight to Marquis of Queensberry rules.

A massive Scot, Cameron, his red beard streaked with blood, came up behind him. “Man, we fair bloodied their noses.”

The words had scarcely left his lips when he fell back, his right shoulder shattered by a rifle bullet. The women screamed, begging their men to retreat. At a distance of one hundred yards, a line of the thugs knelt and began to fire a second volley. Morgan’s men started to drop around him, and the strikers’ ordered ranks were pocked by broken, wounded men.

He shouted his men back, away from the line of fire, and he and the survivors dragged their wounded away across the frozen ground, out of the path of the oncoming owners’ men.

The steelworkers wept, the tears freezing on their rigid, stubbled faces, as the thugs strode on past them on to the Mission Hall. It took them only a matter of minutes to burn it down, destroying the remainder of the strikers’ food supplies.

The strike was over, and Morgan knew it. The rest of the strike fund was soon wiped out by hospital bills, and in two weeks the walkout was over and the men back at work—at five cents an hour less than their previous rate.

The owners had the muscle, and even without it they could always afford to wait. For them, time meant loss of money, but no hardship, while for the steelworkers it meant hunger and loss of life. It had all been for nothing.

No, Ruth had said. It is never for nothing. Even when you are beaten. Every time you fight you become stronger, even in defeat. But there must surely be better ways.

Naturally, there was no work for Morgan now at the mill. Every day he had stood hands in jacket pockets at the black iron gates and every day been turned away.

Then, one winter morning, as he turned away from the gates he felt a hand on his shoulder. It belonged to a small, foxy-faced man in an expensive fur coat.

“Sharpe,” he introduced himself, offering Morgan a gloved hand, which Morgan reluctantly accepted. “Saw you in a few tight spots, my friend. You’re real quick. I like the way you handle yourself.”

Sharpe saw that Morgan did not understand. “Cut a long story short, how would you like to earn some real money—folding money?”

“What do I have to do?” said Morgan suspiciously.

“Hit—like you did in that line couple of weeks back.”

“Keep talking,” said Morgan, putting both hands in the pockets of his jacket. They started to walk away from the gates, their breath steaming around them in the sharp, still air.

“Fights,” explained the smaller man, flipping a cigarette into his mouth. “Bareknuckle fights. Anything goes, except feet.”

Morgan shook his head. “I’ve never fought to hurt,” he said. “Just for what we had coming to us.”

“What you get for it?” said Sharpe, lighting his cigarette. ““Your buddies—you fought for them. Now they got work while you freeze your butt off. So what you got now, union man?”

“Keep talking,” said Morgan again, without animosity.

“McGrath’s warehouse, Salem. We have three fights a night, big money in side bets. You come up good, we move around the state circuit. Fancy pickings.”

“How much?”

“Ten bucks, win or lose. A hundred bucks a win. Either way it’s money in the bank.” Sharpe blew smoke into the icy air.

“But what makes you think I can do it?” asked Morgan, uncertainly.

“T’ve seen you,” said Sharpe, pressing his arm. “You hit crisp, you hit neat. This ain’t no Golden Gloves, mind.”

“How do I start?”

“First we see Clancy,” said the little man. “Back at Milligan’s speakeasy.”

Morgan knew Milligan’s well, but nothing of Clancy.

“This Clancy—where does he figure?”

“Clancy makes fighters,” said Sharpe in explanation. “Used to work legit at Stillman’s in New York. If he likes you, you got it made.”

They walked slowly through the morning mist to Milligan’s.

Eo * *

Eamonn Clancy hit the seven ball into the middle pocket, put down his cue, and removed a cigarette from his mouth. Like Sharpe, he was a short and squat man, but with a flat, fleshy boxer’s nose.

“Gimme your hands,” he said.

He pressed Morgan’s hands in his and turned them around, looking closely at each knuckle in turn as if they were pieces of fine china. The knuckles were flat, the hands hard and firm.

“Make a fist,” he said. He looked up quickly at Morgan. “Ever bust these on some Polack’s head?”

“No,” said Morgan sharply.

Clancy turned away and picked up his cue. “No bones sticking out—okay, so his hands are made for hitting. But does he have heart?” He leaned forward to the edge of the table, made a bridge, slowly withdrew his cue, and slotted the black into the middle pocket.

“T seen him with the mill mob,” said Sharpe, stepping forward and placing both hands on the table. “I seen him, Clancy.”

The other man laid down his cue. “So you told me. So you got me another Dempsey. What you want I should do, phone Tex Rickard? I give him a month with me in the mountains, then we try him out in the warehouse. Okay?”

Sharpe sighed with relief and looked across at Morgan, standing in the darkness away from the pool table.

“What do you say?” he said. “We got a deal?”

Morgan nodded, smiling.

“One more thing,” said Clancy. “Does he cut?”

Sharpe looked at Morgan.

“T don’t know,” said Morgan. “I’ve never been hit.”

Clancy grimaced. “We’ll see.” He nodded at Sharpe. “The last boy Sharpe brought me cut like a tomato taking on a Bowie knife.”

Morgan’s jaw tightened. Clancy walked past him and replaced his cue on the wall rack. Then he turned, smiled and put out his hand.

By the end of that day Morgan had been bought a new set of clothes, a pair of training boots and a light gray sweatsuit. A week later he set off with Clancy in an old Ford for a log cabin in the Tuscarora Mountains, northwest of Harrisburg.

Eo * *

The month of training with Clancy in the Tuscaroras was the hardest Morgan had ever experienced. He had not told Ruth what he was going to do. She had accepted that he had to leave Bethel to look for work, and Sharpe had advanced him twenty dollars to send back to her. He felt lost the first days he was away, but soon the homesickness was submerged in the pain of Clancy’s training. Five miles daily he ran across the mountains, his breath spuming ahead of him. Sweat

froze on his face, ice matted his hair, while his body boiled in his thick, fleecelined track suit.

“You gotta die before you can live,” said Clancy, pulling the cork out of a bottle of whiskey with his teeth, as they sat in front of a roaring fire at the end

‘Andy Yelenak

168 | | JAN/FEB 2008

of a day’s training. “Sharpe’s right. You got guts, Morgan. Soon we’ll see if you can take a punch.”

Finally, after a month of running and strenuous exercises, Clancy drove Morgan over to a nearby farm. “Hitting time,” he said without further explanation.

Together they trudged through soft mud and snow to a big wooden barn. The floor of the barn was brown and springy, a mixture of dirt and sawdust. Clancy opened a brown Gladstone bag and gave Morgan a pair of light leather boxing gloves. “Put these on,” he said. “No point in busting up your hands.”

Morgan slipped on the tight, padded gloves. They felt strange. Clancy laced them up for him and pulled the strings tight. “How does that feel now?” he asked. Morgan’s answer was broken by the squeal of a car’s brakes outside the barn.

“That’ll be Fogarty,” said Clancy, still without further explanation, and continued to tighten Morgan’s gloves.

A man in a thick woolen turtleneck sweater entered the barn, carrying on his shoulders boxing gloves similar to those Clancy had provided. He was older than Morgan, in his mid-thirties, but was the same height, though more heavily muscled about the shoulders and chest.

“This is the guy you’re gonna fight,” said Clancy. “Chuck Fogarty.”

Fogarty’s flat face creased into a smile.

“You got another boy for me, Clancy?” he said in a light voice. He bent down, slipped on his gloves with ease and reached out to shake Morgan by the hand. “Real nice to meet ya,” he said, taking Morgan’s right hand lightly in his. As he did so, Fogarty’s left fist curved in a long arc and clubbed Morgan viciously on the right side of the face.

Morgan fell heavily to the floor, spitting blood from split, pouting lips. He felt as if he had been hit by a brick.

He looked up at Clancy, to find the trainer watching him intently. Morgan’s head swam and his teeth yielded a bitter gunpowder taste.

Only his instincts kept him going in the bitter, spinning moments that followed. At first he stayed down on all fours, gasping, stealing vital seconds as his mind cleared. Then he was ready. He got to his feet, shaking his head. He sensed that Fogarty was standing back from him, confident, ready to set himself up for the final blow. He was right. Fogarty was standing back, smiling, both gloves pressed together, and his guard, Morgan noticed, had dropped slightly, ready for what would be the final easy hit.

Morgan made a weak feint with his left. Fogarty pushed it away with his right and closed in for the kill. But Morgan’s right now came over like a whip to land plumb on Fogarty’s nose. There was a small cracking noise and Fogarty went down spurting blood and groaning, his chin furrowing the dirt floor. He slowly raised himself on one knee and then collapsed. The fight was over. Clancy threw a ten-dollar bill to the ground beside the fallen streetfighter and moved toward the door.

“Thanks, champ,” he said. “I’ll buzz you when I got me another likely boy.” He put a thick jersey over Morgan’s shoulders and dabbed his charge’s nose and mouth with a towel. They walked back together through the snow and mud to the car. Once in the Ford, Clancy put the car into gear and looked ahead at the glassy frozen road. “Sharpe told me you could hit. And you proved you could dig deep running out in the hills. But the big yes/no is always what happens when you get hit. That’s where Fogarty always comes in.”

He moved into high gear, then looked to his side. “You see, this is the way it usually pans out. Nine outa ten guys go back when they get hit. It shocks the hell outa them when they get sight of their own blood. So they wanta get the hell out. Don’t get me wrong: they ain’t cowards. No guy who works twelve hours a day in mills or down a mine is yellow. It’s just they ain’t fighters, that’s all. You are. How do I know? Item one, you came up off the floor. Item two, you came up fighting. Item three, you came up thinking. And item four, you can hit.”

He took his right hand from the wheel and put it around Morgan’s shoulders. “Let that mouth heal up, Morgan. Two weeks from now, next stop Salem warehouse.”

They stayed a final week at the cabin in the mountains to allow Morgan’s mouth to heal. It was only then that Clancy started to open up, to deal with the real meat of streetfighting. This related directly to the game of combat chess which would enable Morgan to survive. Clancy drew upon fighting lore that had been known since the eighteenth century, when the Englishman Jack Broughton had created the first rules of prizefighting. Morgan absorbed every word of Clancy’s advice and committed it to memory, and the week in the lonely cabin passed quickly. Soon it was time to travel back to Bethel, to prepare for his first fight.

* Eo *

Starr’s warehouse, Clairton, had not been used for years. Even the rats, which had fed on the rotted fruit that had been stored there, had long since scuttled off to other feeding places. As Morgan looked around him he shivered. The warehouse was vast, still and cold. In the darkness, in the center of its concrete floor under a pool of light, was a dense square of men, the mist from their breath hanging in a cloud above them as they shouted odds at each other.

In the corner opposite Morgan, stripped to the waist, his back to him, hands on the shoulders of his handlers, was Morgan’s first opponent. He wore black shorts over a pair of black woolen training tights. As his opponent turned to face him Morgan saw that he had a tough, flat-nosed face similar to Fogarty’s. He was glad. Now there would be no room for pity. The man’s white muscular body steamed in the chill, dank air of the warehouse. He pressed his fists together as if sharpening them for battle, turned and sank down on his stool. Above him, his handlers stroked and kneaded his neck and pectorals and whispered advice from the corners of their mouths.

The referee, dressed in a fur cap, gloves and thick plaid jacket, bellowed for silence, his voice echoing in the high steel rafters. The babble stilled, to be replaced by an expectant hush.

The referee turned toward Morgan’s opponent. “McGuin, Chicago, versus…” He turned to Morgan. “. . . Chuck Petrack, the Bronx.” It was the first time that Morgan had heard his ring-name spoken in public. It helped distance him from what he was about to do.

He looked around a further time at the taut, expectant faces in the crowd. He had never before seen such expressions. True, these men had come to bet, but their real desire was to see strong men hit, punished, better men than themselves broken and humiliated.

He was now deep in the underworld of sport, light years from the Olympics, distanced by law even from the seamy but legal world of professional boxing.

Clancy massaged the muscles at the top of Morgan’s neck as he sat on his stool.

“Easy,” said Clancy. “Easy.”

Morgan looked across at his opponent. He felt a still coldness come over him.

There was no gong, but someone in a neutral corner blew a whistle. Morgan got to his feet and came out slow, crouching, as did McGuin. For fully a minute they circled each other, only the sound of their breathing breaking the stillness.

One hit settled it. As with Fogarty, Morgan made a feint with his left, then hit his man on the side of the nose with his right. McGuin went down like a stone and lay for a moment, blood flowing from his nose on to the concrete floor. Like Fogarty before him, he raised himself painfully on both arms, then sank to the cold warehouse floor. It was all over.

A hush fell upon the crowd. Morgan turned to Clancy, taking his dressing gown from him.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, trembling.

He felt sick as he was driven home, a hundred dollars burning in his pocket. When he reached his own house he spread the money he had earned on the table in front of Ruth. “There you are, honey,” he said.

He saw her amazement.

“Want to know how I got it?” He lifted his right fist and spat on it, then hammered it on the table.

“Hitting a guy,” he said, the tears trickling down his face. “Hitting some poor bum. That’s how I earned it. That’s how I aim to keep you and the baby from now on.”

When he had finished his story of the evening, and what had led up to it, Ruth lifted his head with her hands and looked into his eyes. “Morg,” she said, “you’re the bravest man I ever knew. If streetfighting’s what you got to do, then do it. But do it well.”

He did. Under the name of Petrack, the Bronx Bomber, he had six more fights at Salem warehouse. Then, two months later, it was time to move on to the main East Coast circuit, a streetfighting network spanning the industrial centers of the area.

The world of streetfighting was a subterranean one of empty warehouses, ancient armories and midnight railyards. Of blood and darkness.

Sometimes the fights went longer, but not once did Morgan lose. Clancy helped him develop tactics, taught him how to hit the body. “Kill the stomach and the head will die,” he explained. And as Morgan won so the greenbacks poured in from the ringside.

During the year that followed the bond between Morgan and Clancy became strong, though both men knew it would not survive for a moment in the world outside. It was a bond created by mutual respect for each other’s skill and knowledge. Clancy’s eyes could pierce the smoke of the tiny cockpits in which the battles were fought, picking out that single flaw in an opponent which might be the difference between success and failure. Morgan’s task was to translate these instincts and insights into explosive action, to live violently through Clancy’s eyes.

But while as a team they prospered, Clancy sensed that Morgan had no real love of streetfighting.

“So it ain’t Madison Square Garden,” he would say. “But then we ain’t beating up any old ladies and we don’t throw no fights, so who loses? A few guys get bust noses—ribs even—but they could do a lot worse. Say an accident at the mill or in a rock fall down the mines. So who loses?”

Morgan would not answer. He could never grow to love what he did, but—he felt himself echo Ruth’s phrase—it was better to do it well than badly. As Clancy would say, “Everyone wants to win, or says they do. But what it’s all about is not wanting to lose.”

Then came the night when his man lay still and had to be carried from the ringside. Morgan was dragged away, looking over his right shoulder at the fallen fighter as Clancy hustled him out of the warehouse and into the Ford. A week later, Morgan learned that his opponent had died. He drifted about the Eastern Seaboard, aching and silent, occasionally sneaking back to Bethel to see Ruth and his son. He took on any work he could, but he knew that his days of streetfighting were over.

He was in New York, working on the docks, when news came of Ruth’s death. She had died over a week before, but the letter had taken six days to reach him. He had never really thought of dying, though always at the back of his mind had been a dim, childlike idea that he and Ruth would walk off toward death hand in hand.

He could stay in Bethel only for a day, after four hours by train from New York. To have stayed any longer might have been dangerous. He stood in front of the grave, while down in the town the mill whistles blared to signal the end of a day’s work. The town had killed her. The mill had killed her. In a way, in his dogged determination to fight on, he too had been an accomplice. And yet he knew that,

were she alive, she would do it again, with him and all the other losers. All he had ever won had been with his body. The day he had left New York he had heard of a race, somewhere out west, a footrace across America. In his grief he had given it no thought, but now her words came back to him—“You’re the bravest man I ever knew. If that’s what you got to do, then do it. But do it well.”

Then that was what he had to do. It would not be easy, but he had a year to prepare.

Morgan next took his year-old son Michael to his mother’s home in Elmira. A widow, she was glad to have yet another Mike to love and protect. Morgan told her what he planned to do, and a week later set off west.

He took his time making his way to Los Angeles, and had even spent a couple of months fighting at county fairs in the Midwest. But always he made sure that

America, he could run thirty miles nonstop in just over three hours. He found that he grew to like running, for unlike fistfighting, running hurt no one. You stretched yourself, you dug deep, but you did no one any harm.

Morgan had therefore resolved that he would squeeze the Trans-America for its last dollar and come away with some of the big stage prizes early in the race, for he had no certainty of getting into the frame in New York, and thus picking up the big prizes.

Eo * *

8:30 a.m., March 24, 1931. Seventeen hundred and fifty runners—seventeen hundred and ten men and forty women—stood massed just short of the entry to the main road to Barstow, the dismantling of Flanaganville completed. The tension of Los Angeles had gone. The third stage of the race they had completed the day before, and had peeled off over a hundred runners. Already the field was beginning to harden. There had been no real racing yet, though the pace of the leaders had been fast, better than ten minutes a mile. Now, however, there was money on the table, a total of over a thousand dollars for each of the two twenty-mile stages, and there would be those with no hope of winning the Trans-America who would undoubtedly make a bid for these prizes alone.

Morgan looked out into the desert. Five hundred bucks. He would hit the first twenty-mile stage now, when he was still fresh. He would go for the early money.

Chapter 8 ACROSS THE MOJAVE

Doc swore under his breath. Muller, one of the Germans, had rushed into an immediate lead, drawing about twenty runners with him. Morgan had kept up with him, as had Martinez and Thurleigh. By the time the tail of the field had reached

the road toward Barstow, a couple of miles out, the leading groups were some two hundred yards in the lead and surging out into the desert.

A mile later, Doc checked his watch. The leaders were running at close on nine-minute miles, or better. Madness! He slowed his pace even further, unworried by the runners who now overtook him.

He found himself beside Kate Sheridan. He dropped behind her to watch her action, then moved up to her side.

“Go right back on to your heels, lady. Keep the stride low. This is a shuffle, not a run.”

She did not reply.

“You worried about the cut?”

This time Kate nodded.

Doc pointed to an old, white-haired runner padding along about twenty yards ahead.

“Then run with old Charles Fox. Greatest pro in the world up to the war. He’ll tun inside four hours for this stage. Stay with him as long as you can, and you’ll make it through. And, remember, keep low—and drink at all the water points.”

Before she could answer Doc tipped his cap and started to thread his way up through the field. He was not going to race hard, but he still wanted to be in the first twenty finishers, to keep his aggregate time close to the leaders.

It was like the League of Nations. He passed a trio of Chinese, trotting easily in their strange-looking shoes, the same men to whom he had sold some Chickamauga remedy back at the hotel. The Frenchman, Bouin, was running with the Finnish Olympian, Eskola, and the two chatted to each other in German. Both men were fine runners, with many miles behind them. They would have to be watched.

The three remaining Germans ran as if on parade, moving as one, but why had Muller gone so far ahead? True, the German lacked experience, but he was undoubtedly running to orders. Perhaps the Germans had trained a new breed of runners, men capable of running better than nine-minute miles over such distances . . . ?

A couple of hundred yards later, at the ten-mile mark, Doc came abreast of the All-American team, now in about fiftieth position. They were running at a good even pace so he stayed with them, drinking on the run at the second water point, twelve miles out from the start. He checked his watch: one hour forty-eight minutes. About right.

* Eo *

Two miles behind Doc Cole, Kate Sheridan now ran with Charles Fox. The old man said nothing, but shuffled along on mottled, varicosed legs at a steady five miles an hour. Twenty years before no one in the field could have lasted over such distances with Fox. He had been the first professional athlete to run twelve miles in the hour, to cover thirty miles in three hours, to break twelve hours for a hundred miles; but the Trans-America had come too late.

Now, at the age of sixty-six, he was reduced to running alongside a slip of a girl.

Kate ran oblivious to the old man’s feelings, her mind reverting to her days at Minsky’s. No one who watched the smiling, spangled girls nightly kicking in military precision could possibly have imagined the fatigue involved in six shows daily. The ache never really left her legs; but she had learned to tolerate it, accepting it as part of the price that had to be paid. In the Trans-America it was different. Hour upon hour of running, no music to drive her on, none of the challenge of new steps to be learned and none of the occasional adrenaline of an excited audience. Simply mile upon mile of desert, with hundreds of lean, seemingly inexhaustible men stretching out in front of her and driving her from behind. It was a world as far from vaudeville as it was possible to imagine.

Doc had been right, she thought, as she picked up water at the eight-mile point, in thirty-three minutes past the hour. She was going well; it was coming easily. But she could no longer see the leaders, now well over two miles away.

Eo * *

From the very first mile it had felt fast to Morgan. He had followed Muller on to the hard, bumpy road, out on to the fringe of the desert, but the young German would not let up. He covered the first three miles in twenty-four and a half minutes, the first six in just under fifty-two minutes; he did not stop at the first water point but picked up a drink from his trainer a mile later. Yet Morgan stayed with him, pinning himself to the German’s left shoulder.

In the leading press bus Pollard wiped the dusty back window with his handkerchief and shook his head. “Can’t really figure out what’s happening out there, Carl,” he said, turning to Liebnitz. “That Kraut’s running as if the race finishes up at Barstow, not at New York.”

Liebnitz joined Pollard at the back of the bus, and peered through the window at the leading group of runners a couple of hundred yards behind.

“Beats me,” he said. “Still, I can see why some of the others might want to stay in the frame on a money stage like this. Five hundred bucks in the hand now might look better than a hundred and fifty thousand in the bank in New York. These goddam stage prizes may kill off some good men before we even get to Vegas.”

“T don’t see Doc Cole out there,” observed Pollard.

“No,” said Liebnitz, returning to his seat. “Doc’s a cagey old bird. He said he would run at around ten-minute miles back in L.A., and it’s my guess he’ ll stick to his plan. But he’Il be keeping Muller and the others in sight, mark my words.”

“What about the girl?”

“Sheridan?” said Liebnitz. “She’s quite an impressive young lady, but it’s my bet that she’s going to find this a whole heap harder than high kicking at Minsky’s. The next two stages should tell us if she’s going to figure anywhere in the race.

Flanagan’s times are tough—I reckon he’ll wipe out most of the walkers today, and the field should be down to closer to a thousand by sundown. I wouldn’t bet my shirt on Miss Sheridan being among that thousand—or any other woman, for that matter.”

“Pity,” said Pollard, reaching for his glass of beer. “She makes a great story.”

“Well,” said Liebnitz, adjusting his glasses, “don’t be too surprised if it turns out to be a short story.”

* Eo *

They were now deep into the Mojave, into the dry, brown broken plain, the only watchers the twisted Joshua trees, standing like crippled spectators as the leaders wound their way into the desert, preceded by the press buses, the noisy, jug-shaped Maxwell House Coffee Pot and Flanagan’s Trans-America bus.

Sixty years before, the desert had taken its toll of settlers struggling with wagons and handcarts through sun, rock and sand, constantly harassed by marauding Indians. Now the Indians had gone, but nature was enemy enough for the men daily battling with each other and with themselves.

Ten miles on, six men were still there with Muller, including Thurleigh, Martinez and Morgan. The bronzed young German had begun to sweat, but there was no break in his driving rhythm. At twelve miles he went clear, breaking away from the field.

In the Trans-America officials’ bus, Charles Flanagan sucked on his cigar, realized it had gone out, and fumbled in his pocket for a box of matches. “How’s it going out there?” he asked, turning to Willard, who was peering out of the window.

“Difficult to see, boss. Too much dust. But it looks to me like that young German, Muller, is burning up the road.”

“Great,” said Flanagan, “that’1l keep Pollard and the press boys happy. A story a day makes the journalist’s day, eh?”

“Yeah,” Willard agreed. “But Muller’s burned off some good runners today.”

Flanagan drew on his cigar.

“Perhaps that’s what he’s there for,” he said darkly.

* Eo *

Five hundred bucks or three hundred? It took Morgan only a moment to decide. He stretched out after Muller, dragging Martinez and Thurleigh with him. The leading four were soon locked together, all beginning to breathe heavily, a sign that intake no longer matched demand.

Morgan had been in this condition before, two years ago, in the Tuscarora Mountains. It was no harder now, for this was flat land, but there was another twenty-mile stage ahead, and over three thousand miles ahead of that. Perhaps

he had made the wrong decision; perhaps. But he had committed himself; there was no going back.

Beside him, on his right, Martinez ran like a willful child, his breathing clean and fast, his white, shining teeth bared. Thurleigh pushed back a lock of hair and pressed on, ignoring the runners to either side.

Mt >i ‘Andy Yelenak

“Five miles to go,” roared Willard from the loudspeaker atop the Trans-America bus, a couple of hundred yards ahead of the leaders.

Muller, sweating profusely, spurted again. Morgan followed with Martinez, but this time Peter Thurleigh hung back.

Morgan’s breathing was coming hard and it was a comfort to him that he could hear both Muller and Martinez breathing in the same rhythm. He did not stop at the final water point. Nor did the others. Five hundred bucks. Five miles to go.

* Eo *

Doc had left the Americans at ten miles and, eight miles from the finish, had moved steadily through to sixteenth position. A mile later he was joined by McPhail and together they picked up the debris of Muller’s first rush, broken runners who had dropped to a shambling trot or even a walk. Doc was running at just under seven miles an hour. He and McPhail could see Muller and the others about a mile up, and in front of them the buses. A mile was over nine minutes, thought Doc, wiping his wrist handkerchief across his brow. He would prefer to be closer at the finish, if it was not too much effort.

* Eo *

Almost two miles behind Doc and McPhail, Kate Sheridan had passed the ten-mile mark. She was still with Fox. They passed the fifteen-mile mark at comfortably inside three hours, but then Fox started slowly to move away. Kate realized it was not that the old man was accelerating but that she was beginning to slow up. She felt her legs becoming steadily heavier, her hips begin to sink. She was also on her own now, in a limbo between groups. Five miles to go; to be safe, she would have to run them inside sixty-five minutes.

* Eo *

Half a mile to go. The three leaders could see Flanagan’s stage camp in the bright desert sun, set out on the hilly scrub beside the road. They ran almost in line, with Muller’s brown shoulders only slightly ahead, the trio held in a strange, fragile balance. Then Morgan made his decision and broke the spell that bound them. He pressed ahead. Neither Martinez nor Muller responded. He was clear!

A hundred yards later he heard Muller’s tortured breathing again at his right side. As the German pulled level with him he felt a momentary wave of despair. They ran clamped together, their breath rasping in their throats, every fiber at its limit, oblivious to the shouts of the waiting crowd and the tooting of the cars and buses at the lonely desert finish. But all either of them could hear was the scraping of their breath in the tunnels of their lungs. They ran low, legs bent and buckling, barely able to support their body weight.

Five hundred bucks. Five hundred bucks . . . Morgan felt as if his lungs had taken over his whole body. He was simply one heaving lung, sucking oxygen in great desperate gulps. Five hundred bucks, a hundred yards to go… He squeezed his body for one last effort, but it was not there. He could go no faster. Then, as

Morgan felt himself wither and fade, the menacing brown shoulder on his left side disappeared, as Muller gave a deep sob and dropped back. Morgan passed the Trans-America bus a good ten yards up.

Half a mile behind, Doc and McPhail picked up a broken, exhausted Martinez, who summoned a tired smile, the sweat dripping from his face.

He pointed his finger to the side of his head as they passed. “They mad,” he said. “They mad.”

x ok Ox

Flanagan had erected only six main tents for this intermediate camp, five as rest tents, in which a supply of blankets had been placed, upon which the runners could lie for four hours. The other was the medical tent, within which Dr. Falconer and his staff dealt with a diminishing number of casualties.

Doc watched the first hundred-odd finishers, noting each man’s condition. The race was already hardening up, with a solid core of experienced distance runners dominating the first three hundred places. The All-Americans and the German team looked solid and well-organized and Eskola looked strong, as did the Frenchmen Dasriaux and Bouin. Doc was surprised how relaxed Thurleigh looked, despite his following Muller’s mad rush. The Englishman had trotted in a couple of minutes behind Martinez, looking as if he had been out for little more than a stroll along the Thames.

The runners continued to stream past the finish toward the Maxwell House Coffee Pot, just one hundred yards beyond. After a while Doc walked down from the road to the camp area and entered the first rest tent. Martinez, Morgan and McPhail stood together, bodies streaming sweat, unrolling their blankets.

“Why?” said Doc, hands on hips. “Why?”

All three men knew what Doc was talking about.

Morgan held up five fingers, the sweat streaming down his face and neck. “Five hundred bucks, that’s why.”

Martinez sat peeling off his shoes. He shook his head. “Five hundred is a lot of money where I come from. We plant new crop with five hundred.”

Doc looked down at Morgan, who had pulled his shirt over his shoulders.

“You need it that much?”

“Yes.”

Doc shrugged. “You know your business best,” he said, finding a space on the floor to the right of Martinez. “But there’s one helluva long way still to run. A few more sprints like that could bust your balls.”

For the first time Morgan’s face cracked into a smile.

“What the hell do you care, Doc? We’re competing, ain’t we?”

Doc returned his smile. “Yes and no,” he said. “I’ve been racing for about thirty-odd years now. Most races you see your men before the start of your race, then it’s good-bye, Charlie, till next time. Sure, you get to know the guys you race

against—you become friends—but this caper’s a whole new world. Here what you’re up against isn’t each other, it’s the desert, the hills, the cold, the wind, the sun, the snow. We’re all up against them, kinda like a team. Even those Krauts, those crazy Chinamen, the whole nutty League of Nations out there. By the end of the next leg we’ll have sorted out the jokers and we’ll be down to the real runners. And every time one of those guys drops out you’ll suffer a little. You can bank on it.”

Morgan thought back to his own past. He knew what Doc meant. In the line at Bethel he had seen his friends fall around him; in the first fights he had felt a pain every time he knocked down his man. Pain inside.

Hugh moved around and sat on Doc’s left, so that the four men now formed a tight semicircle.

“Why do you think Muller hit it so hard?”

Doc shook his head and slowly unlaced his shoes. “I can’t figure it out. He musta gone through the first eight miles in close to an hour. Crazy.”

He dropped onto his back. “Still, no point in letting it bother us. Four hours. That means four hours’ shuteye.”

He unrolled his blanket and laid it on the floor. He then took two rolled-up blankets, placed both at the bottom of his “bed,” and put his feet on top of the bottom roll.

“The circulation,” he explained. “Having my feet above my head means the waste can get pumped back into the heart easier. Try it.”

He leaned back on to his mat and within minutes was snoring loudly.

* Eo *

“You the only girl left?” asked Dixie. She was standing with Kate Sheridan outside her trailer on the edge of the camp.

“No girls passed me,” said Kate, “but I think we got about ten left. Say, they only seem to have a tent for the men. Could I use your trailer to clean up?”

“Sure,” said Dixie. ““We’ve got showers. You want one?”

Kate nodded gratefully, peeled off her running shoes and climbed up the trailer steps.

“Three of us sleep here,” said Dixie, following her. “Myself, and Mr. Flanagan’s and Mr. Willard’s secretaries; but I don’t see much of them. They seem to spend most of their time at the Trans-America bus.”

Kate nodded. “With Flanagan? That figures.” She pointed to the end of the trailer. “That’s the shower over there?”

Dixie nodded and opened a cupboard behind her to take out a rough white towel. The trailer was sparsely furnished: three beds, a chair, a simple stove, a shower and sink.

Kate quickly peeled off her shirt and brassiere, and walked over to the crude, makeshift shower. She unbuttoned her shorts and slid off the dark silk briefs below them.

Dixie had never seen an adult woman naked before, and she had never imagined that anyone would ever strip down with such impunity. But there Kate stood, legs, face and shoulders brown with the California sun, and the fluffy pubic “V” which Dixie could scarcely bear to look at.

Kate sensed her embarrassment.

“When you’ve been in a burlesque a few years you’ve seen one helluva lot of naked women. No place for modesty there.”

The shower was a rough, improvised affair, little more than a punctured bucket served by tepid, brackish desert water, which was released by pulling a chain.

Kate stepped into the shower and let the dark, lukewarm water flow over her. The Trans-America was skimming every ounce of surplus flesh from her. Even as a dancer her body had been hard, but this was a new and different hardness. Her thighs had become lean and rocklike, her stomach flat, her shoulders muscular and firm. But the real hardness was inside. There she was beginning to feel the growth of a powerful engine: a heart and lungs capable of pumping out enough oxygen for fifty miles a day was beginning to develop. She hoped it would develop in time.

Kate had never realized that there were men like this, hundreds of men who could run at nearly seven miles an hour, seemingly for ever. At least there was a rest day after the “cut” which would give her time to recover.

Even as the water flowed over her and she massaged her thighs with soap, Kate felt tired. Doc had given her good advice, but the first twenty miles had been hard and the next twenty would be even harder. She had run the first stage in fifteen minutes inside four hours; that gave her fifteen minutes’ grace for the next twenty miles, in order to beat the cut. But she was now running with tired, heavy legs, and beginning to realize, too, the enormity of the task which would face her over the next three months.

“Everything all right?” shouted Dixie above the hiss and splatter of the shower.

“Great,” said Kate, stepping out of the shower to pick up the towel which Dixie had laid out for her.

Dixie ventured a closer look. She had always thought of women athletes as masculine creatures, akin to the big-buttocked “hockey hags” she had seen play in college matches. True, Kate Sheridan’s body lacked the softness of her own, but she was just as much a woman. Her femininity simply expressed itself in vibrant, glowing athleticism.

“How do you feel?” asked Dixie.

“Td feel a lot better if I didn’t have another twenty miles ahead of me,” said Kate, toweling her black hair. “Jesus, my legs are stiff.” She kneaded her calves.

“D’you …d’you want me to rub them?” asked Dixie nervously.

“Would you? I don’t want to ask any of those guys—they might get the wrong idea!”

Dixie laughed. “How do I do it?”

“T’ve been watching those fellas. They always push upward, toward the heart.”

Kate pulled on her pants and stretched herself out slowly and painfully on the couch.

Dixie started on Kate’s right calf, gently pressing upward toward the back of the knee. She had expected to find Kate’s muscles hard, and was surprised to find them soft, even flabby to the touch.

She was, in fact, finding that high-quality muscle is loose and supple when relaxed; it is untrained muscle that is stiff and rigid.

Kate groaned, her arms dangling over the side of the couch.

“Am I hurting you?” asked Dixie.

Kate raised her head. “Hell, no. Just that they’re so stiff. Don’t be afraid to press hard.”

When Dixie had finished on her calves Kate sat up and pointed to her thighs. “I’ve watched those guys working on each other. They roll the muscles around from side to side, with the knees bent. Then they work on the backs, the hamstrings, and finish off on the front of the thighs, with the legs straight.”

Dixie turned to Kate’s thighs, using both hands. The muscles moved through about forty-five degrees, then recoiled, the muscles at the front of the thighs flickering subtly beneath the girl’s smooth, hairless skin. Then Dixie turned them in the other direction and watched the muscles flutter back into position.

As she pressed upward on the thick muscles at the back of Kate’s thighs, she could feel tension in the bulging belly of the hamstrings.

“Ow!” yelped Kate.

Then to the front of Kate’s thighs, working with both hands, pressing upward toward the inside of her groin. Again she could both feel and see the muscles flowing beneath her hands. She could also feel herself begin to flush and glow as her hands moved into areas which she had never explored, even in her own body.

“Thanks a million,” said Kate, sitting up. “Now maybe these legs’Il carry me twenty miles to get inside the cut.”

“What time do you have to reach?” asked Dixie.

“Got to go for about four hours five minutes, just for safety,” said Kate, pulling her shirt over her head. “That would give me a total of seven hours fifty minutes and qualify me for the next stage into the Mojave.”

“Do you think you can do it?”

“A year ago I couldn’t make it around the block. Sure I can do it. There’s thousands of girls out there who could do it if they just got off their butts and tried. But forget about me. Are you Flanagan’s girl?”

“No,” said Dixie, blushing.

“T’ve seen the way he looks at you. I know that look. He giving you trouble?”