SPECIAL BOOK BONUS

The Mohave Shows No Mercy to the Desperate Trans-America Runners. Part 5.

The first eight chapters of Flanagan’s Run were published in our last four issues.

Chapter 9 INTO THE DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND

3:45 p.m., March 24, 1931. One thousand four hundred and eighty-three men and women sat silently in front of the Trans-America center, awaiting the afternoon briefing for the second money stage. It was sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, but the sun was hidden behind light cloud, as thankfully it had been all morning. They were now deep into the Mojave, and the first days of running had taken their toll. At least three hundred of the competitors would have difficulty surviving the six-hour, ten-minute “cut.”

“Gentlemen,” said Flanagan, then—“sorry, and ladies,” as he motioned to Kate and the small group of women of which she was a part. “The second part of the day’s final stage will be twenty miles into Shot Gun Camp, five miles ahead of the Mojave Indian village. It’s rough country, with a few long hills.”

He pointed behind him to a line of Ford trucks, some of which were already rolling up the desert road.

“Six of the trucks will start half an hour behind the field and pick up those who aren’t able to finish. The lead trucks are moving off now to set up camp ahead of us, but the Maxwell House Coffee Pot and a first-aid truck will stop three miles out from the start, and there’!I be another first-aid point at fifteen miles. This time there’ll be three further food and water stations—at five, ten and fifteen miles. Any questions?”

“Yes,” shouted out the swarthy little Frenchman, Bouin, standing up, “M’sieur Flanagan: no more of your peanut butter sandwiches at the feeding stations, I beg of you.” There was the customary barrage of jeers and catcalls from the athletes.

“Point taken, and accepted,” said Flanagan, smiling, looking over his right shoulder at Willard, who nodded. “And remember, everyone—tomorrow’s your first rest day. I reckon you’ve earned it.” He checked his watch, then looked up. “You have thirty minutes before the start.”

The Trans-Americans broke up and settled themselves into small groups as Flanagan’s crews finished the dismantling of the midday camp. The German team moved away from the central area in front of the Trans-America bus to sit apart on the sand in an arc around their team coach, Volkner, who spoke to them quietly and earnestly. A couple of hundred yards away, not far from the road, O’Rourke, the plump American coach, could be heard haranguing his team. To their left, the Finns, Pentti Eskola and Juouko Maki, sat beside each other on a rock, neither saying a word, while the Frenchmen, Dasriaux and Bouin, jabbered and gesticulated to each other only a few yards away. The Trans-America trucks continued to roll off across the desert, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot wafting Rudy Vallee’s “Whiffenpoof Song” out through its loudspeaker system into the dry desert air, to no one in particular.

The start was an exact replica of the morning stage. Muller strode into the lead immediately, this time sucking in Bouin, Eskola, Martinez and the Mojave Indian, Quomawahu, as well as four other unknown runners. Doc shook his head as he paddled off with Thurleigh, Morgan and McPhail, and they spent the first three miles together, running evenly through the stretched field, in the mid-fifties.

“That guy Muller must have Montezuma’s Revenge,” Doc growled, moving up behind the All-Americans who were in the first fifty places, for their early running had been more cautious than that of the morning.

Muller started to sweat early, but the German’s rhythm was still relentless, and the first five miles were accomplished in a swift forty-five minutes. As before, Martinez pranced alongside the German, this time on his left, seemingly untroubled by the fast pace. Quomawahu, who had finished twenty-first in the morning leg, was a tiny nut-brown figure in a white headband who had dominated local Mojave desert runs for many years. The Indian’s stride was unusually short, but low and economical, and he scuttled across the sandy desert like a frightened beetle.

Bouin was another of the front-runners. Hirsute and mustachioed, he ran with the fluidity and certainty of a three-time Olympian, occasionally looking to his side over his left shoulder to check on Muller. The four other runners who stayed with the leaders for the first part of the stage faded after only five miles and sank back into the heart of the field.

Eight miles in just over an hour and ten minutes, and of the leaders only Bouin stopped for water. Muller was still pressing hard, his only sign of effort being a muscular twitch at his right temple. Bouin looked at the German’s back, shrugged, then trotted on. Surely, he thought, Muller’s pace would drop.

Behind them, in thirtieth position, Doc could see the leaders three quarters of a mile up, on a curving incline ahead.

“Look,” he said to Hugh, pointing ahead. “They must be five minutes up on us and still going away.”

The All-Americans had also noted the position of the leading runners and had slowly started to ease away from Doc’s group and from the Germans. Doc let them go. He would have to make a decision on whether or not to pull Muller in

within the next three miles. * ok *

Some way back, Kate Sheridan had early in the stage sought out Charles Fox and settled in on the right side of the old man.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” said the veteran, raising his right hand to his forehead. “Might you be looking for me to get you to Shot Gun inside three hours?”

Kate nodded.

“Tf you don’t mind me tagging along, Mr. Fox.”

“Not at all,” said her companion. “Let’s see what we can do for you, at least for the first part.”

Fox turned out to be as good as his word, and took Kate through the first six miles in just over the hour. Surprisingly, the old man became garrulous, and during that first hour Kate was treated to the story of his life in professional footracing in the last part of the nineteenth century.

Fox told her of the six-day “wobbles” on the wooden indoor track at London’s Agricultural Hall, Islington, where Victorian runners had staggered around a two-hundred-and-twenty-yard track for six days on end. Fox had been the first to average a hundred miles a day in the “wobbles,” running six hundred and one miles in 1899.

“T still have the old Astley Belt for that ’un,” he said, wiping his watering eyes with the back of his hand.

And then there had been the big matches, against time, and in these Fox had been the first man, amateur or professional, to run twelve miles in the hour, at the old Hackney Wick ground, the home of nineteenth-century London professional footracing.

There had also been the “man against man” matches, often for massive side bets. Twenty thousand or more Victorians would crowd into dank stadiums to watch George versus Myers, Hutchens versus Gent. Or Charles Fox versus Cannon, Watkins, Shrubb or any one of a dozen other great pedestrians.

“I won my manager plenty,” said Fox. “I was the best there was, in my day, when the money was on.”

Kate forgot her growing fatigue. “But where did all your money go, Mr. Fox?” she asked.

Fox shrugged. “Training expenses. Gambling. Pubs. Ladies. Always had a lot of friends back in them days.”

He eased up as they approached the second feeding station.

“Feeding time,” he said, pointing ahead. “Make sure you have a drink, miss. And eat. But don’t you take none of Mr. Flanagan’s peanut sandwiches.” They both smiled.

As he moved slightly ahead, she looked down at his white legs, still surprisingly muscular but now heavily varicosed. The back of his shirt had a dark patch of sweat and his red wrinkled neck ran with perspiration. Kate felt no pity for him, for the old man had no pity for himself. He was simply doing what he had done for forty years; what he had always done best.

Eo * *

Two miles ahead, Doc decided it was time to get closer to the leaders. Otherwise he could see himself nearly twenty minutes down on aggregate at the end of the third stage. There were something like five hundred hours of running ahead and only about twenty hours would be completed by the end of the day, but he could not afford to throw away time.

Morgan and Hugh sensed the change in pace, though neither said so to Doc. Gradually they moved way from the All-Americans, putting yard after yard between them.

Running beside them, Peter Thurleigh felt like an alien. He had never before met athletes like this; only dimly imagined the nature of such men and their lives, men who had spent every day since youth fighting toward the next day. It was a long way from Cambridge; from March 20, 1930, when it had all begun…

Eo * *

The Oxford versus Cambridge athletics match. March mists had been closing in on the stadium at Queen’s Club, and already some of the massive crowd were beginning to drift away as Peter Thurleigh had stood studying the first announcement in The Times of the Trans-America race. Peter had thrust his hands deep into his blazer pockets and wrapped his woolen scarf even more tightly around his neck. It had never been the best time of the year for a track and field meeting for the best athletes of Britain’s leading universities to compete, as a prelude to the summer track and field season. This was, however, tradition, just as Eton and Shrewsbury and the other public schools had pressed untrained boys into athletics in the bleak winter months before King Cricket took his throne.

Eton! Lord, in April 1920 he had run close to two minutes for a half mile on its sodden turf. It had been half an hour before he had fully recovered consciousness and he had suffered blackouts for the rest of the day. This was not surprising, for he had come from the rugby season into half-miling without a yard of training. Peter Thurleigh had always had the ability to run himself to oblivion, a quality later to stand him in good stead.

As he had stood in the empty stadium he had seen in his mind’s eye the trainer, old Sam White, shepherding the last of the Cambridge runners from the darkening field. Thirty years of students had, literally, passed through the hands of the gnarled old trainer. When he had first arrived at Cambridge in 1920, and had won the Freshers Mile, Peter had been massaged by Sam. “I do think you may have the makings, sir,” the old man had said then, gently kneading the undergraduate’s calves.

The makings: for the next three years Sam White had carefully threaded through the fabric of the young undergraduate’s mind years of running lore. These were ideas and attitudes passed on to Sam from a sepia world deep in the nineteenth century, from matches run by men in faded photographs standing forever frozen on their marks. At first, names like W.G. George, William Cummings and Charles Fox had meant nothing to Peter and when Sam went deeper into the nineteenth century and spoke of Deerfoot, of “The Gateshead Clipper” and of “Crowcatcher” Lang, it was as if the old man were describing a lost world.

It was in this world that Sam White had survived and triumphed, and from it that he drew the knowledge that was his strength, long after the spring and suppleness of his limbs had left him.

Three years with Sam had brought Peter Thurleigh from a staggering, goggle-eyed four-minutes-forty-seconds novice in the Freshman Mile to the Stade Colombes in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Hundreds of miles on winter tracks, hour upon hour under those old hands smoothed by years of massage . . . and yet despite this intimacy they had never been close, and their discussions had dealt only with running. Peter had no idea if Sam White was married, had children, or even exactly where he lived. Sam was simply there. To him, White was part of that seamless continuum that existed only to serve. At home, the servants and gardeners, in autumn the ghillies on sour Scottish moors; their lives outside of service were of no concern to him.

In his final year, after his return from the Paris Olympics, he had arrived at the university track to find that Sam was not there, and had been directed by the groundskeeper to the old man’s home, a cottage a mile or so from the track. When he arrived at the cottage the door was unlocked, but Sam was not at home. He had pushed open the door and ventured into the dark cottage. The smell was appalling, a mixture of rotting food, excreta and stale sweat.

In the center of the dank, stone-floored main room stood a rough wooden table on which lay a tin mug and a chipped plate containing the greasy remains of a meal. Sunk into the wall was a smoldering wood fire, in front of which stood a tin bath. On Peter’s right was a bed, it’s ruptured canvas mattress leaking straw onto the floor of the cottage. The place was a slum.

Peter moved uncertainly forward. On his left stood a sideboard which he found contained the fruits of Sam White’s professional career: the 1890 All Round

Championship Belt, a discolored brass belt composed of championship medals for one, three and six miles, linked by rotting, fading colored braid; a yellowing cup for the World’s Ten Miles Championship, 1895; a few rusting and indecipherable medals. That was all, a lifetime of running. Peter Thurleigh stood for a moment fingering the tattered championship belt, trying to trace in the gloom of the cottage the lettering on some of the more obscure medals.

Something, a muffled sound perhaps—he wasn’t sure—made him turn around.

Sam White was standing behind him. He saw anger in Sam’s eyes, anger that vanished as the old man’s voice gave out its customary deferential tones. After that, relations between them had never been quite the same. Somehow he had crossed the line into another, forbidden world, a world in which Sam wished to live alone.

Six years later, after he had decided to compete in the Trans-America, Peter Thurleigh went back to Cambridge to the older trainer to seek his advice. Sam was not at the track and Peter walked to his cottage; but the building was no more than a pile of rubble. Neighbors told him that the old trainer had died a few months before. No, there was no gravestone; Sam White had been buried in a pauper’s grave. For some reason, Peter Thurleigh had wept.

Eo * *

In certain ways, Doc was like Old Sam. But Doc Cole had a strength and confidence, even in some odd way a culture, that Sam had never possessed. Doc had spoken to him as an equal, but Peter did not yet know how to respond.

And Morgan. Morgan did not appear to acknowledge his existence. The American drove himself through each stage as if pushed on by some strong inner passion, sweat welling from the pores of his lean body like blood from a thousand wounds.

The Scot, McPhail, he could place, for he had met men like him before. His father had called them “Reds,” thus damning any man who dared to challenge pay, working conditions, or the way society was run. McPhail’s resentment was almost palpable. Yes, undoubtedly a “Red.” Peter did not know how he could bear to live in the company of such men as these for the next three months.

Gradually they were sucking in the leading group, running easily and evenly over the baked and broken ground. Peter, too, had felt the change in pace, but decided to trust Doc, for he still had no idea of the speed that would be required to get from Los Angeles to New York. He would live from mile to mile, stage to stage, relying on his body to tell him what had to be done.

In front, Muller showed no signs of letting up, and took his drink at the final feeding station, at fifteen miles, on the run, the water spilling as he ran. Eskola and Bouin stopped to drink, found difficulty in regaining their running rhythm,

and were soon a couple of hundred yards down. The Finn shook his head and eased to a trot. Bouin kept going, the sweat glistening on his swarthy legs, but he could make no impression on the three leaders and found himself in a limbo between them and the trotting Pentti Eskola behind him.

Three miles back Charles Fox had done his work well, and had talked Kate through to twelve miles in just over two hours, twenty minutes. Even so, he could sense the American girl weakening. Kate’s breathing was no problem to her, but she could feel her legs becoming heavier, her hips dropping, her muscles become less and less capable of absorbing the broken contours of the soft road.

“You all right, miss?” he asked, increasingly aware that runner after runner was now passing him.

Kate nodded weakly, sweat breaking over her brow and biting her eyes.

“No problem,” she said. “Go on, Mr. Fox.”

“See you at Shot Gun Camp then,” said Fox. “Just you keep it steady, mind, miss. Run through it.”

Even through her fatigue Kate was surprised to note, as Fox moved away from her, how slowly he appeared to be running. God only knew what she must look like! She stopped at the fifteen-mile feeding point and stood for a moment among a dozen runners standing at the table, splashing a cup of water over her face and neck, and drinking two more cups. Kate looked desperately at her watch. Three hours two minutes: it had taken her nearly thirty-nine minutes to run the last three miles, an average of thirteen minutes a mile. This time she was finished. Done. It was all over.

In the lead, Muller, Martinez and Quomawahu now ran as one to the rhythmic chant of hundreds of Mojave Indians who had lined the final miles of the route to cheer on their champion.

Muller progressed grimly now, his face and shoulders streaming sweat, but still breathing evenly, if deeply. In contrast, Juan Martinez took in air in great sobbing gulps, his eyes wide and staring, while Quomawahu crawled his way ahead, occasionally grunting with fatigue. All ran at the same speed, and yet the outward expression of its cost was peculiar to each man.

Half a mile to go, and the chanting of the Mojaves by the side of the road became ever more insistent. As soon as he sighted the waiting buses at the finish Quomawahu responded by surging away, setting up a ten-yard lead. Soon it had stretched to thirty. The finish was now only a quarter of a mile away.

With a furlong to go, Martinez made a final desperate effort to catch the Indian, the rasping sound of his breathing drowned by the screaming of the massed Mojaves. But Quomawahu was too strong. Martinez could come in only second. Muller finished third, vomiting only seconds after he staggered past the line.

Doc and his group cruised in five minutes later, followed closely by the German and American teams.

Over three miles back Kate Sheridan was dying on her feet. She had never stopped running and her will was still strong, but somehow her body would no longer respond. She was empty. Her legs, sapped of life, had lost all rhythm. As each new runner passed her, Kate clung to him desperately, hanging on his shoulder, sucking a temporary strength and momentum from him, only to sink back into a broken struggle as she was dropped. Nothing in her past life provided her with the reference point to demand a reply from muscles seemingly drained of energy.

She looked up ahead at a long, slight incline which had assumed the proportions of a mountain. Kate Sheridan’s feet were now barely clearing the ground, and she saw through the heat-haze, as in a mirage, a billowing stream of runners seemingly jogging on the spot, on the crest of the rise, moving away from her.

“Run, Kate, run!” said a voice in her head, and she labored up the incline, spraying small stones to the sides of the road, her feet shuffling through the brown dust. “Run, Kate, run!” She heard herself answering through dry, split lips, her hips continuing to drop.

She groaned as she reached the top of the rise, stopping for a moment with hands on hips. When she tried to start again her legs would no longer support her. She fell, grazing both shoulders and elbows as she rolled down into the rough ditch. She turned onto her back, spitting dust from bleeding lips, and lay still. For a moment she thought she had lost her sight, for she was quite unable to focus and the salt sweat stung her eyes and seeped into her mouth. Then she saw two men above her. Two men with the same sweating face, looking down at her.

Both faces smiled and leaned over her.

“Get up,” said a single voice.

Kate pushed herself up onto her elbows, shook her head, and continued to spit sand and dirt.

“Get up,” repeated the voice, this time more urgently.

Kate shook her head again.

Morgan slapped her hard across the face. The two images coalesced into one.

“You son of a bitch,” she shouted, pushing herself up on one arm and rising unsteadily to her feet.

“Run, lady,” said Morgan. “You’ve got thirty-five minutes to run the next three miles. You can do it. Go!”

Kate Sheridan forced a crooked, wan smile, walked back up onto the road and started to move. They ran together, slowly at first, Kate adjusting her stride to Morgan’s rhythm. Out of the corner of her right eye she could just see his left shoulder, feel it suck her in toward their common goal, feel him as a magnet drawing her toward the finish.

Above them, a Pathé newsplane saw only a male runner and a young woman staggering uncertainly across the gathering gloom of the Mojave. As it made its

way back to Los Angeles with film of the day’s dramatic finish the pilot closed in on the two runners and the cameraman finished his day’s film on the scene. Kate heard the noise of the plane’s engines above her, looked up and smiled, a broken smile. Perhaps, after all, she was going to make it.

Eo * *

An hour later Flanagan looked out of his trailer window as the last runners limped into camp.

“So how many beat the cut, Willard?” he asked.

“At the last count, twelve hundred and eighty,” said Willard, rising from his desk and consulting his clipboard.

Flanagan swore loudly. “Nearly a thousand gone in four days! This race is more like a massacre than a competition. What about the girl?”

“You mean Sheridan?” Willard flipped through the result sheets. “She made it okay. All the other gals flunked out.”

“A pity,” said Flanagan. “The feminine interest sells a lot of papers. That means we got to find some new angle on the Sheridan girl to keep it alive. Make sure the press boys know Sheridan’s the only gal left. Maybe they’ll come up with something.”

“Done,” said Willard.

There was a knock at the door. Willard opened it to reveal the German team manager, Hans von Moltke. For a moment the German stood stiffly, as if on parade, then made a formal bow.

“Herr Flanagan, I regret to have to make protest.”

“Say your piece, Mr. von Moltke.”

“What I have to say concerns Miss Sheridan,” said the German. “The American girl. Over the final part of the race she was—how do you say?—illegally assisted by another runner.”

“Tilegally assisted?” said Flanagan. “Explain yourself, please.”

His visitor set his lips. “An American runner, Morgan, went back and ran with her to the finish. We therefore demand that both runners be disqualified.”

“Demand?” exploded Flanagan. “Did I understand you to say ‘demand’?”

“Perhaps I use the wrong term,” said the German defensively. “Let me therefore say ‘request.

Flanagan beckoned to Willard to take some notes.

“Let me get this clear, Mr. von Moltke,” he said. “Did Mr. Morgan lift or carry Miss Sheridan?”

The German winced. “No. I am saying that he assisted her by—how do you say?—pacing her over the last miles.”

“And that’s all you claim he did?” said Flanagan.

“Yes.”

Flanagan looked at Willard.

“Got all that down?” he asked. Willard nodded.

Flanagan rose. “Thank you, Herr von Moltke. I think I have all the essential details now. Rest assured I will let you know my decision in due course.”

The German opened his mouth as if to interject but decided against it. He bowed his cropped gray head and left the trailer.

“Go get me Doc Cole,” said Flanagan to Willard.

Five minutes later Cole was comfortably settled in front of a tall glass of iced orange juice in Flanagan’s trailer.

“How can I help you, Flanagan?” he asked, the sweat still visible on his forehead.

Flanagan gulped down his coffee.

“T think we face a little technical problem, Doc. I suppose you already know Morgan went out and brought Kate Sheridan in?”

“Yes,” said Doc. “What of it?”

“The Germans have demanded I disqualify them both.”

“On what grounds?”

“That he assisted her in finishing the stage.”

Doc took a final gulp of his orange juice, sucking on the cube of ice he had taken with it. He looked up.

“Did he pick her up, drag her along, carry her?”

“No. Not as far as I know.”

“Flanagan, you probably know that I ran in the Dorando Olympic Marathon of 1908. Perhaps you heard of it? Dorando arrived in the White City Stadium first but in a state of rigor mortis. Hell, he didn’t know if he was in London, England, or Gary, Indiana. He fell, was picked up by some officials, fell again, and in the end was practically carried over the line by the judges.”

“And was he disqualified?”

“Yep, but I remember that he was lifted and carried across the line. Could I have another peek at your race rules?”

Willard handed the slim rule book across the trailer to Doc, who ran his finger slowly down each page in turn.

The runner shook his head.

“TI can see that you’ve pretty much followed the amateur rules, but there’s nothing here to cover Morgan’s situation. Hell, what do you think those Germans and All-Americans are doing if it isn’t pacing each other every day of the goddam week?”

“What would you say if I disqualified both of them?” asked Flanagan.

“Td say you were disqualifying her for something in which she played no active part, and him for sheer decency and kindness.”

Flanagan put down his cup.

“Thanks, Doc. You’ve helped me make up my mind.”

The older man rose to go. “And do you mind telling me what you’ve decided?”

Flanagan gave him a toothy smile. “That they both run,” he said.

Eo * *

“Coffee?” asked Dixie.

For a moment Kate did not know where she was. She looked sleepily around her, at the plain white ceiling above, her black hair tumbling over her sunburned face. She felt the coolness of silk on her arms and realized that she was wearing a pair of pink silk pajamas, and was covered by a thin white cotton sheet. She was in bed in Dixie’s trailer.

“How… ?”

Dixie anticipated her question. “How did you get here?”

Kate nodded sleepily, shaking her tousled hair.

Dixie poured out a steaming cup of black coffee, asked about sugar and cream, then explained. “It was Morgan and McPhail who brought you in. Them and Doc Cole. But don’t worry—it was me who cleaned you up and undressed you. You weren’t really capable of much last night. How do you feel now?”

Kate rubbed her calves. “Stiff. Feels like someone’s been banging my legs with jackhammers.” She sipped her drink. “Did anyone ever tell you you make great coffee?”

Dixie smiled.

Kate put down her cup thoughtfully. “I just can’t figure out that guy Morgan. Jesus, the first time he spoke to me was only yesterday—and then he bopped me one.”

Dixie stared at her.

“Morgan hit you?”

Kate cupped her jaw in her hands and gingerly moved it from side to side.

“No complaints. I had it coming to me. Anyhow, I made it. The only thing I can remember is the time. Seven hours fifty-four.”

“So you beat the cut?” said Dixie, pouring herself a second cup.

“Yes, by over five minutes. I sure hope Flanagan doesn’t have any more of these cuts for a few days.”

Dixie picked up her clipboard and shook her head.

Kate smiled. “That’s all I need. A couple of days’ rest and some easy running and I’ll be right as rain. You just watch me.”

Dixie looked out of the window at the rows of tents on the desert plain. She could see Hugh McPhail walking not far from the trailer, and waved.

He looked over toward her and smiled in response. Within two minutes he was seated in the small traveling home sampling her prize brew. Their hands touched as she held his cup, and for a moment he wondered if her hand had lingered a moment on his.

“How are you feeling?” he asked Kate, who sat in her running outfit on Dixie’s bed.

“All the better for this coffee,” she replied. “I’d sure like to thank you guys for getting me here last night.”

Hugh blushed. “It was mainly Morgan,” he said, looking down at his cup. He was still thinking of Dixie’s hand.

There was a moment’s silence, then another voice joined in the conversation. “What the hell is this, a coffee klatch?”

They looked around to see Flanagan at the door. He was dressed in his Tom Mix outfit and carrying a sheaf of papers on a clipboard.

He pointed to Kate.

“T’ve got some news you won’t like,” he said. “The German manager Moltke has put in a protest—about Morgan helping you. He wants you both disqualified.”

Kate flushed and started to speak. “You can tell Moltke, whoever he is . . .”

“Don’t get yourself in a tizzy,” Flanagan said quickly. “I threw his protest out cold. Anyhow, it was Morgan he was really after, not you. Morgan’s the one who might cream his blue-eyed boys, they must reckon. But I’ve got some good news for you, too. The Woman’s Home Journal has offered a ten-thousand-dollar prize if you can finish in the first two hundred places. Does that get to you?”

“TI say,” said Kate, grinning. “What place am I in?”

“Seven hundred and eighty-ninth,” he said. “So you’ll have to kill off over five hundred guys to get to that ten grand. Even the famous Miss Lily Langtry herself couldn’t have done that.”

“No,” replied Kate. “But then Lily Langtry hadn’t hoofed for six shows a day!”

* Eo *

Close on two hundred miles east of Los Angeles, the Trans-America had ceased to become a race purely between individuals. Rather, it was between teams, between groups of men drawn together by friendship and the desire for success, and the certain knowledge that it was going to be difficult for any individual runner to win on his own. The fifteen state teams, the All-Americans, the Germans, the various company-sponsored teams—these groupings had been known at the start of the race, but now the social chemistry of the Trans-America had changed, and the race was composed of dozens of less formal alliances. Some of these had in common age, others experience, yet others race, religion or color; but most of them cut across all these boundaries. Just as men had traveled in families from the East fifty years before, so the Trans-America was dividing up into families to make the return journey, only this time families of athletes.

Kate Sheridan was aware of this, aware of the daily need to go beyond individual ambitions. She knew herself to be in a unique position. She was now the only woman left in the race, with no female group to which she could adhere.

C.C. Flanagan had not been the only man to show interest in her. The twohundred-odd miles of the Trans-America did not appear to have depleted the sexual energies of the some of the competitors, which seemed to be fueled by quite a different source from their running.

Chance, however, had led her toward Doc’s group, which, though its members had reached no formal agreements, moved about the camp as one. At the center of the group was Doc himself, the fountainhead of running knowledge, even more than that—someone with whom she and the others felt entirely comfortable.

After tea on the rest day Kate had made her way to Doc’s tent to find him sitting outside with Martinez, Morgan and McPhail.

As she approached she saw Doc fish deep into his knapsack and pull out a small piece of sandpaper. Then he pulled off his shoes and inspected his feet closely. Hugh, Morgan and Kate looked at each other in wonder.

“°Spect you’re wondering what I’m about,” said Doc. He rubbed the paper across the side of his left foot. “Friction,” he said. “We got to run on ball bearings. Have any of you any idea how many times our feet will hit the road on any one day? Then I’ll tell you. About seventy thousand. So we don’t want roughness on the feet or in the shoes. That’s why I polish my feet smooth. I do it every day.”

Disregarding Kate, Doc went quickly over both feet, then clipped his toenails close, so that there were no protrusions. Next he powdered his armpits with talcum and then smeared Vaseline on the front of his chest and his nipples. “Friction again,” he said. “Used to get sore nipples. Same with the crotch.” He opened the top of his shorts and poured some more powder down inside, then shook his shorts around with both hands. “You don’t just run with your legs,” he explained. “You run with everything you’ve got. The Ford Automobile people call it ‘testing to destruction.’ That’s what we’re doing out here. Testing ourselves to destruction. Only I don’t figure to get destroyed.”

Hugh looked on dumbly. There was so much he had to learn, and quickly, or he would soon be out of the race, stranded on the roadside on some vast American desert. Luckily, his feet had so far held out, though he had done no more than powder the inside of his shoes.

Doc next drew out from his knapsack a long-sleeved football shirt. “It’s going to be sunny tomorrow. Every part of your skin below neck level should be covered, otherwise that sun’ll flay you alive. Sure I’ sweat in this, but my arms and shoulders won’t burn.” He pulled out his white peaked cap. “This’ll protect my face,” he said. “Reckon my legs are brown enough to take the sun, so I’ll leave them free.”

He looked up at his three companions.

“T don’t know why I’m telling you guys all this, cause one of these days one of you is going to have me whole for breakfast.”

He stood up. “Look out there,” he said, pointing into the desert. “The devil’s playground; it’s the meanest, driest land God ever made. A fossil wasteland of yucca, Joshua trees and dry lake beds. Jesus, sixty years back they brought out camels from Arabia, and even they didn’t last long.”

He returned to examining his feet, but the respite only lasted a moment.

“Any of you think you’re going to run easy across that in seventy-five degrees or more, then think again,” he said, looking up. “No, just you treat the Mojave with respect and run out quiet on tiptoe and maybe you might just make it across.”

He pointed out into the distance. “Tomorrow I intend to shuffle across that desert at just over six miles an hour at best. And if that mad young Kraut wants to run wild again then let him. Anyone who goes with him every day will be a total wreck by Vegas.”

“And what about me, Doc?” It was Kate who spoke.

Doc finally nodded his recognition, picked up a broken branch and traced a line on the ground.

“This is where we are now,” he said, making a mark on the sandy soil. “About a hundred-odd miles south of Vegas. Then more desert, then the Rockies. If you can make it over the Rockies, Miss Sheridan, then I reckon you just might’ve run your body in. Depends how quickly you can adapt.”

“You were talking about clothing, Doc. Does that go for me too?”

“Exactly the same. Cover up all light colored skin. Get a floppy hat in Barstow to keep out the sun and keep your face cool. You mayn’t look much, but this ain’t no beauty competition.”

“What about face creams?”

“Hell no,” said Doc. “Unless you’re figuring to fry like an egg.”

He looked at her, sensing her uncertainty.

“Look, Kate, you can make it. You showed your stuff at the last cut. But just you take it slow, and stop at all water points. And don’t be too proud to walk.”

“Walk?” said Kate.

“Walk. At seventy-five degrees and above your body can’t keep its temperature in balance, even with all the sweating in the world. In that heat the body chemistry goes crazy. So listen to your body; do what it tells you. Nothing chicken in that.”

“You’ve really got it worked out,” said Kate admiringly.

“Well, I’ve had thirty years to think about it,” said Doc. “I don’t know much else.”

She turned to the rest of the group, reddening. “I’d… I’d like to say thank you guys for yesterday.”

“Heck,” said Doc. “It was Morgan here who went back. The rest of us, we just did a peck of stretcher bearing. Morgan here did all the real work. Thank him.”

He stood up, patting his belly. “Anyhow, my stomach tells me it’s dinner time.” He gave a quick sidelong grin at Morgan, and walked off toward the refreshment tent, followed by McPhail and Martinez, the little Mexican gabbling excitedly away to Hugh about his earnings. Kate watched them move off, then sat down on the rock which Doc had vacated. She looked steadily down at the sand at her feet.

“Td like to thank you, Morgan.” She realized suddenly that she didn’t even know his first name.

There was no reply.

“Why did you come back for me?”

Mike Morgan looked at her steadily, chewing on a straw. At last he spoke. “Maybe it’s because I once trained with a pug called Clancy up in the Tuscarora Mountains, back in Pennsylvania. It was the hardest time of my life. Back there Clancy said I had ‘bottom.’ He said it to me like it was some sort of compliment. Bottom. Well, you got it, Miss Sheridan.”

“Bottom?” said Kate, reddening again.

She looked across at her companion, his body only partly visible in the gathering dusk. For a moment she felt again the tug of that invisible thread that had bound them in those last desperate miles, even though the need for the link had now gone.

“Yes,” said Morgan. “And don’t think for one moment that if I hadn’t got to you that you would have just lain there and given up. No, you would’ve got up and finished, because that’s the kind of person you are, ma’am. Lady, you ain’t got a single ounce of give-up in you.”

With that Morgan got to his feet and ambled off toward the others.

Bottom. That was all the man could say, and then just walk away. Kate normally had a flow of smart repartee to hold a man long enough to keep his interest; but not this time. She sat dumb, letting Morgan amble off into the dusk. Surely there had to be more than this? Perhaps hundreds of miles on, far beyond these sour, arid wastes. But not now. Sometime, maybe.

Chapter 10 CROSS-COUNTRY TO LAS VEGAS

6 p.m., March 26, 1931. Silver Lake, Nevada. “Testing, testing … one, two, three,” bellowed Willard into the microphone. In front of the Trans-America trailer sat one thousand two hundred and fifty-five men and one woman, all that remained of the Trans-America after just two hundred and thirty miles. Five days in the California sun had tanned their complexions a golden brown, and a day’s rest had given their skins an added glow and vitality.

Willard Clay was in his element. All his life he had been a fixer, an organizer. At five foot four inches and one hundred and seventy pounds, he knew that there was no athletic event for which he was suited, except possibly sumo wrestling, and he had been born in the wrong country for that. However, even as early as the fifth grade he had been the one who had arranged the basketball matches between local street teams, raised money for Father Murphy’s church funds, even organized track and field meets on a sixty-by-forty-yard strip of dirt sunk in a canyon of tenements. Willard loved the challenge of organizing people. The more the better.

Flanagan: he was the dreamer, and in the ten years since they had first met it had been Willard’s job to put flesh and bones on Flanagan’s dreams. Flanagan was, in the best sense of the word, a “con” man, in that he had the capacity to gain people’s confidence, and Willard knew that it was something that he himself could never do. However, once Flanagan had launched himself into a project, it was Willard’s job to place brick on brick, and this he did superbly. Willard made certain that there was a man for every task, that each man knew his role, and, however humble it was, that each man was recognized. Flanagan could well strut about in his Hollywood gear, but it was Willard who would get things done.

He had known that the Trans-America would be his most difficult task. Organizing a race across a continent was difficult enough, but handling two thousand runners, plus a circus and the attendant press corps—that was a job in the loaves and fishes category, and Willard did not anticipate the same level of divine support. Yet he reveled in his work. What was more, from the beginning he had taken to the runners. They were honest, decent men. He respected them, and in time they would grow to respect him.

“Testing … one, two, three,” he shouted again. Hands were raised to indicate that he was being heard.

Flanagan took over the microphone.

“Thank you, Willard,” he said, looking at the throng seated in front of him. Under his breath he added, “Hell, I feel like Moses leading the Israelites.”

A Trans-American standing close to Flanagan stood up, his voice ringing out in the dry air.

“Mr. Flanagan, if you are Moses, for pity’s sake gimme some of them tablets of the Lord—I haven’t been to the john for days!”

The athletes roared, their laughter lost in the dry desert.

Flanagan in turn grinned good-naturedly then held up his hands for silence.

“Okay, fellas, quiet down. Just want to let you know the program for the next few days. Tomorrow, just over forty miles through the desert across the McCullough Range taking us into Las Vegas. . .”

Jeers and laughter interrupted Flanagan as the stocky Frenchman, Bouin, got to his feet. For Bouin, in the Great War a sergeant in the French army, had

already become known as the barrack-room lawyer of the European group. “Mr. Flanagan, what matter of place is your Las Vegas?”

Flanagan’s eyes twinkled in response. “I think that you’ll find it entirely to your liking, Mr. Bouin,” he said. “Around here they call Las Vegas the Monte Carlo of the USA. They’ve got everything there any man could want, and perhaps a few things more.”

Doc was the next to shout out. “What’s the weather forecast?” he asked, already on his feet.

Flanagan looked sideways at Willard, who duly leaned forward to the microphone. “Hot,” he said. “At least seventy-five degrees in the shade, eighty-five digress or more in the sun.”

Doc stayed standing.

“Then we’ll need to double up on water points,” he said. He turned to the desert behind him. “Out there’s the meanest land in the world,” he said, “They call it the devil’s playground. People dried out in droves back in the Gold Rush days. Their bones are still out here somewhere. The speed we’re moving at, we burn up fluid like a racing car burns up gas.”

Flanagan looked sideways again at Willard, who nodded.

“Tt’ll be done,” Flanagan said. “Any other points?”

“Yes,” said Doc. “No cuts till we get out of this graveyard. Else some of us won’t be having good times in Las Vegas or anywhere else.”

There was arumble of support. Flanagan immediately sensed the mood of the runners and nodded. “Agreed.”

Pentti Eskola stood up. “What sort of country is it ahead, Mr. Flanagan?” he asked. “In more detail, please.”

“Well, very similar to what you have already passed through. Like Doc said, it’s hot and it’s dry. It’s a land of wastes, dry river bids and salt flats. We call it a desert, but it’s full of saguaro, yucca, mescal and palo verde—and rattlesnakes. Further on, there’s mountains going up to about five thousand feet.”

“Any Indians, Mr. Flanagan?” shouted a Cockney voice.

“Plenty,” said Flanagan. “But you’ll find them selling sand paintings and blankets at the roadside or pushing gas at the gas stations. So don’t look for any Tom Mix action around here.”

Eskola stood up. “What are the starting times?”

Flanagan looked at his timetable. “Tomorrow’s leg starts at eight so we can get the first twenty miles under our belts before noon. We break till three, then run the second leg till six.”

“What about prizes?” asked another voice. Flanagan smiled. “I thought that might come up sooner or later.” He picked up his clipboard. “The biggest money yet. The Six Companies, who are building America’s biggest dam at Boulder just south of Vegas, have put up prizes of two thousand dollars for first place

down to a hundred dollars for sixth. That makes the Vegas stage our richest so far.”

Jean Bouin got to his feet. ““M’sieu Flanagan, the finish—is it in the center of Las Vegas?”

“Good question,” said Flanagan. “Yes, plumb in the middle of the main street, right by the Golden Nugget Casino. The whole goddam town is going to be there—the mayor, the city council, the whole circus. Tomorrow night, you guys are going to be the toast of Vegas.”

“And what about these?” Doc Cole stood up, holding a yellow running shirt with the letters “IWW” emblazoned on the front and “Vegas” on the back. “We’ve been told that we’ve all got to wear these shirts on the way into Vegas. Why?”

Flanagan smiled uneasily. “Courtesy. Courtesy. We show a little respect for Vegas, they’re gonna show some respect for the Trans-America.”

“Now Las Vegas I can understand,” rejoined Doc. “But what in tarnation does TWW stand for?”

“I don’t care if it stands for International Widow Women,” shouted a gruff voice from the back of the crowd. “They’re clean and they sure beat that ole YMCA shirt you’ve been wearing for the past week.”

Doc tried to reply, but his answer was drowned in jeers and laughter. He sat down, shaking his head uncertainly and a few moments later the meeting drew to a close, and Doc’s group followed him back to his tent.

“A real ball buster,” said Doc, kneeling on all fours, spreading a map evenly over the rough sandy ground. “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” he added, looking over his shoulder at Kate.

She grinned and shook her head.

He jabbed his finger at a point in the map. “I reckon we’re about here, just beyond the Soda Mountains, about two hundred and thirty-odd miles out from Los Angeles. We’ve been climbing for the past three days of running, though it’s been gradual, for the most part.”

“How high are we now?” asked Kate, joining Doc on her knees.

“Must be over three thousand feet—even those goddam Germans are dropping close to nine-minute miles. The air gets real stingy at these heights.”

His finger traced a short line on the map. “We have about forty-odd miles to Vegas. The first fifteen or so see us clear of the desert. Then it’s hard climbing all the way into Vegas, through the McCullough Range.”

“What height do they go to?” asked Hugh.

“Over five thousand feet. At that height, even a ten-minute pace is tough, ’specially on the steep climbs. Your legs go, your breathing goes, everything goes.”

“You ever run that high before, Doc?” asked Morgan, kneeling on one knee beside Kate and looking intently at the map.

“Once,” said Doc. “Mexico City in 1912. Some fancy Mexican general had put up a couple of thousand dollars for a marathon there. That was real big money in those days, and we came clambering from all over to get at it. Kohlemainen, Shrubb, Appleby, Fox—all the great professionals turned up.

“How high was Mexico City?” asked Kate.

“Something over seven thousand feet. The boys didn’t pay it much attention, though. They all went bounding off at the usual six-minute-mile pace, while I chugged along at the back of the field about half a minute a mile slower. They went through ten in the hour all right, but then at fifteen miles it all went haywire. They started coming back to me like I was pulling them in on a string. All the greats fell apart. There was Kohlemainen, dying on his feet, and even Alf Shrubb ended up in a pushcart. Old Charles Fox over there finished up walking.”

“Did you win?” asked Kate.

“T didn’t win it—they lost it. I just kept plugging along, staying loose, taking it easy, while they were dropping around me like drowned men. It was one of the slowest marathons I ever ran—it took me over three hours. I spent two weeks recovering too, much longer than usual. Kohlemainen and Shrubb were in a Mexican hospital for weeks, and so were a dozen others. Meanwhile, there I was traveling back first-class in the S.S. Marianna with two thousand bucks in my pocket. Happy days.”

“So we have to keep the pace low?” said Hugh.

“Exactly,” said Doc. “It’s always the pace that kills, never the distance.”

Eo * *

Flanagan put down the telephone, his face fixed in a scowl, and slumped back into his armchair. He took his revolver from its holster, opened it and flicked its cylinder around.

“Trouble in New York,” he said looking up. “Trouble for Mayor Jimmy Walker, and if Jimmy goes hungry then we starve.”

Willard waited for an explanation.

“That Sir Galahad Franklin Roosevelt, the state governor, has got a petition from the public affairs committee asking for Jimmy Walker’s removal. ‘Malfeasance of office’ they call it.” Flanagan got up and poured out a full measure of whiskey and gulped it down in one.

“So what?” said Willard. ““Walker’s signed up to us tight for twenty grand.”

“Tf this charge sticks, Walker could be on his way to the Tombs a full month before we hit New York. Twenty grand—we won’t see twenty cents! Jesus H. Christ, it’s all happening at once.”

Willard picked up a sheaf of papers. “I know this may not be the best time, but could you look at these bills? All of a sudden they’ve started pouring in.”

“Strange,” said Flanagan, pouring himself another drink and leafing through the bills.

“Most of these people offered us long-term credit,” said Willard. “Now they all seem to want their money yesterday. The toughest one is the catering contract with De Luxe. They want twenty thousand dollars advance by the end of next week or they pull out the cooks.”

“How much have we got in the kitty?”

“About thirty grand.”

“Pay it,” said Flanagan, pointing out of the window. “We run out of food, they tun out of legs. They run out of legs, we run out of business.”

He lay back on the trailer couch and closed his eyes. “Excite me, Willard,” he said. “Go over the figures again. You know what I mean.”

Willard recited the accounts in a low monotone.

“Costs: salaries and services till New York total six hundred forty thousand dollars. Equipment costs twenty-five thousand dollars. Publicity costs fifteen thousand five hundred dollars. Sundries twenty-five thousand five hundred dollars. Prize money to be met by Trans-America Bank. Grand total seven hundred six thousand dollars.

“Income: entry fees four hundred thousand dollars. Films fifty thousand dollars. Appropriations from towns three hundred thousand dollars. Sundry income one hundred forty thousand dollars. Total eight hundred ninety thousand dollars.”

Flanagan kept his eyes closed. “Now to the best bit,” he said. “The profit.”

Willard’s voice rose from its monotone.

“Even excluding post-race contracts, there will be a profit of one hundred eighty-five thousand dollars.”

Flanagan stood up and stretched. “I feel better already.”

“But what about the bills?”

“Burn them,” said Flanagan. “The whole damn lot.”

* Eo *

Unaware of Flanagan’s problems, Rae, Kowalski and Liebnitz were busy comparing notes in the press tent.

“How do you think it’s going so far, Carl?” asked Rae.

Liebnitz took off his horn-rimmed glasses and polished them.

“You guys know I’m no sports reporter. Still, Flanagan has surprised me. First, he somehow got two thousand men and women from all over the world to tun in this crazy race of his.”

He paused to replace his glasses on his lean, peeling nose. “Perhaps, in the circumstances, that wasn’t too surprising, considering the present state of the nation. What is surprising is that up till now the whole goddam jamboree has been so well organized. When I first met Flanagan, it wasn’t that he didn’t know the next step ahead—he didn’t know the step he had just taken!”

“Yep,” said Kowalski. “You’ve got to hand it to him, Carl. And he’s done well by the press corps too. Every day, a pack of good stories.”

Liebnitz nodded.

“And who have you got your two bits on, Mr. Liebnitz?” It was Kevin Maguire of the Jrish Times. Liebnitz smiled and polished his glasses again.

“When I first hit Los Angeles I would have bet my last buck on Doc Cole,” he said, investigating the lens by holding it up to the light. “But that young German Muller…”

“He’s going to take some beating,” interjected Kowalski.

“And his pal Stock is still running easy,” observed Rae.

“Perhaps Muller’s just the stalking horse,” said Liebnitz. “Put out there just to burn off likely contenders, to set the race up for Stock.”

“He sure burned me off yesterday,” growled Kowalski. “I couldn’t get a word out of him after the finish.”

“And then there’s young McPhail and the Yankee boy Morgan,” said Maguire.

“And your Lord Thurleigh’s no slouch, even if he has left his butler back at Barstow,” said Kowalksi.

“Don’t call him my Lord,” replied Maguire. “I hate the bloody English.”

Liebnitz replaced his glasses and rubbed his nose, removing a surface layer of dried, sunburned skin.

“Tl take a chance,” he said cautiously, “and pick McPhail, with Cole second choice.”

“Banana oil,” said Kowalski. “It’s got to be Muller and Stock. What about you, Kevin?”

Maguire tipped back his hat and mopped his brow.

“I’m going to use the Irish method,” he said. “Cole, Muller, Stock, Morgan, Thurleigh, Eskola, McPhail. It’s going to be one of them. . . I think.”

Eo * *

7 AM., March 27, 1931. The runners stood massed on the road to Las Vegas, a few miles north of the Soda Mountains. The desert air was sharp and clear. Behind them, Flanagan’s workers were clearing away the remains of the night’s stay. Ahead of them were Flanagan’s Trans-America trailer, six press buses, the Maxwell House Coffee Pot and a collection of over a hundred cars and motorcycles. Around them, still and silent on the cool desert surface, the cottonwood, cactus and yucca, which grew at between three thousand five hundred and five thousand feet.

As Doc had predicted back in Los Angeles, the cranks, the dreamers and the optimists had now gone, and the Trans-America was composed either of athletes or men rapidly becoming athletes. Luckily, the weather had been kind; they had been favored by a succession of unusually mild spring days, days in which the desert was unable to impose its full vigor upon them. At present, only mileage was a problem, before they reached Las Vegas—“the meadow with many streams.”

Again, it was the German, Muller, who took the lead, this time after a mile of easy running with the main pack of thirty, in which Doc, Hugh, Morgan, Martinez and Peter Thurleigh were securely tucked, together with Eskola, Bouin and Dasriaux, the All-Americans and the remainder of the German team.

The leading groups slipped into a reflex rhythm, running between six and seven miles an hour, for they had now accepted the reality both of their bodies and the nature of the Trans-America. They ran like clockwork toys, daily insinuating themselves into rather than piercing the desert, as they had tried to do in their first springier, more optimistic days.

For Hugh, the road had become a dream, and as in a dream there was no pain. For he in turn had become a machine, through which oxygen and blood flowed endlessly, the oxygen exactly matching his needs. The stumbling, staggering days of his early training were long past him; he was no longer a sprinter, but a roadrunner.

In the early days, the air had sometimes ripped through him, rasping in his throat like sandpaper. Now the easy in-and-out of his breathing was balanced, his strides were never an inch longer or shorter than necessary, regardless of the surface. He ran as if the road and its contours had been made for his legs and his alone. And, like a confession, the run somehow purged and cleansed him, bringing a daily flow of memories unchecked and without order.

Hugh remembered that he had been drawn two nights before across to the circus camp by the mournful wail of bagpipes coming from somewhere on its perimeter. It had taken him some time to locate them in the cluster of tents, trailers and cages that formed the circus camp, but eventually he found that the pipes were being played by Albert Koch, the fat, balding owner of Fritz the talking mule.

Koch stood in front of Fritz, his sweating face reddening as he played “The MacRimmon’s Lament” a few feet from the donkey, who silently munched from the trough in front of him. Albert Koch looked up apologetically as Hugh approached.

“T’m trying to teach him some new words,” he explained. “These bagpipes—they gets him in the right mood—at least it always has done before. Goddam beast.”

“Don’t you know any other tunes?” asked Hugh.

“Hell no,” replied Koch. “I had enough trouble learning this one from the Scotsman who sold me this damn donkey.”

“Did he sell you the pipes too?”

“You bet your sweet life he did. Ten dollars extra, and a buck fifty for teaching me the tune.”

Hugh put out his hands to Koch. “Care to let me try?”

“My pleasure,” said Koch, handing him the pipes.

Hugh cleaned the mouthpiece and filled the bag. They were poor pipes, probably made in Aberdeen, Idaho, rather than Aberdeen, Scotland, but he would

squeeze a tune out of them. As he looked up at Koch he saw that Dixie Williams had strolled by, and was watching the scene, chewing on a blade of grass. Hugh reddened, but placed his fingers automatically in place on the chanter and swung into “Flora McDonald’s Jig.”

At the sound of the jaunty melody Fritz lifted his head from the trough and viewed McPhail intently.

“Dooog,” he brayed.

“Great!” said Koch. “Keep at it.”

Hugh continued to play, walking rhythmically, Highland style, in front of the now attentive donkey.

“Caaat,” brayed Fritz again in a high nasal whine.

“You got yourself a friend for life,” whooped Koch. “I been saying ‘Cat’ to him all goddam night.”

Hugh continued to play for about ten more minutes, during which Fritz made several other additions to his vocabulary, none of them intelligible to Hugh or Dixie but evoking immediate response from Koch.

Hugh handed the pipes back to Koch, who shook him vigorously by the hand.

“What you think I should do, Scotsman? I’m moving up to Vegas tomorrow to set up camp.”

“T think you should learn some new tunes, Mr. Koch,” said Hugh. “And stay away from the sad stuff. That donkey’s got a sense of humor.”

“So have you,” said a voice behind him. It was Dixie. Hugh blushed again.

Leaving Koch with his pipes and his donkey, the two of them strolled back through the camp, through the tents and trailers as dogs scampered between the evening fires.

“Where did you learn to play the bagpipes?” Dixie asked.

“With the Boys Brigade,” answered Hugh.

“Brigade? Is that the army?” asked Dixie, kicking a pebble along the dry ground.

Hugh smiled. “Not quite,” he answered. “More like the Boy Scouts. All drill and marching up and down the church hall. I joined for the soccer. But they did teach me the pipes.”

“Whatever happens you can always get a job with Mr. Koch,” said Dixie.

They had now reached the edge of the circus encampment.

“It’s always a possibility,” he replied. “Well, we’ll see in Las Vegas if Flora McDonald’s jig will help Fritz learn a few more words. I think I’Il have a look at this circus—I’ve never seen one in action.”

“You’ll have to wait a bit,” said Dixie. “They only work the big towns. Mr. Flanagan has got them booked ahead in all the towns from here to New York.” She paused. “Anyway, who was this Flora McDonald?”

Hugh beckoned her to sit down on a rock, then sat down beside her.

“Back in 1745,” he said, “Bonnie Prince Charlie led a Jacobite uprising against the King. He was beaten in battle and hunted the length and breadth of Scotland.”

“These Jacobites,” said Dixie. “They like Democrats?”

“Something like,” said Hugh, smiling. “The King offered a big reward for his capture. But not a single Highlander betrayed the Prince. Flora McDonald was one of the main people who took care of him, helping him to escape back to France.”

“All over the country, protected by a woman even though he was a prince?” mused Dixie.

“Yes. But he made it eventually,” said Hugh. “He escaped to France.”

“Did they ever meet again?”

“No. Not as far as I know.”

“That’s often the way of it,” said Dixie, standing up. “People come from far off, get together. Then they never see each other again.”

Hugh looked down at the ground. “Yes,” he said. “That’s often the way of it.” He watched her move slowly off in front of him toward her quarters.

“But it doesn’t have to be,” he said, under his breath.

* Eo *

A fat globule of warm rain hit Hugh on the forehead, bringing him back to the present. Within seconds the rain was rushing down, as if from a celestial faucet, hissing through the still desert air. The pace dropped to a crawl as runners, blinded by the warm torrent, slowed in order to focus clearly on the slippery, muddy road ahead. Packs which had been glued together for the first ten miles were pried apart by the blinding rush of water. Hugh’s shirt and shorts clung stickily to his body.

The runners, who had up till that point run sparingly, output exactly balancing input, now found their breathing rhythms broken as they breathed in rain through nose and mouth. Worse still, the road had already started to break up, as the rain gouged and cut across the softer portions of its surface, creating networks of tiny streams. It was really no longer a road but a mixture of mud and stream, and what had started as a road run had become a cross-country.

As the rain lashed down, Kate was glad that she had tied back her hair, though the rest of her was wet through, and her nipples were already showing clearly through her wet bra. At least, she thought, she was wearing dark briefs underneath her shorts. It was amazing how her concern for modesty remained, she thought, even in the lashing rain on a desert road with a thousand sweating sodden athletes. Beside her, Charles Fox was now struggling, for his old legs simply could not take the changing contours of the increasingly slimy road. His rhythm broken, he was beginning to breathe heavily and his short regular stride had dropped to an erratic, choppy pecking action.

“On you go, lass,” gasped Fox. “I’ll catch you up later.”

Kate nodded and Fox dropped back.

At the front of the field, Muller had built up a half-mile lead at fifteen miles, but it was now impossible to see him: they were now running through solid walls of rain. Suddenly they heard William Clay’s voice through the loudspeaker system.

“Flash flood!” he shouted. “Flash flood ahead, two miles on. The road is down. Repeat, the road is down. Cut south at the point of breakdown. Repeat. Cut south at the point of breakdown, five miles to bridge, and make your own way north back to the main Vegas road.”

The information was swiftly passed back down the field by word of mouth until it reached Doc and his group.

“Hell,” said Doc, the rain streaming down his face. “That means another two hours’ running.”

Soon Doc, McPhail, Morgan and the rest of their group had reached the point of the flood. The rains had etched a thirty-foot wide, six-foot deep chasm, ripping away the road. Doc stopped, took off his cap and from inside it took out what looked like a watch. He replaced his cap and looked sideways at Morgan, Hugh and Martinez, then back at the watch.

“You know what this is?” he said.

There was no answer.

“Then I’ll tell you. This is a compass. This might mean a mile, and maybe a thousand dollars to us.”

They slithered right, south into the desert, the mud turning their once-tight shoes into brown, slimy clogs. Cactus and yucca ripped at their legs as they stumbled and staggered through the lashing rain. They ran parallel to the roaring flash flood on their left, which had broken through the road east to Las Vegas, and they had traveled about half a mile downstream before Doc shouted to them through the noise of the rain.

“There!” he shouted, gesturing to the narrowest point in the brown rush of water, only about twelve yards across. They stopped and gathered around him.

“Here’s how I see it,” gasped Doc, the rain rolling down his cheeks and into his mouth. “We make a chain across the stream with Mike leading, Juan and I next, and Hugh as anchor holding on to that yucca.” He pointed to a stout twisted yucca on their side of the flood whose roots had not yet been loosened by the flood. “When Mike manages to get a firm grip on that yucca on the far side, Hugh lets go and we pull each other across. I reckon it’s about a four-man-span—just over ten yards.”

There was no reply from the others, only the hiss and splatter of the rain as following runners began to slither south past them.

“Well?” yelled Doc. “What the hell is this? A staring competition? Jesus, we can pick up a couple of hours on that Kraut!” Doc walked forward a few yards and then looked back expectantly at the others.

They moved off toward the stream’s edge and linked hands, with Hugh mooring himself firmly to the yucca. He nodded to Doc, who tapped Morgan on the shoulder.

“Here goes nothing,” said Morgan, stepping first into the brown torrent, with Martinez and Doc following, holding each other firmly at the wrist. Morgan trod cautiously, feeling with his feet for broad stones on which to balance. He was lucky, for on his first tentative steps he at once made contact with firm, gritty surfaces, and the chain of runners made its way painfully across the stream, constantly buffeted by the warm, gushing water.

“Right!” shouted Morgan through the roar of rain and river. “Got it!”” He had made contact with the tree branch on the far side of the stream. As Morgan shouted, the yucca tree on which Hugh was holding himself firm, its roots at last eroded by the flood, tumbled into the stream, taking Hugh with it. Doc, caught between stones, hung on tight to Hugh, but was ripped from Martinez’s grasp and tumbled helplessly downstream, still clasped in the Scotsman’s firm grip.

“Jesus!” said Morgan, dragging Martinez onto the muddy bank, where he lay gasping like a stranded fish. “Jesus.”

Morgan looked desperately around him. He stood up and pulled savagely at a yucca tree at his side, but the twisted, wiry branch would not break.

“Come on, you bastard,” he snarled, continuing to heave.

At last the branch broke, throwing Morgan backward. He got to his feet and half slithered, half ran down the side of the stream, which fortunately curved, cutting down the distance between Morgan and the two in the water.

Meanwhile Doc and Hugh tumbled crazily downstream, swallowing rainwater from the heavens as well as gritty mouthfuls of the muddy flash flood. Doc had been submerged several times but still Hugh held grimly on, attempting to swim with his free right arm. Doc, however, a nonswimmer, had become a dead weight. Hugh felt himself weakening.

Then above the brown swell he saw a blurred Morgan at the stream’s edge, about ten yards downstream.

“Here!” shouted Morgan, reaching out into the stream with the yucca branch. Hugh was still on the right side of Doc, who had gone under yet again, and had to spin in the water over Doc onto his back to get closer to the branch.

At last he reached out, only to miss it completely, and rolled further downstream, still clinging leechlike to Doc’s wrist with his left hand. Morgan cursed and dashed on a further twenty yards downstream to the next curve and again held out the branch.

Hugh managed to get his fingers firmly around the branch, but the force of the flood and Doc’s pull on him were too great; he lost his grip and again the two men tumbled downstream, the skin of their backs ripping as they hit the gravelly bottom of the stream.

Hugh surfaced again, pulling Doc with him and saw, almost above him, the yucca branch and Morgan’s face. He clawed for the branch and this time his grip held firm, though their bodies were swung downstream by the force of the current.

Morgan grabbed the Scotsman’s other arm and pulled slowly; Hugh, still holding Doc, was dragged onto the bank.

The young Scot sat gasping against a rock; but Doc lay still, on his back, on the bank. Immediately Morgan pushed Doc onto his front, placing his head to the left and started to pump his upper back, forcing water and grit to erupt in great spurts from his mouth. Only moments later Doc started to groan. Then he coughed, and Morgan pulled him roughly into an upright position.

“You all right?” he asked. Doc spat out a stream of muddy water and stood up uncertainly, leaning on both Hugh and Morgan.

“Of course I’m all right,” he growled, shaking his head. “Take more than that to finish me.”

“You never died a winter yet,” said Hugh.

Doc grinned and spat out more water. “How much time d’you reckon we lost?”

“T reckon about twenty minutes,” said Morgan.

Doc coughed again. “Then we still got plenty of time in hand.” He gave a wheezy cough and started to hop from foot to foot. “Then we got ’em. We goddam got ’em!” he chuckled. “Muller and his boys will run a good ten miles before they can get back on the Vegas road.”

They walked back slowly to Martinez, who was standing a couple of hundred yards upstream. Doc had almost fully recovered, though he still spat out grit and water as he walked along.

“You said we’d save two hours, coming across the flood,” said Morgan mockingly.

“Okay, okay,” said Doc, “so I’m no Johnny Weissmuller. Five’ll get you ten that none of the others will try to make it across.”

Doc was right. No other runner ventured across the flood, choosing instead to stumble and slide almost five miles downstream to a stout bridge, there to turn to tun north five miles back across the desert to the main Las Vegas road. Doc and his friends had gained well over an hour’s lead, and all within the race rules.

“Right,” said Doc, as they stood shivering in the warm rain. “We’ve got more than twenty miles to go into Vegas. So we can do one of three things. First, we can race our nuts off all the way for the prize money. A couple of us will pick up the big money, but we’ll all be pooped for the next desert stages past Las Vegas.”

“What else can we do?” asked Hugh.

“We can take it easy for, say, fifteen miles, staying close, then run for the money over the last five miles.”

“And what’s your last option?” asked Morgan cautiously.

“For us to make it into Vegas real easy, and split the prize money between us.”

“A lot of people have come into Vegas to see a race,” said Hugh. “Not a fix.”

“You got a point,” said Doc. “But this ain’t the United States Senate. We’ve got to decide—now.”

Martinez shrugged his shoulders while Hugh looked back at Doc uncertainly.

“You know a kid’s game?” asked Morgan suddenly.

No one spoke.

“You know,” said Morgan. “We all put one hand behind our back. We got a choice of showing one, two or three fingers. Majority takes it.”

“So if we want to race all the way it’s one finger, two fingers for the last five miles, three fingers for a share-out?” asked Doc.

“That’s it,” said Morgan. “Game?”

This time they all nodded.

Each man put his right hand behind his back. There was a moment’s pause.

“Now!” shouted Morgan.

All four men thrust out their right hands. Each one showed two fingers.

They laughed. Then they trotted together up toward the main road, the road to Las Vegas.

Flanagan’s Run will continue in our next issue.