“I admire her pluck.”
Josephine approached, eyes warm, extending both hands. “I’m so glad you made it, Mrs. Whiteway. My own mother couldn’t, and I felt all alone until now.”
Mrs. Whiteway looked Josephine up and down. “Aren’t you the plain Jane?” she announced. “Pretty enough, but no beauty, thank goodness. Beauty spoils a woman, turns her head . . . Who is that woman in maid-of-honor costume directing those men to point moving-picture cameras at me?”
“My fiancée,” said Bell, who had already stepped out of the line of focus, “Miss Marion Morgan.”
“Well, there may be exceptions to what I said about beautiful women,” Mrs. Whiteway harrumphed. “Young lady, do you love my son?”
The aviatrix looked her in the eye. “I like him.”
“Why?”
“He gets things done.”
“That is the one good trait he inherited from my husband.” She took Josephine’s hand and said, “Let’s get on with this,” and walked her back to the altar.
Mrs. Whiteway was settled in the front pew, and the bishop’s stand-in was repeating for the third time “We are gathered here today . . .” when through the skylight above Josephine and Preston the heavens suddenly glowed a steely green.
“Twisters!” cried the Texas plains dwellers who knew that weirdly tinted sky could only mean tornadoes.
Fort Worthians fled to storm cellars, inviting as many guests as they could squeeze in. Visitors who had steamed in on special trains retired to their dubious shelters. Those without cellars or trains found saloons.
The tornados roamed the rangeland until long after dark, roaring like runaway freights, hurling cattle and bunkhouses to the skies. They spared the city, but it was past midnight before a grateful congregation finally smelled the wedding feast cooking and at last heard the words “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
Preston Whiteway, flushed from reciprocating multiple toasts to the bridegroom, planted a kiss on Josephine’s lips. Maid of Honor Marion Morgan assured all who asked that, from her close vantage, she had observed that Josephine returned it gamely.
A roar of “Let’s eat” drove hundreds to the tables.
Whiteway raised his glass high. “A toast to my beautiful bride, America’s Sweetheart of the Air. May she fly ever higher and faster in my arms and—”
However Whiteway intended to continue his toast was drowned out by the distinctive grinding clatter of two pump-driven, eight-cylinder Antoinette motors clawing Steve Stevens’s overburdened biplane into the night air.
JOSEPHINE JUMPED from the bridal party’s table and ran full tilt through a canvas flap that covered a cattle chute leading to the flying field. Spitting fire from both motors, Stevens’s machine cleared a fence and Mrs. Whiteway’s locomotive, headed straight at a line of telegraph wires, cleared them by inches, lurched over a barn, and disappeared into the night.
Marco Celere was standing with the chocks he had pulled from its wheels at his feet, waving good-bye with his Platov’s slide rule and his red-banded straw boater.
“I told you I’d think of something for your wedding night.”
“Where’s he going?”
“Abilene.”
“That sneaky, fat . . .”
“I convinced him to go ahead so we’d have time to work on the motors.”
“How can he see where he’s flying?”
“Stars and moon on shiny tracks.”
Josephine yelled for her mechanicians to pour gas and oil into her flying machine and spin it over. Marco raced after her as she ran to it, dragging her wedding dress like a cloud of white smoke. He pulled the canvas off the monoplane’s wings while she knelt by tent pegs to release the tie-downs.
“I have to warn you . . .” he whispered urgently.
“What?” She loosened a taut-line hitch, tugged the rope off the strut, and knelt to loosen another.
“If something were to happen to ‘Dmitri Platov,’ don’t worry.”
“What do you mean? . . . Hurry it up! ” she shouted to her detective-mechanicians, who were tipping cans of gas and oil into the tanks. “What are you talking about? You’re Dmitri Platov.”
“‘Dmitri Platov’ is being watched by Bell’s detectives. He may have to suddenly disappear.”
Josephine untied the last tie-down, jumped up on the soapbox, and scrambled onto her machine, desperate to get up in the air. The train of her wedding dress tangled in a stay. “Knife!” she yelled to a detective-mechanician, who flicked open a sharpened blade and slashed the train off her dress.
“Keep it out of the propeller!” she ordered, and the mechanician dragged it away. Marco was still standing on the soapbox, his whiskered face inches from hers. “What about you?” she asked.
“I’ll be back. Don’t worry.”
She plunged her control post forward and pulled it back and tilted it sideways, checking that her elevator, rudder, and alettoni moved properly. “O.K., I won’t. Get out of my way . . . Contact!”
She raced off the ground ten minutes behind Stevens.
Isaac Bell was already circling the field, having instructed Andy Moser to keep the motor warm and gas and castor oil topped off. From high in the air, he saw the North Side Coliseum, and all of Fort Worth, as a dull glow lost in the infinite sea of darkness that was the night-blackened Texas rangeland.
Josephine raced west, following the railroad tracks by the light of the moon.
The tall detective was right behind her, tracking the aviatrix by the pinprick of fire that marked her Antoinette’s exhaust. For the first ten miles, he kept slowing his engine so as not to overtake her. But when the glow of Fort Worth had completely disappeared, and the ground was as dark behind as it was ahead, he fixed his eyes on the double line of moonlit steel, took his finger off the blip switch, and let the Eagle fly.
BOOK FOUR
“in the air she goes! there she goes!”
34
HARRY FROST THOUGHT he heard something coming from the east. He saw no glow of a locomotive headlamp. But he knelt anyway and pressed his good ear to the cold steel rail to confirm that it was not a train. The track transmitted no tuning-fork vibration.
Dave Mayhew hunched over his telegraph key. It was he, eavesdropping on the railroad dispatchers, who had suddenly reported the startling news that several flying machines had ascended from Fort Worth in the dark. The blushing bride Josephine’s was among them.
“This time,” Harry Frost vowed in grave tones that chilled the hard-bitten Mayhew to the bone, “I’ll give her a wedding night she will never forget.”
He had been watching the eastern sky for nearly an hour, hoping to see her machine silhouetted against first light. So far, nothing. Still dark as a coal mine. Now he was sure he heard a motor.
He turned left and called into the dark, “Hear me?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.”
He turned right and shouted again.
“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.”
“Get ready!”
He waited for a return shout, “Ready!” turned to his right, shouted again, “Get ready!” and heard, “Ready!” back.
Sound carried in the cold night air. He heard the distinctive metallic snick when, to either side of him, the machine gunners levered open their Colts’ action to chamber their first rounds.
There were three men on each gun, knee-deep in rainwater left by the evening storms: a gunner, a feeder to the gunner’s left guiding the canvas belt of cartridges, and a spotter with field glasses. Frost kept Mike Stotts standing by to run with orders if they couldn’t hear him.
The noise grew louder, the sound of a straining machine. Then Frost distinguished the clatter of not one but two motors. They must be flying very close to each other, he thought. Too close. Something was wrong. Suddenly he realized that he was hearing two poorly synchronized engines driving Steve Stevens’s biplane. Stevens was in the lead.
“Hold your fire! It’s not her. Hold your fire!”
The biplane passed over, motors loud and ragged, flying low so the driver could see the rails. Josephine would have to fly low, too, making her an easy target.
Ten minutes elapsed before Frost heard another machine. Once again, he saw no locomotive light. Definitely an aeroplane. Was it Josephine? Or was it Isaac Bell? It was coming fast. He had seconds to make up his mind. Bell usually flew behind her.
“Ready!”
“Ready, Mr. Frost.”
“Ready, Mr. Frost.”
The gunner to his left yelled excitedly, “Here she comes!”
“Wait! . . . Wait!”
“Here she comes, boys!” cried the men on his right.
“Wait!”
Suddenly Frost heard the distinctive hollow-sounding blatting exhaust of a rotary motor.
“It’s a Gnome! It’s not her. It’s a Gnome! He’s ahead of her. Hold your fire! Hold your fire! ”
He was too late. The excited gunners drowned him out with long bursts of automatic fire, feeding the ammunition belts as fast as the guns could fire. Spitting brass cartridges and empty cloth, the weapons spewed four hundred rounds a minute at the approaching machine.
ISAAC BELL LOCATED both machine guns by their muzzle flashes, two hundred yards apart to the north and south of the tracks. There was no way the gunners could see him, blinded by those flashes. But they were shooting accurately anyway, aiming at the sound of his motor, firing thunderously, stopping to listen, firing again.
Flying lead crackled as it passed close to the Eagle’s king posts.
Bell blipped the motor off, glided silently, then blipped it on again. The guns caught up and resumed firing. Heavy slugs shook struts behind him. The rudder took several hits, and he felt them kick his wheel post.
Bell turned the Eagle around and flew back up the tracks in the direction from which he had come. Facing east, back toward Fort Worth, he saw the gray glow of first light. His keen eyes detected a dot several miles distant. Josephine was coming at sixty miles at hour. He had two minutes to disable the machine guns before she ran into the clouds of lead they were shooting into the sky. But armed with a single Remington rifle, he was badly outgunned. His only hope was to sow confusion.
He blipped his motor off again, banked, and glided silently to the right. He blipped on. The south gun chattered, tracing the noise of his motor but revealing its position. Bell steered for the flashes, swooped low, and fired his rifle. He blipped off the motor and glided over the machine gun. Well past it, he blipped the Gnome again, roared around, and headed back, flying in line with the guns on a course perpendicular to the tracks.
Both guns, the closer south gun and the north gun on the far side of the tracks, opened a deadly sheet of fire. Bell swooped low over the nearer. By its muzzle flashes, he could see three men had the gun mounted on a light landing carriage, which they wheeled skillfully as he passed to rake him from behind.
Bell dropped under the stream of bullets, so low he could see flashes on the tracks. Harry Frost was firing a shotgun at the Gnome’s brightly flaming exhaust. Bell dropped almost to the ground, practically parted Frost’s hair with his skids, and fired his rifle at the north machine gunners, drawing their attention and causing them to wheel their gun and fire at him continuously. Had they held the trigger any longer, the air-cooled Colt would have burned up. As it was he could see the barrel glowing red-hot. But they stopped firing abruptly and scattered for their lives as their emplacement was hit by a burst from the south gunners, whom Bell had tricked into strafing their opposite position while trying to rake him from behind.
A second later, the south gun exploded when the last bullets from the northern emplacement they put out of action ignited their ammunition boxes.
Bell slammed the Eagle in another tight turn and fired his last shots from the Remington at the shotgun flashes. He stood little chance of hitting Frost in the dim light from his racing machine but hoped that Remington .35 slugs shrieking near Frost’s head would make the murderer dive for cover.
Frost didn’t budge.
He stood erect, firing repeatedly, until his shotgun was empty.
Then he jumped from the tracks into the creek bed and ran with astonishing agility the hundred yards to the machine gun whose gunners had fled. As Josephine flashed by low overhead, Frost spun the heavy weapon’s carriage and fired a long burst after her. Bell drove his machine straight at him. The Remington was empty. He drew his pistol and fired as fast as he could pull the trigger. Bracketed by flying lead, Harry Frost fired back until the ammunition belt, with no one to guide it into the breech, jammed.
Bell saw Josephine’s machine dip a wing. It dropped toward the ground, skimming the tracks, and Bell feared that she was wounded or her controls so badly damaged that she would slam a wing into the ground and cartwheel to oblivion. Heart in his throat, he watched with terrible anticipation that turned to astonished relief as the Celere monoplane lifted its wing, straightened up, and wobbled into the sky.
ISAAC BELL STUCK CLOSE to Josephine all the way to Abilene, where the tracks of the Abilene & Northern Railway, the Abilene & Southern, and the Santa Fe crossed the Texas & Pacific. She landed clumsily, skidding half around in front of the freight station. Bell alighted nearby.
He found her slumped over her controls, clutching her arm. A machine-gun slug had grazed her, tearing the skin and furrowing flesh. Her wedding dress was streaked with blood and engine grease. Her lips were trembling. “I nearly lost control.”
“I am so sorry. I should have stopped him.”
“I told you he’s animal sly. Nobody can stop him.”
Bell tied a handkerchief around the wound, which was still oozing blood. Small boys had come running, trailed by old men with long Civil War beards. Men and boys gaped at the yellow machines side by side in the dust.
“Run, you boys,” Bell shouted, “bring a doctor!”
Josephine straightened up but did not try to climb down from her machine. Her entire body seemed rigid with the sustained effort to keep flying. She was pale and looked utterly exhausted. Bell threw an arm around her shoulders.
“It’s all right to cry,” he said gently. “I won’t tell anybody.”
“My machine’s O.K.,” she answered, her voice small and distant. “But he ruined my wedding dress. Why am I crying? I don’t even care about this silly dress. Wait a minute!” She looked around, suddenly frantic. “Where’s Steve Stevens?”
The doctor came running with his medical bag.
“Did you see a white biplane with a big fat driver?” Josephine demanded.
“Just left, ma’am, headed for Odessa. Said he’s hoping to make El Paso in a couple of days. Now, let’s help you off this machine.”
“I need oil and gasoline.”
“You need a proper bandage, carbolic acid, and a week in bed, little lady.”
“Watch me,” said Josephine. She raised her bloody arm and opened her fingers. “I can move my hand, do you see?”
“I see that the bone is not broken,” said the doctor. “But you have had terrible shock to your system.”
Isaac Bell observed the determined set to her jaw and the sudden fierce gleam in her eye. He beckoned the boys and tossed each a five-dollar gold piece. “Rustle up oil and gasoline for Josephine’s flying machine. Gasoline and castor oil for mine. On the jump!”
“She can’t operate a flying machine in her condition,” the doctor protested.
“Patch her up!” Bell told the doctor.
“Do you seriously believe that she’s flying to El Paso in her condition?”
“No,” said Isaac Bell. “She’s flying to San Francisco.”
35
TWO DAYS LATER, Josephine circled El Paso’s business district while Isaac Bell swept field glasses across the rooftops in search of Harry Frost with a rifle. Her Celere monoplane had taken the lead on the run today from Pecos, as it had the day before from Midland to Pecos.
The ground below was seething with ten thousand El Paso Texans
who had turned out to greet the aviatrix, primed for her arrival by newspaper headlines blaring:
HERE COMES THE BRIDE!
They crammed the business district to watch from streets, city squares, windows, and sixth-story roofs. Mindful of the mobs they encountered in Fort Worth, Bell had demanded that Whiteway move the actual alighting spot to a more easily guarded rail yard beside the Rio Grande. Looking at the mad scene below, he was glad he had.
Josephine was still giving them a show when Steve Stevens’s big white biplane appeared in the east with Joe Mudd’s red Liberator laboring after it. She circled once more for the crowd, embellished the maneuver with a string of steep spiral dips that set them ooohhhing and aaahhhing, and descended to the rail yard.
Bell landed beside her.
The air racers had battled strong headwinds all day, and their support trains had already arrived. The crews were celebrating. With the state of Texas behind them now, the finish line seemed almost in sight. South, across the river, exotic Mexico shimmered in the hot sun. But it was the west that gripped their interest—the New Mexico Territory, the Arizona Territory, and finally California at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
They weren’t there yet, Bell knew, his eye captured by a series of blue mountain ranges that pointed toward the Continental Divide. To clear even the low end of the Rockies, the machines would have to climb higher than four thousand feet.
He found telegrams waiting. One lifted his spirits mightily. Archie was recovered enough to risk traveling west with Lillian on Osgood Hennessy’s special train to see the end of the race. Bell wired back that they should light a fire under the lawyers angling to free Danielle Di Vecchio from the asylum and bring her with them so she could see her father’s machine had flown across the continent while guarding the race—provided, of course, Bell thought, knocking ruefully on wood, that he didn’t smash it to pieces or get shot out of the sky by Harry Frost.