Since the flesh-and-blood elephants were ready at once, while the Iron Elephant had to build up steam, Trevithick wanted Preen Chand not to start until the engine could move. This the elephant driver indignantly refused, on the grounds that the start-up delay was an inherent part of the mechanical device's function. Public opinion in Spring field backed him, and Trevithick gave way.
But Preen Chand had to yield in turn on the load the Iron Elephant would have to haul. He wanted the weight of the waggons added on to that of the engine and coal-waggon.
Trevithick, though, neatly turned the tables on him, pointing out that the Iron Elephant natural y got lighter as it traveled and consumed its fuel. The coal, he said, should count as part of its initial burden. He won his point.
Most of Springfield was there to see the race begin. The Iron Elephant was on the regular westbound track; Caesar and Hannibal took the track usually reserved for eastbound trains. Trevithick doffed his dapper cap to Preen Ghand.
The elephant driver returned a curt nod. Trevithick was not a bad sort.
If anything, that made matters worse.
The mayor of Springfield cried, "Are all you gentlemen ready?" He held a pistol in the air. It would have taken more pul than a steam engine or a couple of hairy elephants put out to keep His Honor away.
Hearing no objections, he fired the starting gun. Caesar's ears flapped at the report. "Mal -mall!" Preen Chand shouted. Behind him, he heard Paul Tilak give Hannibal the same command, and emphasize it with a whack of the elephant goad.
The hairy elephants surged forward as far as their harness would al ow.
Then, grunting with effort, they lowered their heads, dug in their big round feet, and pulled for al they were worth. Fifty tons of dead weight was a lot \ even for such powerful beasts to overcome.
From the other track, Preen Chand heard the clatter of coal being shoveled into the Iron Elephant's firebox. He did not look over. He knew his train would get rol ing first, and inoended to wring every inch out of his advantage.
"Mall-mal !" he shouted again.
The spectators started to slide out of his field of vision.
"We're moving!"" he and Tilak shouted in the same breath.
"Mall-mal !" In his urgency, Preen Chand used the anhus on Caesar.
The elephant shook his head reproachfully.
Each step Caesar and Hannibal took came more easily than the one before.
Horses paral eled the twaek, as riders came along to watch the race.
Preen Chand kin d back over his shoulder. The Iron Elephant stil had not moved "We may do this yet" he called to Paul Tilak. He hoped so. He had bet as many big silver denaires as he could afford, and perhaps a few more, on the great animal straining beneath him.
"We shall see," was all Tilak said. As far as Preen Chand knew, he had not made any bets for the elephants. Hie had - not made any against them, either. Had he done so, Preen Chand would have kicked him off Hannibal even if it meant putting an unschooled oxherd aboard the beast.
He had already filed one brakeman, he wanted no one with him who had a stake in losing.
Buildings hid the Iron Elephant as Caesar and Hannibal pul ed their train round a curve. They had made a good quarter of a mile and were approaching the outskirts of town when Tilak said, "The machine is coming after us."
Preen Chand looked back again. Sure enough, a plume of steam and smoke was rising above the train station. The elephant driver grunoed, sounding very much like Caesar. "Whatever Trevithick does, we are stil faster, so long as we are moving. What worries me is that he will go al night."
"Do you want us to try that?" Tilak asked.
"No," Preen Chand said regretfully; he had thought long and hard about it. "If we do, Caesar and Hannibal will be worth nothing tomorrow. Even as is, I am not sure they will be able to match today's pace. And I am so afraid they will have to. If Trevithick's engine works as he hopes, we will have to catch him from behind."
Soon they were out among farms once more. Cows and sheep stared incuriously as the hairy elephants tramped past. Rifle-toting farmers guarded their stock. Even so close to Springfield, sims were a constant nuisance. They might not have the brains of humans, but they were too clever to trap.
Preen Chand decided he was going to get a stiff neck if he kept turning around to look back, but he could not help it. He had to see the Iron Elephant in action. Here it came, with its train behind it.
He put a spyglass to his eye for a better view.
He thought it even uglier moving than stationary. Shafts connected to its pistons drove small gears at either side of the back of the engine.
Those, in turn, meshed with larger gears in front of them, and the larger gears joined with the ones on the outside of the engine's four wheels. Smoke belched from the stack as the contraption crawled along.
Even from close to half a mile away, Preen Chand could hear it chug and wheeze and rattle. It reminded him more of a flatulent iron cockroach than an elephant.
When he said that out loud, Tilak chuckled, remarking, "The farm animals would agree with you, it seems."
Preen Chand had been too busy studying the Iron Elephant to pay atoention to them. A quick glance showed his fellow driver to be right.
The livestock had reacted to their own train as they would have toward a couple of mules hauling a waggon past, which is to say they did not react at all.
The noisy, smoky, stinking steam engine was something else again.
Animals' ears went up in surprise, then back in alarm. Terrified flocks pounded across the fields, farmers trying without much luck to halt them and now and then pausing to shake their fists at the Iron Elephant.
"I never thought of that," Preen Chand exclaimed. "How can these machines ever accomplish anything, if sheep and cattle and horses will not go near them?"
"Trevithick has come this far," Paul Tilak pointed out, which made Preen Chand give him a dirty look.
The sun climbed the sky. One by one, the townsfolk who had ridden out to watch the race began turning back for Springfield. It was not the sort of event to be easily watched.
Neither contestant moved very fast, and they were drawing steadily farther apart. The only drama lay in who would finish first, but the answer to that was stil more than a day away.
This time Tilak was the one who looked back. What he saw raised even his unsanguine spirits. "They have broken down!" he shouted.
Preen Chand slapped the spyglass to his eye. Sure enough, the Iron Elephant was barely limping along. Less smoke poured from the stack, and what there was had changed color.
The brakemen raised a cheer. "Come on, Caesar!"
"Go, Hannibal, gal"
"Run that hunk of tin back to the blacksmith's shop where it belongs!" But Preen Chand kept watching. As he had been certain, Richard Trevithick was rot a man to yield tamely to misfortune. The engine handler worked furiously on his machine. Once he leaped away; Preen Chand saw one of his henchmen rush up to help him bandage his hand. Together they plunged back to their repairs. After a while, the Iron Elephant picked up speed again.
All the same, Caesar and Hannibal gained on the steam engine with every soep they took. They were pul ing magnificently now, their heads down, their double-curved tusks, bigger by far than those of the Indian elephants Preen Chand's grandfather had fondly remembered, almost dragging the ground.
A small stream ran not far from the tracks. "They should water themselves," Tilak said.
Preen Chand haoedto stop for any reason, but knew his friend was right.
He raised a signal flag to warn the brakemen to stop, cal ed, "Choro!"
to Caesar. Tilak echoed him. The brakes squealed as they halted. The two elephant drivers unharnessed their beasts and rode them over to the creek. "I'd like to see Trevithick do this when his boiler runs dry,"