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 Eaglein 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 amp; Northern Railway, the Abilene amp; Southern, and the Santa Fe crossed the Texas amp; 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.
Less happy news was contained in a long telegram from Research:
PLATOV UNMET UNSEEN UNKNOWN,
Grady Forrer had begun, confessing his failure to turn up anything about the Russian inventor Dmitri Platov beyond the reports from Belmont Park. The head of the Van Dorn Research Department added an intriguing slant that deepened the mystery:
THERMO ENGINE DEMONSTRATED AT PARIS INTERNATIONAL AERONAUTICAL SALON BY AUSTRALIAN INVENTOR/SHEEP DROVER ROB CONNOLLY.