CHECKERED FLAG, by Cliff Farrell

Doc Elton had never known fear, and he had felt none upon that day when his car left the course and headed for destruction. He had felt only bitter, unreasoning anger at young Stubby Burns.

It had happened during one of the last Vanderbilt Cup races at Santa Monica. It had been Doc’s fault, and normally he would have blamed himself. But a man is not normal after nearly two hundred miles behind the wheel of one of those square-nosed, high-wheeled vehicles that were called racing cars in those days.

Doc had been nearly forty years old then, and forty is long past the deadline in the art of speed. But Doc had been an exception; still a top-notch driver. In second place, only five seconds behind the leader and with two circuits still to go, he had had his white car averaging ninety miles an hour, his heart set on winning.

He had made his mistake in attempting to pass young Stubby Burns on the Soldiers’ Home curve in Sawtelle. Stubby, at that time a wild, reckless novice, was driving his first race against big league competition. Stubby did not dream that even Doc Elton would attempt to take him on that sharp curve. Not a driver in a thousand would have attempted such a thing, and so Stubby held the center of the road. Then he hit a soft spot just as Doc, confident in his ability, perhaps careless after nearly fifteen years of taking such chances, came alongside of him.

Doc’s right wheels were in the loose dirt apron of the track when Stubby’s car slipped into him. The shock was not enough to unbalance Stubby. He strong-armed his black car out of the curve and into the safety of the wide boulevard beyond. But Doc’s white machine skittered off the road and burst through the bales of straw that had been piled there as a cushion for just such mishaps. It remained upright for a hundred feet.

Then it smashed through a picket fence fronting a little cottage. Its wheels caught and it flew up in the air, turning over and over like a toy.

Doc’s mechanician was thrown out and landed on the lawn only slightly injured. But Doc stayed with the car until it crashed into the porch of the cottage. Tough and wiry, he was still alive, but he would never drive again. In addition to other injuries, an arm was done for. A surgeon at the hospital dubiously attempted to save the arm—and he did—but never again would it be flexible enough to nurse a speeding car around a fast curve.

Doc had raved considerably during the first two days in the hospital; and Stubby Burns’ name had figured largely in his ravings. He never again mentioned Stubby after his head had cleared, but he was no longer the good-humored, smiling eyed Doc Elton that the speedways had always known. And it was not solely the fact that he was through as a driver that had changed Doc.

Perhaps it was a type of shock—crash-shock, something akin to shell-shock. But whatever the psychology of it, Doc Elton bore a grudge against Stubby Burns, unreasonable and far-fetched as that may seem.

Doc recovered, and in time was forgotten in the racing pits. It was generally understood by a few veterans who knew him that Doc was operating an automobile agency in Glendale, and that he was prospering. It was known that Doc was married and had a son about eleven years of age at the time of his Santa Monica crackup, But the name of Elton was no longer lettered on pit walls.

Motor racing evolved. Road racing was a thing of the past. The era of saucer tracks came and the pace grew faster. In Doc’s day one hundred miles an hour was about the limit. But smaller and more efficient motors, slimmer bodies and better surfaces on which to ride, gradually pushed the average up. Cars were reduced to one-man capacity for the sake of speed. On the boards, men began to turn laps at upwards of one hundred and fifty miles an hour.

About ten years later, the name of Elton reappeared on a speedway entry list. It was at the Brookside dirt track in Los Angeles that Pinkie Elton, Doc’s son, now grown to manhood, was introduced to the sport where men dared and too often died.

Pinkie bore little resemblance to his father. His mother, now dead, had given him dreamy gray eyes, a high forehead and thin, sensitive features. He had a trace of his father’s bulldog chin; but all in all, he only faintly suggested the daredevil Doc Elton of the road racing days. He was more of the studious type, though his shoulders were square and his muscles sinewy, for he had been a track star in high school and college.

Pinkie appeared lost on that first day at the track with his father. Doc, however, was in a rhapsody of excitement. He had waited weary years for Pinkie to reach maturity, years during which he had bitterly watched, through the medium of the newspapers, the rise of Stubby Burns to international fame as a speedway star.

Stubby was a veteran now. He had been at the dangerous sport for so long that he was called the old master. At the peak of his career, twice national champion, winner of the recent Indianapolis five hundred mile race, Stubby’s exploits behind the wheel were earning him a place along with Oldfield, DePalma, Milton, DePaolo and the other past and present greats of the motor world.

Once Doc had pointed to a newspaper picture of Stubby and had said to Pinkie, “There’s the fellow who’s going to eat the dust of an Elton again some day.”

Doc was a hero to his son, and Pinkie had thrilled to the lore of the speedways. But he had always listened in an impersonal way. Not until that day at Brookside did he realize the full sacrifice that Doc was demanding of him. Pinkie preferred the law as a profession, but he could not brook his father’s eager plans. And so, with a cheerful face and a leaden heart, he stood in the pits beside a new, tiny, four-cylinder racing car and listened.

“Take it easy today,” Doc cautioned. “Don’t try for speed. You know, this isn’t like driving a boulevard. This is a slow track but a dangerous one. The curves are sharp, and you can hit a fence hard enough at sixty to muss things up. Get the feel of the car and the track. Take it easy.”

“Right, dad,” said Pinkie obediently. Only the vacant grandstands stared solemnly down at Pinkie as he drove out on the track, for this was early morning and the next event at Brookside was still two weeks away.

* * * *

Pinkie followed instructions. He learned how to handle the car. Each day he and Doc were at the track, and finally Pinkie was turning the circuit at respectable speed. But Doc felt that there was something missing. Perhaps he expected too much, but Pinkie’s driving was listless, dead, mechanical. He did what he was told, and that was all. There was no fire, no spirit, in his work. Other drivers sometimes appeared for practice, and Doc noted that Pinkie avoided them when they were on the track with him. He never engaged in a friendly brush.

“How does it go, son?” Doc asked carelessly, ten days later. “Think you’d care to take a crack at real competition this week? We must sign an entry today if we’re going to drive.”

“Might as well start right away,” Pinkie said indifferently.

“That’s the spirit,” said Doc heartily. “A year here at Brookside, and you’ll be ripe for the high speed racket. Then you can take a fall out of this fellow Burns.”

“Now listen dad,” protested Pinkie. “I’m willing to drive my best in any race you want me to enter, but I’m not going to start a feud with Stubby Burns. It would be ridiculous. Burns is a great driver. He has nearly ten years’ experience on me. Besides, Burns probably didn’t intend to crack you up at Santa Monica. It was an accident.”

“Accident!” shouted Doc. “Maybe he didn’t intend to wreck me, but he crowded me! What right did a kid have crowding Doc Elton in a big race? I’ll show him that an Elton can drive his wheels off.”

That was it. Shell-shock or crash-shock or whatever one wanted to call it. On all other subjects Doc, now nearly fifty, was a normal, hard-headed business man. But he still saw red whenever the name of Stubby Burns came up.

Pinkie was a starter at Brookside the following Sunday afternoon. Now the Brookside track, while small, was not easy. It was a Class B circuit where the qualification rules and the car specifications were not as rigid as on the big time ovals. Youngsters who were anxious to graduate to the championship events were there at Brookside to prove their nerve and ability, and they always drove at peak speed. It was a testing ground for human endurance, and its examinations were too often written in blood.

“Don’t try to win,” Doc told his son as the field began to smoke up. “Just drive for experience.”

Pinkie obeyed literally—too literally. There were fourteen entries in the fifty, mile event, and Pinkie finished tenth. Four of the original starters had dropped out during the course of the race because of motor trouble and a smashup or two, and so it took no figuring to discover that when it was all over Pinkie was last.

Pinkie’s driving had been mechanically perfect. He sat the car easily and swept it around the curves calmly, his four wheels always smoothly in line. But Doc was disappointed. He had hoped that his son, in the stress of competition, would show some of the fighting spirit without which no man can become a champion in any line of endeavor.

Doc was persistent, however. For a year Pinkie drove at Brookside and other small dirt tracks in the southwest; a nerve-racking year which Pinkie endured stoically. He even began taking risks because he knew his father expected it. Finally, he began to win occasional small races, and the name of Elton seemed on its way again to ascendancy in the speed world.

Then, on Pinkie’s birthday, Doc led him into a private workshop in the Elton motor establishment in Glendale. A new racing car sat resplendently on the floor, and even Pinkie was enthused by the sight of it. The machine was one of the latest products from the shop of Miller, in Los Angeles. Powered with a ninety-one inch motor, it was as compact as a bullet and as graceful as an arrow. Squatting close to the ground, its lines concealed its true bulk and sturdiness. That car had cost Doc nearly twenty thousand dollars.

“There she is, son,” said Doc proudly. “A front drive straight eight. You can toss that four cylinder job on the scrap heap now. You’re ready for a crack at real racing. I’m going to enter you at Ocean City in the three hundred mile roll next month.”

“Whew,” gasped Pinkie inwardly quailing at the thought, well knowing what speed they were making on the big mile and a half saucer track at Ocean City. “Do you think I can do it?”

“Think you can do it!” echoed Doc scornfully. “An Elton can drive on any track with the best of them. Stubby Burns will be riding against you.——Beat him, son! Beat him and show him what an Elton can do. You’re ready. This car should be as fast as any in the world. It’s equipped with everything to make it so. It’s up to you.”

* * * *

Stubby Burns was at Ocean City on the first afternoon that Doc and Pinkie appeared there for practice. The race was two weeks away; but the score of drivers entered were wasting no time tuning for the event, for it was a championship race and it carried one of the biggest purses of the year. In addition, every man knew that it was to be a blistering speed test, for this bowl was so scientifically built with sweeping, steeply banked curves and sloping stretches that it was in reality a straightaway. The only limit to velocity was the ability of the motor and the nerve of the pilot.

Stubby did not recognize Doc at first, but he soon learned that the car was entered under the name of Elton and he realized then that Doc, in the person of his son, was back on the track. And so Stubby walked casually down to the pit that had been assigned the Elton car. Doc saw him coming and began glowering.

“Hello, Doc,” said Stubby evenly, extending his hand. Both were thinking of that terrific moment at Santa Monica ten years before.

“You crowded me off the road and into a hospital once, Burns,” Doc snapped, ignoring the hand. “You put me off the track for keeps. But another Elton is here to start in where I left off. You’re going to eat splinters from now on.”

“I wish you luck, kid,” said Stubby, flushing and turning to Pinkie. And he said it sincerely. “If there’s anything I can do to help you, let me know.”

“The only thing we want you to do is to get out of this pit,” yelled Doc, blind with years of pent up fury. “We’ll do our talking on the track. And don’t try to crowd us either.”

Stubby retreated to his own pit. He waited until Pinkie was ready to drive out on the track, then squeezed into his own car, a marvelous red machine that had carried him to victory in half a dozen fiercely fought races. He drove to the backstretch and stopped on the apron. Pinkie appeared a moment later, driving slowly in low gear to warm the motor. Stubby waved an arm and Pinkie stopped alongside.

“What’s it to be, kid,” the veteran asked. “Peace or war?”

“I’d be a fool to declare war on you,” Pinkie said honestly. “Don’t take to heart what the Old Man says. He doesn’t really mean it.”

“I’m not afraid of anybody on the sidelines,” Stubby smiled. “My worries are on the track.”

“I’m only a greenhorn,” said Pinkie. “The Old Man knows nothing about saucer track driving. If you can give me a few hints, I’ll be grateful.”

“Follow me,” Stubby invited. “We’ll turn about a dozen laps at slow speed. Then when I wave my elbows, be ready to give it the gun. Keep your arms in. Remember that the banked curves will help you negotiate them, so be careful and don’t oversteer or you’ll go into a spin.”

Pinkie fell in behind the red car. Stubby drove at about ninety miles an hour, a snail-like pace for this track, until he felt sure that the novice had got the feel of his car. Then he gave the signal and gradually began to open up.

Pinkie was an expert at following instructions. He hung a dozen feet behind the pointed tail of Stubby’s car, matching notch for notch the throttle increase. The speed reached two miles a minute, and Stubby looked back to study his pupil’s work. Pinkie grinned, and Stubby turned back to his task. They turned the final lap at better than one hundred and thirty, and Pinkie handled his machine capably. It was a valuable session, for Stubby had taught the youngster the proper way to ride these sloping curves”

“You’ll do,” Stubby said as they drifted to the pits.

But Doc Elton was far from pleased, and Pinkie recognized the storm signals as he came to a stop.

“Why didn’t you pass that skunk?” Doc growled.

“I didn’t have the ability,” Pinkie said truthfully.

“He hasn’t the guts,” Doc told himself later, voicing for the first time the fear that had been growing within him ever since that first day at Brookside when Pinkie had finished last. Doc was beginning to feel the fierce pangs of failure. He had produced a mechanically perfect racing driver, but one who was only a robot. Pinkie had no spirit, no will to win, and worse than that, he had accepted help from the very man upon whom Doc had sworn vengeance.

Pinkie practiced doggedly and faithfully, finally qualifying for the race by turning a lap at one hundred and thirty-six miles an hour. That placed him fifteenth in the list of twenty starters.

Stubby Burns had qualified at one hundred and forty-six miles and hour, but that was only good enough to give him the pole in the second row, as the cars lined up two by two. Pinkie, nervous and moody, and at the same time depressed and unmoved by the pre-race ceremonies and unresponsive to the crowd that packed the grandstands, sat pallid in his car, awaiting the final bomb.

Stubby grinned encouragingly back at him as the field smoked up and the pole car led the way slowly along the apron. It was to be a massed flying start, with three laps to get the race started.

Pinkie was dazed by the magnitude of the task. He flinched at the thought of what was to come, for he rode in the middle of a stream of thunderbolts that were picking up speed gradually in preparation for launching themselves into fierce competition.

On the second preliminary swing around the bowl, the pace reached one hundred miles an hour; and the cars, riding in pairs, were swinging higher up on the saucer. As they entered the third and final lap, the speed topped two miles a minute, and was still climbing steadily.

Pinkie faltered in the backstretch. Every other driver was tensed for the jump-off, but Pinkie lifted his foot. His white car lost momentum and fell back among the two pairs of machines following him. Those four pilots were forced to reach for brakes to avoid a general crackup, and the result was that the field was thrown into such confusion that the green starting flag did not fall.

It required two laps for the cars to realign themselves, and the drivers’ taut nerves were twitching as a result of the false start. They thundered down on the green flag again. This time Pinkie did not falter. He had steeled himself. But Stubby Burns had fouled a spark plug during all the jockeying; and now he fell back, with one barrel missing, as the stream of cars poured across the starting line.

Pinkie swerved past Stubby, only vaguely realizing it; and before they had reached the backstretch, Stubby had fallen to the tail of the squirming mass of machines. But the plug was clearing now, and as the leaders completed the first lap, clipping along at one hundred and forty miles an hour, Stubby began to pick up his lost ground.

Pinkie was in fourteenth position, and content to remain there. But two laps later Stubby bore down on him, determined to work his way back to the head of the procession. Stubby rushed alongside Pinkie on the north turn, though Pinkie did not know that it was Stubby. He was too busy holding his humming bit of machinery between those two white fences that spun dizzily past. He merely sensed the shadow at his side.

Pinkie had been told by Doc to hold his position for the first hundred miles and then to begin to drive. He now attempted to follow instructions and he opened the throttle a fraction. His white car picked up more momentum. But Stubby was also moving faster with every turn of his wheels, and the red car and the white car sailed around the curve side by side.

Then Pinkie realized who was beside him. Furthermore, Stubby had the advantage of position, being in the top lane, where higher speed was feasible. In a panic over his temerity, Pinkie eased up. His car lost headway, and at that fateful moment the right front wheel struck the end of a board that had been loosened by the pounding of the cars.

The white car swerved out of line. Pinkie, accustomed to the dirt, wrenched the wheel viciously to the left to correct the skid. That finished what the loose board had started. Pinkie had oversteered, and the rear end whipped around.

The car began its spin as it entered the homestretch. Its momentum carried it, spinning end for end, down into the pits flanking the starting line and it struck the concrete retaining wall. Doc Elton, standing there a hundred feet away, gripping his black briar pipe between his teeth, felt cold and dizzy and too weak to move. The wall deflected the berserk car, and it shot back towards the board deck. But its wheel caught and it turned over. It rolled twice and then came to a stop, one wheel still intact and spinning feebly above the wreckage.

Pinkie had only a cracked rib. Doc Elton thought of nothing else but his son’s welfare, until it was definitely established two hours later that he was unhurt. Then Doc gave way to his emotions in the field hospital.

“Burns wrecked you, son!” he swore solemnly. “He did it purposely. It may have been an accident at Santa Monica, but not here today.— He’ll never do it again and live. And he’ll never win another race in which you are a starter. I’ll see to that.”

“But dad,” Pinkie exclaimed horrified by Doc’s outburst. “It was an accident. My own fault. I oversteered.”

“Listen,” said Doc, ignoring Pinkie. The mechanical voice of a loud speaker on the public address system was just announcing the fact that Stubby Burns had taken the lead with only ten miles to go. He was a certain winner. “There’s your answer. Burns knew you were a menace to him. So he eliminated you early in the race.”

Pinkie gave up in despair. Crash-shock. That was the answer. Doc was still steering the blind side of the curve.

* * * *

During the next few weeks, Doc continued to rave and Pinkie to laugh it off. Doc’s birthday was approaching, and Pinkie made a tobacco pipe from wrecked parts of the white car. He cut the bowl from the tough wood of the smashed steering wheel, and reamed out a stem from an aluminum conrod.

The pipe was a resplendent affair, its stem glistening from the polish Pinkie had given it. When he presented it to Doc, his father regarded the memento dubiously. But he went so far as actually to smoke it, laying away his seasoned briar with regrets. It was a sacrifice that he would have made only for Pinkie, for Doc and the briar had been inseparable companions for years.

* * * *

Six weeks later, Doc carried the aluminum pipe to Coltonia for the two hundred mile race. The white car had been repaired and rebuilt. It had lost none of its speed. And Pinkie seemed unaffected by his crash. He drove in the same old mechanical, efficient way at Coltonia, practicing faithfully and laboriously. He displayed neither brilliancy nor inaptitude. He was merely another driver who would clutter up the track while others scintillated and won the plaudits and the prizes. He was still a robot.

Doc began to abandon hope. To relieve his mind, he continued his bitter attacks on Stubby Burns. It was a habit with him now. He blamed the innocent Stubby for every mishap or minor irritation. Pinkie grew so accustomed to this quirk in his father’s character that he no longer thought anything of it. Meanwhile, Stubby pursued his normal course of preparing to win the Coltonia.

On the evening before the race, Pinkie found something to worry about. He dropped into Doc’s room at the hotel for their usual chat before retiring and found the old driver sitting at a table, busily greasing and cleaning a revolver. The weapon was a cheap, nickel-plated thirty-two of a popular make, and Doc had polished its barrel to a glistening sheen.

“I found it back of the radiator over there,” Doc said carelessly in explanation. “Somebody hid or dropped it there. It was loaded but rusty. Thought I’d tune it up just to do something.”

“Better give it to the management,” Pinkie suggested.

“I may take it to the track tomorrow and potshoot the tires of any wild guys who try to pass you,” Doc laughed. “A bullet can beat the fastest speed bug that ever lived.”

Pinkie was thinking of some of the threats Doc had made against Stubby Burns. Crash-shock. Just how far could its evil work go? He did not sleep that night. He was still thinking of the gun as they towed the white car to the track at noon the next day. Doc seemed nervous, but Pinkie could detect no suspicious bulges in Doc’s pockets and so his mind rested easier.

Pinkie had qualified far back in the list as usual; and as the twenty machines seared the stretch under the green flag, he settled down to his normal task of driving securely and conservatively. Stubby Burns, who had the pole, booted his red mount into the lead on the first curve, opened up a hundred yard gap over his nearest competitor in the first lap, and continued adding to his advantage as the race settled down to a fierce speed duel.

The Coltonia bowl was considerably slower than the Ocean City layout. Older, and built with less regard for drivers’ comfort, its turns were pitched so steeply and the approaches were sharp and hazardous. Its mile and a quarter length was packed with perils.

Pinkie drove with his old mechanical perfection. He even found himself beginning to enjoy this race. The constant vigilance, the extreme delicacy necessary in handling the car on this treacherous surface, struck a responsive chord. Some of Doc Elton’s old spirit glowed within him. Its flame was feeble at first, however, and Pinkie rode on, content to remain back in the field.

Stubby, at fifty miles, had rolled up an advantage of a mile over Pinkie, who was now eighth in place. The entire field was turning the bowl at an average above the old track record, because of Stubby’s fierce leadership. Tommy Mandot, an experienced pilot as skillful and as daring as Stubby himself, was in second place only a hundred yards back of the leader. Mandot was riding Stubby fast into the turns, awaiting a chance to grab the lead should Stubby relax or be guilty of a driving error.

But Stubby did not relax and neither did he make a mistake. He had a heavy foot clamped on the throttle and he never eased off. He held Mandot grimly in second place. Notch by notch the average advanced, for the roaring motors seemed to wind up to greater power as they droned ever onward. Over the streaming oval gathered a pall of blue castor oil smoke, through which flickered darting tongues of flame from twenty screaming exhausts.

* * * *

Pinkie, to his father’s amazement, was now more than holding his own. The leaders no longer gained on him. He clung determinedly to his position a mile behind Stubby. Now and then he mowed down an opposing car, sweeping past surely and expertly. At one hundred miles he was in fourth place. His driving was positive, almost brilliant.

Pinkie himself did not realize that he had pushed so far up in the list. He did not know why he was driving so swiftly. But somewhere back in his head something urged him to go on, to turn his wheels over ever faster. Perhaps he was subconsciously thinking of that gun he had seen in Doc’s possession the evening before. Perhaps it was instinct. But anyway he was slamming his slim, white car over the boards faster than he had believed it possible for him to drive.

Jimmy Dance, in a red Comet Special was his next victim. Pinkie jockeyed past Dance on the treacherous south curve, thereby assuming third place. Only Stubby and Mandot were ahead of him now.

Pinkie’s speed was beginning to cut into their advantage also, and the pit crews were awakening. Blackboards flashed signals to both Stubby and Mandot. White arrows, pointing to the number of Pinkie’s car, informed the two veterans that a challenger was coming up. And Stubby and Mandot both bore down heavier on the gas.

Pinkie gained but little now. He was still half a mile behind, and the average was five miles an hour faster than was safe on this perilous course.

The velocity began to take its toll at one hundred and twenty miles. A green car, bearing an English pilot, came a cropper on the north turn, just as Pinkie was about to lap it. It swerved into the upper fence as its pilot momentarily swayed it off balance, ripping off a hundred feet of heavy steel guard railing as it did so. Then the remains of the machine tumbled down the track and onto the apron.

Pinkie dodged the wreckage by threading through it at one hundred and thirty miles an hour. He caught a glimpse of the Englishman’s limp form lying down on the apron among the debris. Then he was past, his lips compressed, his eyes hard, and sorrow in his heart. He did not slow down. Neither did any of the others. It was part of the game, the sacrifice that any of them might be called upon to make at any time.

At one hundred and fifty miles, the field was thinned down by wrecks and motor trouble to an even dozen cars. Stubby still blistered the boards in the lead, with Mandot now half the length of the stretch behind him. Pinkie had moved up on Mandot and was desperately hanging to the tow from the veteran’s car, trying to nurse enough speed from his humming four wheels to go past.

Pinkie could do no more. He believed he had reached the limit of his speed. On the turns now his car was almost out of control. He could hear the tortured tires squealing shrill protest above the song of the motor on each dizzy spin around a curve, He could feel the sickening sway of the machine as it leaned on its outside wheels, and he knew that the rubber was growing hot and thin under such punishment.

“But they’re no better off,” he told himself, revelling in this newfound thrill. He was being hypnotized by the lure of speed.

* * * *

Ten miles more were unreeled, and Stubby still held sway, using sheer, brutal speed to stave off every challenger. Pinkie had been so busy with his perilous task that he had ignored his pit throughout the race. He knew he was in third place, and vaguely he realized that the event was nearing its finish. But beyond that he had not glanced at a blackboard flash.

Now he looked down into his pit, a sudden thought coming to him. Doc Elton was standing there, leaning tensely on the front pit wall and there was something in his hand—something from which Pinkie caught the reflected, silvery gleam of the waning sun. It was a brief view as Pinkie flashed by, but it registered vividly on his mind. For Doc seemed to be holding that object so that none of the men in the pit with him could see it. He had his left arm carelessly draped around the right hand that held it.

‘The gun! The gun!” Pinkie moaned. “He’s gunning for Stubby.”

Doc had sworn that Stubby would never defeat his son again in a race, and now he evidently was preparing to make good his threat.

Then Pinkie fought off the nausea that had momentarily gripped him and bent lower over the wheel. He began to drive as no man ever had driven that track before. He knew that he must beat Stubby Burns. It was the only way to save Stubby from the madness of Doc’s plan—and the only way to save Doc, too.

Pinkie passed Mandot on the next lap, pushing by at the most dangerous apex of the rough south curve. It was fierce, reckless, death-defying velocity, a pace that seemed sure to carry the white car into the outside rail that it was grazing. But Pinkie held his wheels in line with superb control.

Stubby was nearly an eighth of a mile ahead. There were less than forty miles, less than twenty minutes of driving, to go. Stubby glanced back and recognized the oncoming menace. He still had a notch or two of both power and nerve, and he opened up with both. Pinkie now gained so slowly that it seemed hopeless.

Doc watched his son’s epic battle for a few laps. Then he could stand it no more, for Pinkie’s car was swinging wildly on the curves now, grazing the fence and threatening to go entirely out of control on every recovery in the stretches.

“Slow him down,” he snarled to Bing Morgan, the pit captain. “He’s going to break up at that speed. Slow him down, quick, before something awful happens!”

Bing had the blackboard ready, and now he held it aloft as Pinkie moaned by on his next lap. It carried only the easily read word ‘SLOW’ in big letters; but Doc groaned, for Pinkie had not even glanced into the pit. He did not see the command. So terrific was his velocity that he did not dare glance away from that dizzy, spinning track for even a fraction of a second.

Two more laps went by, and it was evident that Pinkie was beginning to eat into the gulf that separated him from the red-hot exhaust of Stubby’s car.

Ten miles more, and Pinkie was only a hundred yards behind. Then Doc Elton suddenly screeched hoarsely as the white car darted past through the blue fog. A slapping sound accompanied the crescendo roar of the motor, and Doc caught a glimpse of a blurred object whirling around the right front wheel of Pinkie’s car.

“He’s throwing a tread,” Doc shouted. “Watch out, son! Watch out! Slow down before that rubber blows.” But Pinkie, of course, could not hear mere words, and so the blackboard with its frantic messages was again called into play. Still Pinkie did not see them!

Pinkie had felt the car lurch as the tread on the tire began to strip away from the casing. The tread had worn through in one section, and the heat from friction was melting it away from its seat. The revolving wheel completed the job on the back stretch. With a final slap and lurch of the car, the tread was stripped clear of the casing and hurled two hundred feet in the air.

* * * *

The tire was now down to the cords. Pinkie knew the peril in which he rode. That tire was ready to blow. It could not stand up long under the terrific punishment it was receiving, and nine times out of ten a flat front at one hundred and thirty miles an hour would turn a car somersaulting.

But Pinkie held his foot down. He was pale and shaken, but he ignored that thin, white streak that spun on the right wheel. He did not even dare look at it.

“I’ve gotta beat Stubby,” he told himself over and over. “I’ve gotta.—Please don’t blow now! Oh, God, how much longer? If I only knew. It must be almost over.—I’ve gotta beat Stubby!”

Doc Elton grew faint when he realized that Pinkie was continuing to drive on the weak tire.

“I drove him to it,” he told himself, trembling as he followed the streaking course of the white bullet around and around the bowl, his tired old eyes dark with misery. He had stuffed the gleaming object into the pocket of his coat where it rested, forgotten.

Pinkie still gained slowly but surely. With two laps to go, he was only three lengths behind Stubby, and his face was being peppered with fine splinters thrown from the track like darts by the wheels of the leading car. They were knocking off the miles now with throttles to the floor. Neither eased off on the curves. They were riding wide open.

On the next to the last lap, Pinkie chopped another length from Stubby’s advantage. Like phantoms, they bulleted down the homestretch in the late afternoon haze. Other cars were still on the track, battling for positions, but they were merely subsidiary characters to the two leading actors who were fighting in this dramatic duel for supremacy.

The blue flag denoting the last lap snapped before the two pilots’ eyes, and then they were disappearing down the stretch on their final whirl around the bowl.

Pinkie knew that he could do no more in the way of speed. The motor on the white car was revving at top capacity, but top speed was not enough, so evenly were they matched.

Ordinarily, it is the unwritten custom to pass an overtaken car on the outside. But Stubby’s speed was so great that he could not hold his car low, and Pinkie knew that his only chance was to cut down and pass beneath, as Stubby drifted high on the curves.

“Will that tire stand it?” Pinkie asked himself, even as he started the maneuver. He swung high on the takeoff from the stretch, and cut far down below the lower white guideline on the steeply banked south turn. At the same time Stubby drifted into the upper lane.

The tire did hold that time, and Pinkie emerged into the backstretch with Stubby only a wheel’s width in the lead. They ate up that straightaway in a gulp, so beautiful in flight, side by side, that few in the grandstands realized the terrible peril in which they rode. Stubby, too, could now see the menace of that thin tire with its ever widening streak of white, for Pinkie’s right front wheel hummed so close to Stubby’s elbow that he could have reached out and touched it.

Then the last curve. Pinkie knew, now that he was on the inside, that he must stay there. The few feet advantage in distance that he would gain by the curvature of the track would win for him. The question was whether he could hold his machine there. It would attempt to drift high because of centrifugal force and because he did not have the advantage of entering this turn high and cutting low, as he had done before. If he wrestled with the wheel to hold the car down, it probably would scrape the last remaining protection from that thin tire.

But nevertheless he did hold it in the lower lane, manhandling the machine out of its tendency to slide up the track. He could hear his tires squealing and he smelt the pungent odor of burned rubber. But Pinkie’s white car emerged into the last stretch half a length in the lead—and held it as the two machines flashed down upon the checkered flag. Pinkie held his foot down, but he was shrinking. He sensed what was coming. Intuition told him that the tortured front tire was finally going. Now! Now! Now! The checkered flag floated nearer, seeming to approach with the leaden slowness of a nightmare.

Then the white finish line gleamed beneath Pinkie’s wheels a hundredth of a second ahead of Stubby’s. He had won!

A pent up cheer rolled from the grandstand, but it ceased suddenly as though some titanic hand had closed the stops on a great pipe organ. For a pistol-like report sounded from the finish line just as Pinkie’s victorious wheels crossed it. The white car continued its course for a hundred feet, then the right front could be seen spinning in a blur. It had blown.

Pinkie wrestled grimly with the wheel to hold it up. But no human hands could have prevented this crackup. Stubby swerved high out of the way as the white car whirled around and then shot down towards the pits, skidding backwards at more than a hundred miles an hour.

By a freak of chance, it shot directly at its own pit. Doc Elton stood there grimly awaiting it, hoping that it would take him with it when it struck; but Bing Morgan picked him up and tossed him out of its path in time to save his life.

The machine cut through the concrete wall as though the obstruction had been made of cheese. Then it reared up for a terrific moment on its crushed rear wheels, and sailed over the pit to land on the ambulance drive. For a few minutes dust and smoke obscured the scene as the wreckage caught fire. Then Doc Elton emerged from the fog, bearing Pinkie’s limp form.

“He’s dead and I did it!” Doc was crying. But Pinkie was not dead. The gas tank, nearly emptied, had acted as a cushion, and aside from bruises he was all right. To prove it he sat up.

“Hello, dad,” he said weakly. “I beat Stubby after all.”

Doc had learned his lesson. He wanted to get down on his knees and apologize to his son—and apologize to Stubby Burns, too. For thoughts of vengeance had forever been erased from his mind during those trying moments when he felt that he had sent Pinkie to his death. To cover his emotion, he mechanically reached in his pocket and produced his pipe. It was the one Pinkie had given him on his birthday. As Doc held it by its bowl, its gleaming aluminum stem jutted out like the barrel of a gun. Pinkie stared at it for a moment.

“Dad,” he asked suddenly. “What did you do with that gun?”

“Why, I gave it to the clerk at the hotel like you suggested,” said Doc in surprise, “But now let’s go home to Los Angeles and quit this crazy racket. It’s too dangerous.”

“Nix,” said Pinkie. “I really learned to drive today. It’s great. I’m in this business to stay. I beat Stubby today, and I’ll do it plenty times more.”

“Crash-shock,” said Doc sadly. But he was proud of his son now.