3.45 p.m., 24 March 1931. One thousand four hundred and eighty-three men and women sat silently in front of the Trans-America centre, 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 beckoned 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 trundling 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’ll 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 cat-calls 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 trundle 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 padded 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 head band 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 had 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 German trio. Doc let them go. He would have to make a decision on whether or not to pull Muller in within the next three miles.
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.
“If 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 foot-racing 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 round 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.
“I 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 foot-racing.
There had also been the “man against man” matches, often for massive side bets. Twenty thousand Victorians or more would crowd into dank stadiums to watch George versus Myers, Hutchens versus Gent. Or Charles Fox versus Gannon, Watkins, Shrubb or any one of a dozen other great pedestrians.
“I won my gaffer 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 vest 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.
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 away 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 towards the next day. It was a long way from Cambridge; from 20 March 1930, when it had all begun . . .
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 woollen scarf even more tightly round 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 black-outs 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 was 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 borne only upon running. Peter had no idea if Sam White were 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 groundsman 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 centre 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 smouldering wood fire, in front of which stood a tin bath. On Peter’s right was a bed, its ruptured canvas mattress leaking straw on to 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 discoloured brass belt composed of championship medals for one, three and six miles, linked by rotting, fading coloured 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 round.
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 old trainer to seek his advice. Sam was not at the track and Peter walked on to his cottage; but the building was no more than a pile of rubble. Neighbours 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.
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 had 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 weaken. 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 amongst 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, as she laboured 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 verge of the road. She turned on to 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 leant over her.
“Get up,” said a single voice.
Kate pushed herself up on to 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 sharply 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 on to 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 towards their common goal, feel him as a magnet drawing her towards 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.
An hour later Flanagan looked out of his caravan 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.”
Flanagan beckoned to the German to sit down.
“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.”
“Illegally 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 you say? – pacing her over the last miles.”
“And that’s all you claim he did?” said Flanagan.
“Yes.”
Flanagan looked at Willard.
“Got that all 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 grey head and left the caravan.
“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 caravan.
“How can I help you, Flanagan?” he asked, the sweat still visible on his forehead.
Flanagan gulped down his coffee.
“I 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 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 caravan to Doc, who ran his finger slowly down each page in turn.
The runner shook his head.
“I 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?” said Flanagan.
“I’d 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.
“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 sunburnt face. She felt the coolness of silk on her arms and realized that she was wearing a pair of pink silk pyjamas, and was covered by a thin white cotton sheet. She was in bed in Dixie’s caravan.
“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 after 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 jack-hammers.” 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 as 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 caravan, and waved.
He looked over towards her and smiled in response. Within two minutes he was seated in the small travelling 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 kit 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 morning?”
They looked round 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.
“I’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 have offered a ten-thousand-dollar prize if you can finish in the first two hundred places. Does that get to you?”
“I’ll say,” said Kate, grinning. “What place am I in?”
Flanagan looked at his clipboard.
“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!”
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 colour; but most of them cut across all these boundaries. Just as men had travelled 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 two hundred-odd miles of the Trans-America did not appear to have depleted the sexual energies of some of the competitors, which seemed to be fuelled by quite a different source from their running.
Chance, however, had led her towards Doc’s group, which, though its members had reached no formal agreements, moved about the camp as one. At the centre 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 emery paper. 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 talc the inside of his shoes.
Doc next drew out from his knapsack a long-sleeved soccer 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’ll 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.
“I 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 basket-case 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 coloured 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 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 towards 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.
“I’d 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 towards 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.