Page 29 (1/2)

“I don’t bring friends to gunfights”

Bell leaped behind the steering wheel and sent the Gray Wolf flying up the buggy track in a cloud of dust

“That’smy race car!”

“I just bought it!” he fired over his shoulder “Send the bill to Van Dorn” Although, strictly speaking, he thought with a last gried by freight wagons, once Van Dorn’s expense sheets were subhter’s Gray Wolf twice

The look over his shoulder revealed that he was trailing a dust cloud as tall and dark as a loco h alert

Bell twisted the steering wheel The Wolf sprang off the buggy track, up the railroad eain to force the tires over the nearest rail Straddling it, the Wolf pounded on the crossties and ballast It was a bone-jarring ride, though the banging and bouncing was far more predictable than the ruts in the road And unless he punctured a tire on a loose spike, his chances of keeping the car intact at such speed were better than on rocks and ruts He glanced back, confir on the rail bed was he was no longer trailing a dust cloud like a flag

He raced northward on the line for a quarter of an hour

Suddenly, he saw a colu upward into the hard-blue sky The train itself was invisible, hidden around a bend in the track that appeared to pass through a wooded valley between two hills It wasthe smoke He instantly steered off the track, down the e the car around in the thin cover, he watched the smoke draw nearer

The wet huffing of the locorew audible over the insistent rusound, louder and louder Then the big black engine rounded the bend, spewing sondolas and boxcars Lightly burdened and rolling easily on the slope of a downgrade, the train was ht

Bell counted fifty cars, scrutinizing each The flatbeds looked empty He could not tell about a couple of cattle cars Most of the boxcars had open doors He saw no one peering out The last car was a faded red caboose with a ed cupola on the roof

The second the caboose passed by, Bell gunned the Wolf’s ravel eht-side tires over the nearest rail and opened the throttle The Wolf tore after the train, bouncing hard on its ties At nearly forty miles an hour, it bucked violently and swayed froainst steel, as the tires slaainst the rails Bell halved the distance between hiain, until he was only ten feet behind the train Now he saw that he could not juside the train He slewed the car back over the rail and steered on the edge of the eraph poles

He had to pull alongside the caboose, grab one of its side ladders, and jump before the race car lost speed and fell back He overtook the train, steered alongside it A car length ahead, he saw a telegraph pole that was set closer than the others to the rail There was no room to squeeze between it and the train

10

BELL GUNNED THE ENGINE, SEIZED THE CABOOSE’S LADDER IN his right hand, and jumped

His fingers slipped on the cold steel rung He heard the Packard Wolf crash into the telegraph pole behind hi down the eth to avoid the same fate But his arm felt as if it had been ripped out of his shoulder The pain tore down his arm like fire Hard as he tried to hold on, he could not stop his fingers fro open