The Chase

  Bell loved the big machine. He had an exceptional sense of its temperament and idiosyncrasies. He gloried in its strength and simplicity, felt intoxicated by the speed produced by the big pounding engine, and drove like a demon possessed, reveling at the vast, swirling cloud of dust the Locomobile hurled in its wake.

  Bronson looked over at Bell, who wore a short leather jacket and jodhpur riding pants with boots. He wore goggles but no helmet, preferring to hear the beat of the engine. There was a look of unfathomable concentration about him. He looked relentlessly determined to beat Cromwell at his own game. Bronson had never seen anyone with such fierce, decisive resolve. He turned away and studied his map. Then he tapped Bell on the shoulder.

  “There is a fork in the road coming up. Veer left. The road is better inland than along the coast. At this rate, Salinas will come up in another hour. After that, Soledad.”

  “How’s our time?” Bell asked without taking his hands from the wheel and digging out his pocket watch.

  “Ten past eleven,” Bronson answered over the exhaust. “Without knowing how fast we’re going, I have no way of knowing how much time, if any, we’ve gained on Cromwell’s train.”

  Bell nodded in understanding. “The auto does not have a speedometer or a tachometer, but I’d guess our speed to be over ninety miles an hour.”

  Bronson had been slowly becoming attuned to the wind rushing against his face, the telegraph poles streaking past at lightning speed. But then a stretch of road became violently rough and rutted, and Bronson soon realized what it would be like inside the rattle of a maddened sidewinder. He clutched the arm of his seat in a death grip with one hand and gamely worked the fuel pump with the other.

  They hurtled over the narrow, rolling farm road and crossed into Monterey County before coming to the agricultural community of Salinas. The farmland along the sides of the road was strikingly beautiful, turning green under the spring sun. Fortunately, the main road through town was quiet, with only one or two automobiles and a few horse-drawn wagons parked along the sidewalks. People heard the booming bellow of the Locomobile’s exhaust as it crossed the city limits. They turned and looked speechlessly as the big fire red machine shot through the business section of town. They had no time to indulge their curiosity before the hard-charging machine was heading into the open country to the south.

  “What’s the next town?” asked Bell.

  Bronson consulted his map. “Soledad.”

  “How far?

  “About twenty-five miles. We’d better fill the tank there, because it’s a good two hundred miles to the next major town.” He turned and looked at the huge cylindrical brass tank mounted behind the seats. “How much does it hold?”

  “Forty-five gallons.”

  “They should have a garage in Soledad that services automobiles and farm machinery.”

  The words were no sooner out of Bronson’s mouth than the left rear tire went flat after striking a sharp rock in the road. The Locomobile fishtailed for a hundred yards before Bell brought it under control and braked it to a stop.

  “Only a matter of time,” said Bell resignedly. “One of the predicaments of road racing.”

  He was out of the automobile and shoving a jack under the rear axle within three minutes while Bronson removed one of the two spare tires on the rear of the automobile. Bell removed the wheel and replaced it inside of ten minutes. He had changed tires that gave out at breakneck speeds many times since he owned the Locomobile. Then he separated the tire from the wheel and tossed the tire to Bronson. “There’s a patching kit under your seat. Patch the hole while we drive. I’ll remount it on the wheel after we reach Salinas.”

  No sooner were they on their way again over a reasonably smooth road than a hay wagon hitched to a team of horses loomed up. The farmer, believing he was the only one for a mile around, was driving right down the center of the road, with only a few feet to spare before the weeds and brush along the edge of the dirt thoroughfare met fences surrounding fields of artichokes, chilies, mushrooms, and lettuce.

  Bell began to slow but had no choice but to pull the Locomobile half off the road and pass the hay wagon with only inches to spare, but he hadn’t been left enough room for a free-and-clear passage. He took out a good thirty feet of a frail wooden fence, luckily without causing severe damage to the car. Only the front right fender was bent and twisted, scraping the tire when it hit a bump in the road. Bell did not look back to see the farmer shaking his fist and cursing him as his horses reared and nearly turned the wagon over on its side. Nor was he happy at being inundated by the dust storm that spewed from the Locomobile’s drive wheels.

  “That’s one mad sodbuster,” said Bronson, turning in his seat and looking behind him.

  “He probably built and owns the fence we destroyed,” Bell said with a sly grin.

  Within ten miles, Soledad came into view. Named after the Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad that had been founded over a hundred years before, the town was a major railroad stop in the valley for transporting to market as quickly as possible the produce grown there. Bell quickly slowed as he entered town and soon found a garage where he could purchase gasoline for the Locomobile. While Bronson and the garage owner poured cans of fuel into the big tank, Bell wrestled with the crumpled right front fender, bending it back away from the tire. Then he took the tube Bronson had patched, inserted it back inside the tire, and remounted it on the wheel before bolting it on the rear of the Locomobile.

  “You fellas the first car in a race passing through?” the garage owner asked, clad in a pair of greasy coveralls.

  Bell laughed. “No, we’re alone.”

  The garage owner looked at the dusty and damaged automobile and shook his head. “You fellas must be in a mighty big hurry.”

  “That we are,” said Bell, pressing bills that more than covered the price of the gasoline into the garage owner’s hand.

  He stood there, scratching his head, as the Locomobile roared away and quickly became a red speck down the main street of town before traveling out into the farm country. “Them fellas must be crazy,” he mumbled. “I hope they know the bridge over Solvang Creek is out.”

  Fifteen minutes later and twenty miles down the road from Soledad, a sharp left-angled curve with a down slope came rushing toward them. A sign that stood beside the road flashed past.

  “What did it say?” asked Bell.

  “Something about a bridge, was all I caught,” replied Bronson.

  A barricade of railroad ties blocked the center of the road, and Bell could see the upper part of a bridge that looked as if it had broken apart in the middle. A crew of men were working to repair the center span while another crew were installing poles and restringing the telegraph and phone lines that had been torn away by a flash flood.

  Bell jerked his foot off the accelerator, made a hard twist of the wheel. He jammed both feet on the brake, locking the rear wheels, fishtailing the rear end across the road, and causing the Locomobile to slow into a four-wheel drift. He straightened the front of the automobile with one second to spare and they flew through the air over the edge of the slope and dove down the steep bank of a broad ravine that had once been a dry wash. They landed in an explosion of dust less than twenty feet from a wide stream two feet deep that flowed toward the sea.

  The heavy steel chassis and massive engine, driven by momentum, smacked into the water with an enormous eruption of silty brown water that burst over the Locomobile in a giant wave. The violent thump jarred Bell and Bronson in their every joint. Water gushed over the radiator and onto the hood before flooding over the men, drenching them in a deluge of liquid mud. Taking the full brunt of the surge, they felt as if they were driving through a tidal wave.

  Then the big automobile burst into clean air on the opposite shore, as it shuddered and shed itself free of the stream. Bell instantly jammed the accelerator to the floor, hoping against hope that the powerful engine would not drown and die. Miraculously, the spark plugs, mag
neto, and carburetor survived to do their job and kept the big four-cylinder combustion chambers hitting without a single miss. Like a faithful steed, the Locomobile charged up the opposite slope until it shot onto level ground again and Bell regained the road.

  With great relief after their narrow brush with disaster, Bell and Bronson pulled off their goggles and wiped them clean of the mud and silt that splattered the lenses.

  “It would have been nice if that garage guy had warned us,” said Bronson, soaked by their ordeal.

  “Maybe they’re close-lipped in these parts,” Bell joked.

  “That was where the flash flood took out the phone and telegraph lines.”

  “We’ll contact your counterpart in the Los Angeles office when we stop for gas again.”

  The road flattened out and appeared well maintained for the next ninety miles. Bell, with his ear tuned to any miss of the brawny engine’s cylinders, let the Locomobile run as fast as he dared over the dirt-and-gravel road, thankful there were no sharp turns, and especially happy the tires held without going flat.

  Finally, his luck ran out when he hit a stretch of the road that was rock infested but worn smooth by eons of rain. He slowed to save the tires, but one became embedded with a sharp stone and hissed flat within a hundred yards. One of the spares was quickly thrown on the axle and, with Bronson patching the tube once again, Bell continued his mad dash toward Los Angeles.

  San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria came and went. Then they dropped down in altitude as the road ran along the Pacific Coast. The ocean glittered blue under the sky, turning white as the breakers rolled onto the white sandy beach that was flecked with black rocks.

  Outside of Santa Barbara, they became airborne over a large hump in the road, crashing down on the other side with an impact that knocked the wind out of Bronson, who was amazed that the sturdy car held together without flying to pieces.

  They entered Santa Barbara, where they refueled, filled the radiator with water, and installed the spare tire. A quick stop was made at the railroad depot, where Bronson sent a wire to his fellow agent Bob Harrington asking him to meet them at the Los Angeles railroad terminal.

  Instead of taking the treacherous winding road called the Grapevine over Tejon Pass before plunging down into Los Angeles, Bronson directed Bell to run the Locomobile along the railroad tracks that were laid with far more gradual turns. The rough ride strained the automobile’s chassis as it rolled through the narrow pass below the 4,183-foot summit, but it held together until they reached the long slope leading down into the San Fernando Valley.

  At last, the worst was behind them. Now they were in the homestretch, and the Locomobile was pressing hard and gaining on Cromwell’s private train with every mile. According to Bronson’s time estimate, they were only fifteen minutes behind. With luck, they just might reach the Los Angeles railroad terminal ahead of the Butcher Bandit.

  Most cheering was the sight of tall buildings in the far distance. As they neared the outskirts of the city, the traffic began to build. Bronson marveled at Bell’s physical endurance. His blue eyes, hard and unblinking, never left the road. The man was born to sit behind the wheel of a fast car, Bronson thought. He looked at his watch. The hands on the dial read four-twelve. They had averaged over sixty miles an hour for the four-hundred-mile run.

  Traffic thickened the closer they came to the main part of the city and Bell began his now accustomed routine of swerving around horse-drawn wagons and buggies and automobiles. He was vastly relieved when the dirt road finally became paved with bricks. He raced in and around big red trolley cars that rode tracks down the center of the street. He was surprised by the number of automobiles he rushed past, unaware that there were over two thousand of them traveling the streets of the mushrooming city of one hundred twenty thousand.

  Bell found the thoroughfares of the City of Angels were considerably wider than those of San Francisco, and he made good time with more room to negotiate around the traffic. They passed through downtown, heads turning in awe at the speed of the red Locomobile. A police officer blew his whistle and became angered when Bell ignored it and sped on. The policeman jumped on his bicycle and took up the chase but was soon left far behind, until the automobile was completely out of sight.

  The big train depot came into view as Bell rounded a corner on two wheels. A man in a brown suit and wide-brimmed hat was standing on the curb at the entrance frantically waving his arms. Bell braked to a stop in front of Bob Harrington, the Van Dorn agent in charge of Southern California operations. At first, Harrington didn’t recognize Bronson. The man in the mud-encrusted leather coat and helmet looked like an apparition until the goggles were raised.

  “My God, Horace, I didn’t recognize you,” said the intense man with a tanned face and sharp features. At six foot five inches, Harrington towered over Bell and Bronson.

  Bronson stiffly stepped to the pavement and stretched his aching muscles. “I doubt if my own mother would know me.” He turned and pointed at Bell, still sitting exhausted behind the wheel. “Bob, this is Isaac Bell. Isaac, Bob Harrington.”

  Bell pulled off his driving glove and shook Harrington’s hand. “Good to meet you, Bob.”

  “I heard a lot about your exploits, Isaac. It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Bell wasted no more time in pleasantries “What’s the status of Cromwell’s private train? Are we in time to stop it?”

  Harrington slowly shook his head. “Sorry to have to tell you, but the regularly scheduled passenger train pulled off on a siding in Ventura and let it go through. When it came to Los Angeles, it bypassed the depot and took the express track south to San Diego. By doing that, it cut off nearly half an hour.”

  “How long ago?” asked Bell, his hopes dashed.

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “We would have beat it by ten minutes,” Bronson observed morosely.

  Bell looked at the tired Locomobile, wondering if there was enough left in her for the final dash. He knew, without looking in a mirror, that he was more exhausted than the automobile.

  Harrington studied the worn-out men. “I can have my agents in San Diego apprehend Cromwell when his special train stops at the San Diego depot.”

  “He’s too smart to get off at the depot,” said Bell. “He’ll stop the train outside of town and enter in one of his many disguises.”

  “Where do you think he’s headed?”

  “One of the local banks.”

  “Which one?” queried Harrington. “There are at least ten.”

  “The one with the most assets.”

  “You honestly believe a lone bandit will attempt robbing the San Diego Wells Fargo Bank?” Harrington asked skeptically. “It’s the most secure bank in Southern California.”

  “All the more reason he’d attempt it,” answered Bell. “Cromwell loves a challenge.”

  “I’ll telephone ahead and have my agents standing by the entrance.”

  Bell shook his head doubtfully. “He’ll spot them and call it off. Unless we can catch him in the act, we still haven’t enough evidence to convict. And your agents have no idea what he looks like, and, if they did, they’d never see through his disguise. He’s that good.”

  “We can’t stand around and let him waltz into the bank unhindered,” protested Bronson. “He’ll murder everyone inside.”

  Bell turned to Harrington. “Tell your agents to close the bank until Horace and I get there.”

  “You’re not continuing on to San Diego?” Harrington asked incredulously.

  “Yes,” Bell said simply as he wearily climbed behind the wheel of the Locomobile. “What’s the fastest way out of town to the south?”

  “Just stay on the road that runs alongside the railroad tracks. It will take you straight south to San Diego.”

  “What’s the condition?”

  “Well maintained all the way,” said Harrington. He stared doubtfully at the tired machine. “You should make good time if your automobile holds up.”
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  “She got us this far,” said Bell with a tight smile. “She’ll see us through.”

  “Tell your agents we’re on our way,” Bronson said tiredly. He looked like a man stepping up to the gallows.

  Harrington stood for a few moments watching the Locomobile roar down the road. Then he slowly shook his head and walked to the nearest telephone.

  Ten minutes later, Bell reached the outer limits of the city and aimed the eagle ornament on the big brass radiator down the open road toward San Diego. Even after the wild ride from San Francisco, Bronson still marveled at Bell’s expertise and mastery at timing the engine rpms and judging the precise moment to engage the clutch and grip the tall brass lever that meshed the unsynchronized gears.

  Bell’s weary mind was divided between his driving over the road ahead and the image of Jacob Cromwell robbing another bank and killing everyone in it. As they closed in on their destination, his nerves tightened and his blood churned with adrenaline while the faithful engine beat with the steadiness of a healthy pulse.

  33

  THE TIME SPED AWAY SWIFTLY AS THE LOCOMOBILE ate up the one hundred twenty miles between the two cities in nine minutes under two hours. The last light was glimmering over the ocean to the west when they dropped down from Mount Soledad toward the heart of the city that opened up before them like a carpet of buildings tinted gold by the final rays of the setting sun. Though the Locomobile sported huge acetylene headlamps, Bell did not wish to take the time to stop the car and light them. “How’s our gas?” Bell asked in a rasping voice, his mouth coated with dust.

  Bronson turned in his seat, unscrewed the big gas tank cap, and dipped a stick down to the bottom. He withdrew the stick and stared at the moisture at its very tip.