The One (Balmer)

by Edwin Balmer

 

THE ONE

By Edwin Balmer

Illustrated by George Wright

DUST-dimmed and fume-spuming, car No. 8 gatling gunned by on its sixteenth lap. Two more than half of the twenty-eight long, nine-mile triangles for the continental road race trophy were finished for three cars. Five others of the fourteen which started still were running; but engine trouble, tires, bad driving, lack of nerve, and a few accidents had put them back. Three only were running on the sixteenth round, of which ricocheting, tiger-striped No. 8 now was running third. But big "Happy" Hinman, as the world already had been told by the telegraph senders sputtering before us in the grand stand, was driving the race of his life; he was closing up on the leaders—and the probability that each time he passed us would be the last was greater with every lap.

"Come on! Come on! Go on! Go-o-on!"

"He's safe! He's coming again! He's all right! I can still see him—sa-afe!"

The alert, brown-haired girl, flushed and with blue eyes burning in triumph, was on her feet in her place in the row ahead of me and three seats to the right. The dark-haired, quiet girl, with pale cheeks glowing only in a bright, rose-colored patch, stood in her place in the row behind me and three seats to the left, watching with her big, dark eyes the turn in the road round which No. 8 had disappeared.

OTHER cars leaped out from the woods down in the other direction, caromed up from the road in their bursts of dust and burnt-oil haze. But those girls glanced toward them only if they seemed to be gaining; each time the man with the megaphone raised his great horn to his lips to announce the time of a lap, the cause of a car stopping or a disaster, both looked again to the point at which No. 8 had vanished, or, if it was nearly time for the car to be around again, they stared to the opening in the trees on the other side where the car would first appear.

And so complete was each one's absorption in No. 8 that neither yet had noticed the attention of the other. Hinman, when he had made them known to me, had said they had not met. He wished each to watch the race for herself. I, in between, was to watch them.

"I grew up with her," he said as he pointed one out to me. "Sometimes I think I can never care about anyone else. But then I met her," he said, indicating the other, "and other times I believe she's the only one I can make really to care. So you tell me what to do. I'm going to drive this race—not so much to win either of 'em, you understand, as to know for certain which one I should win."

At the edge of the trees from which the cars appeared on their way to the stretch before the grand stand, the soldier on watch waved his big red flag, the bugles blew "Car Coming," and a great green car scurried out from the trees and behind it, so close that they seemed to come together, another.

The green car bore a figure upon its radiator, more gigantic each second.

"It's Donnet in No. 6!" The crowd shrieked its delight at the driver and the car which had been running second. "And Hinman in No. 8 trying to pass!"

"Take the side of the road! You can make it! Don't let him hold you back! Oh, come o-on!" The girl on my right was upon her feet, all passion, all daring with him in No. 8. The driver of No. 6 was not turning out to permit the overtaking car to pass. He was trying for a few seconds more to deny the necessity.

"Don't try to pass him now!" I made out the supplication from the other side. "Wait just a second! The road's wider there!" They were almost to the wider, oiled, and smoothed racing way reaching before the stands.

But Hinman did not wait. With a squirt and scatter of pebbles, a yellow explosion of dust from under his wheels, he swung far to the side of the road. He toppled far over and slipped; but then his wheels bit. No. 6, in the middle of the road, tried by a more desperate spurt to avoid the pass; but No. 8 went by, swung in ahead of the green car, and cannonaded into the stretch in second place!

"Go on now! Go o-on!" the girl on my right sped him the ecstasy of her share in his triumph.

"He made it!" The other on my left gazed after him in thankfulness, the look in her eyes of a soul saved from torment.

"Eighteenth lap for car No. 8!" the announcer bawled at us through his megaphone. "Seven minutes, twenty-five and six-tenth seconds. The fastest lap yet timed! Car No. 8 is now running second, having a minute less elapsed time than No. 6, which it just passed." The cars had been started in order, a half minute between each. "Car No. 7 is still leading the race, being on this lap forty-seven seconds ahead of No. 8 and having started only thirty seconds ahead."

BUT at the nineteenth lap No. 7's lead was cut down to forty seconds, only ten actual running time ahead. At the twentieth round the difference was but thirty-five seconds—five seconds difference in time elapsed—as they boomed by the stand not half a mile apart, in plain sight of each other, with No. 7's mechanician looking back as he uselessly pumped oil, and No. 7's driver—Wolton—skewing like a lunatic into the turn with his neck for sale, and Hinman, a madman amuck at the driving wheel of No. 8, after him.

Once again, at that pace, Wolton somehow got around again, smashing all records, for the race, for the course—for any similar course in the world. But the new record he set was smashed in turn before it could be announced, when Hinman projectiled by just thirty-two and one-tenth seconds behind. So Wolton lowered that mark by one second and a half on the next lap. yet once more Hinman gained. No. 8 salvoed into the stretch and crossed the line just thirty seconds behind No. 7 running even in elapsed time. But then, when the red flag waved at the edge of the wood on the other side again, and the bugles blew "Car Coming!" and No. 7 shot into sight, and everyone was standing and leaning to see how much more No. 8 had closed up, no second car came! The quarter mile, the half, the mile from the wood, No. 7 made alone, No. 8 not yet in sight. Wolton crossed the timing line in the same time as the last lap and went on to the turn, his mechanician looking back and shouting to him.

Everyone remained standing, silent or whispering in the suspense. Still no car appeared in the opening under the trees: the soldier with the red flag stood motionless; the bugles were quiet: only the telegraph instruments upon the pine table before the announcer, which brought word of disaster in other parts of the course, began clicking.

THE telegraph operator was writing, the man with the megaphone watching him. Slowly he lifted his horn; but before he could speak the brown-haired girl broke the suspense, confidently.

"There's something happened to block him. Or he's had engine trouble! That's all!"

The possibility that Hinman might have failed or that accident could have hurt him did not master her. I looked toward the dark-haired girl with the big, wide eyes. "If he's only not killed!" I saw her white lips form the whispers rather than heard them. "If he's only not killed—that's all I ask!"

"Car No. 8," the megaphone man began, "threw a tire on the first turn on the other side of the course, and, keeping on without slowing, Hinman—"

The roar from the stand drowned his voice. At the end of the trees the red flag waved violently, as it would wave for only one car; the bugles blew; and out from under the shadow of the trees a wild, tiger-striped car, bearing its great 8 upon the radiator, plunged toward the pits before our stand, running on three bare rims, with a tire only on one forward wheel, Hinman holding the car grimly to the road, his mechanician with both hands above his head signaling their repair men.

"No. 8 is stopping at the pits for tires!" the announcer tried to make himself heard above the applause. "It threw a rear tire at the first turn, and the other rear and one front at the second turn, but made round in eight and one-half minutes!"

"Oil! Give him oil, gas, and water!" I heard the frantic reminder from the girl on my right to the men screwing on three tires at once. "Give him oil and gas so he won't have to stop again, and get him away!" Car No. 6, which he had passed by wearing it down second by second in each lap, spun by Hinman in the pits and dashed triumphantly on. "Let him get away and—after them!"

"Oh, don't let him start again now! It's almost over and he's too far behind. He'll kill himself if he tries to catch them now!" It was the appeal from the other side.

"A-ah-h! They've got him off! Now—after them!"

The churning cloud of white smoke under the rear wheels told that No. 8 had taken oil and, surely, gasoline and water, as well as new tires. It was at the turn and now out of sight. But minutes had been lost—minutes on the twenty-third lap of the race, with but five more—forty-five miles—in which to regain them. Yet Hinman was driving to do it.

Setting a new record upon that round to smash by seconds in the next, he got back half a minute in two laps from No. 6; upon the next circuit—the twenty-sixth—he again passed No. 6 and was running second. He had gained upon No. 7 also, but Wolton was still minutes ahead. He had run without a stop, and there were but two laps left as No. 8 burst from the trees and crossed the timing mark for his fastest lap.

"Drive carefully! Oh, you can save yourself, and you're second now! You can't catch the other! You'll only kill yourself!" I heard the protest from my left first this time; but then I got the other's admonition. "Go on now! Go on and you can beat him! He hasn't stopped yet, so he'll have to! For oil anyway. Now's when he'll have to stop! Go on, and you can beat him!"

Hinman was around the turn away from us. A couple of the other cars, still running but no longer in the race, passed us; but no one looked at them. The girl on my right, who had just cried No. 8 on, was standing upon her chair; so also, to get first possible sight of Hinman, the pale girl with deep eyes and with little white fist convulsively clenched, was on her chair and staring.

No. 7, of course, came first into sight; but, as it c I eared the trees, the mechanician had both arms in the air, signaling the pits.

"Oil! Oil and gas! He's got to stop! And there's one lap left!" I observed the wild triumph upon my right, and, looking at the other girl's face, I saw she knew what this meant for the last lap.

For Wolton stopped at the pits. Needing only oil and gasoline, he did not stop long, not so long as Hinman had to. Yet No. 8 was closing up so fast that Hinman was in sight as No. 7 was getting away; and we knew, as Hinman came down the stretch as the flag fell for the last lap, that he had seen No. 7 ahead and knew it was possible to win.

"Cars Nos. 7 and 8 are now on their twenty-eighth and last lap!" the announcer confirmed as we waited. "Car No. 7, having been started a half minute ahead of No. 8, must finish thirty seconds ahead to win. It left the pits fifty-two seconds before No. 8 passed!"

SO WE waited. Other cars came out from the trees, but no one cared for them. The soldier with the flag had ceased to wave for them; the bugles waited. We watched, all standing on chairs now, to see the first of the two cars come out from the trees, and to see how close the other could be. There was a silence, so complete that, after the other cars had gone by, we could hear beyond the trees the far-off, faint clatter of motor exhausts.

"Two cars—two cars together! I can hear them both!"

The soldier with the flag was waving it across and across; the bugles pealed and were lost in the cry from the crowds down the course.

The cars were coming, and they were coming together!

The radiator bearing the 7 showed first, but so close behind it, that it was pressing the other to give room to pass as they shot into sight, came No. 8!

At once, I saw, the situation flashed to both girls. Hinman already had won the race. Unless he drove that last mile so madly that he wrecked his car before he brought it across the finish, there was no way for him to lose. He was directly behind the car upon which he had a half-minute's advantage. Still he drove on to pass it, steering out to the side of the road where it was narrow and steep before the stretch.

"Don't try to pass!" I heard the anguish of the girl to my left. "You don't need to! Oh, you've won—anyway!"

"Pass him! Oh, get by him! Beat him in! Oh, come on!" I got it from the other side. And Hinman came. Again, at the same narrow place where he had passed No. 6, he turned out, his wheels squirting up gravel and slipping from the side of the road. He seemed to be turning over, but somehow—the pace itself saving him perhaps—his wheels bit before they slipped to the ditch. He was by No. 7, and coming on! He came into the stretch leading by a length—finished, flying, a full second ahead.

AND never had I seen such ecstasy as glowed in the face of the brown-haired girl as she saw him cross the finish line, not only winning but leading! The only expression to match it was upon the face of the girl on my other side as she watched him pull up safe a half mile down the course and step, unhurt, from his seat. Then she fainted.

The people half mobbed Hinman, and tried to make him appear for all sorts of applause and to receive every manner of trophy. Rut all the time he was trying to get to me.

"Well," he demanded as I faced him, and he swept every other consideration aside as petty, "which one cares most about me? Who is it for me?"

"Why," I said, "it's perfectly plain. She," I pointed. "Don't you see her?"