Bell jockeyed his foot from the accelerator to the brake and back again, as he tore down the streets, hammering turns at the intersections onto the main street leading from the city, wishing he was a sorcerer who could magically make the traffic disappear. Bell narrowly missed a laundry truck, throwing the Locomobile into a four-wheel drift to avoid it. He spun the thick wooden rim of the steering wheel fiercely as he dove between vehicles littering the streets. Drivers of other motorized vehicles stared in awe at the speed of the car as it flashed up from behind and quickly disappeared up ahead. Horses harnessed to buggies and wagons reared at the noise of what their drivers thought was the devil’s chorus.
As they neared the outer edge of the city’s southern limits, the traffic began to thin. Bell slowed the Locomobile around a sweeping turn onto the main road south that paralleled the railroad tracks. He breathed a sigh of relief at seeing automobiles and wagons becoming sparse. He was also thankful that he now had ample room to swerve around any vehicle that blocked his path. The huge automobile was incredibly responsive. Bell pressed the accelerator within an inch of the floor, as the car began to rocket along a road that ran straight with few curves. The faster the Locomobile traveled, the more solid her feel of stability, as the drive chains on her axles whirred at a high, metallic pitch.
Soon the road became straight and rural. Picturesque farming communities came up on the horizon and quickly slipped behind the automobile’s dust trail. San Carlos, Menlo Park, and then San Jose, towns that were linked together by the El Camino Real, the old road used in the late 1700s by the Franciscan friars who built twenty-one missions, each a day’s journey apart.
Enjoying a straight, open road with little traffic, Bell pressed the accelerator to the floor and pushed the automobile as hard as it could go. The Locomobile was in its element now, running as strongly as when it had in the Vanderbilt Cup race, the first American car to place in an international speed event. Like a racehorse that had been retired and then brought back to run again, the Locomobile roared down the road like a maddened elephant, the cavernous cylinders of its mighty engine turning the huge crankshaft effortlessly.
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
