Stringer on Pikes Peak

by Lou Cameron

  There was a mutter of general agreement from the sporting gents assembled. Carlton held up a hand for silence and said, “For openers, we’ll want witnesses to a fair start as well as a fair ending to this here automotive contest. So I suggest half or more of us take the cog train to the top, with neither of these horseless carriages to start up before the boys getting there the easy way have a right smart start on ’em.”

  Nobody argued with that. It sounded fair enough. But Murdstone bitched, “Hold on, now, Bert. Me and MacKail, here, may need some time to get these infernal wheels stuffed with air again! I can’t even say, ’til I rustle up a pump and test the inner tubes in a water trough whether we’re dealing with punctures or whether some son of a bitch who shall be nameless, if only to keep this contest more mechanical than fatal, let the air out on purpose.”

  Ritter bulled closer to smile jeeringly at Murdstone and say, “You’re right, you sore loser, for nobody calls this child a cheat unless he aims to prove it or fill his fist!”

  The more reasonable Bert Carlton, who had less to lose either way, got between them to sooth, “Nobody’s accusing nobody of nothing, yet. Why don’t you try pumping your tires back up, T.S.?” To which Murdstone replied in a small sheepish voice, “I don’t have a pump.”

  Even the judicious Carlton had to chuckle. Stringer caught himself grinning and then cussed Murdstone’s family tree all the way back to that ape who hadn’t passed on a lick of common sense to his fat descend-ents. Ritter couldn’t resist rubbing it in by saying, “I have a pump along with a full tool kit in the trunk of my no-bullshit motor car, for whoever heard of driving one without even a tire pump to call one’s own? It’s small wonder you ain’t up to driving up the mountain yourself, T.S.”

  Stringer had to agree with his otherwise mighty stupid betting partner when Murdstone wailed, “That’s as dumb as it is unfair, coming from a man who hires girl-sized jockies to race his pile of junk!”

  Bert Carlton sushed one and all to say, “We come to watch a race, not to listen to a slanging match. How’s about lending T.S. your tire pump long enough to get things started fair and square, Dutch?”

  Ritter shook his head and said, “Not hardly. I paid for my own education, let anyone betting against me pay for their own. You just said you and the boys rode all this way to watch a race, Bert. So let the record show me and Dusty Rhodes, driving for our side, stand ready to start our engine and get on with it, any damn time you say!”

  Somewhere a brass bell was clanging. It seemed too loud and tuneful for a cow and, sure enough, when Stringer craned to stare that way above the crowd he saw the peanut roaster engine of the cog railroad was easing its quartet of slanty cars into the depot to drop off passengers from the top and pick up any who wanted to get up there in time to watch the sunset from fourteen thousand feet in the same sunny sky. Bert Carlton hauled out his own watch and consulted it before he announced, “We’re running out of time to argue. I can’t see sending anyone all the way up to watch the end of a race I can’t see starting, at the rate we’re going. How do you all feel about just calling it no contest, all bets off?”

  Dutch Ritter demanded, “What difference does it make whether a motor car breaks down during or before a race? Would you call it all bets off if my boy missed a turn halfway to the top, damn it?”

  Carlton grimaced and said, “I’d call it an occasion to send flowers, having seen how steep some of them hairpin turns drop off. But it ain’t the same, Dutch. A runner tripping on the way to the wire and a runner who can’t even start to run are not the same call, to my way of thinking.”

  But Ritter said, “They are to mine. My motor car and driver are ready to go. If the other side ain’t, they forfeits their bets. You can look it up.”

  The head of their association scowled and demanded, “Where, for God’s sake?” But Stringer had been thinking while everyone else had been arguing. So he asked, quietly, “Do we have, let’s say, half an hour before the race has to begin, Mister Carlton?” To be told with a puzzled smile, “Hell, take forty-five minutes if you’ve a mind to. Just don’t let me send these other gents up the mountain by cog train unless you know you’re fixing to start after ’em some damned time!”

  Stringer nodded and said he’d be right back. Then he bulled through the crowd toward the general store he’d spotted across from the place he’d left his pony. Asking inside if they had any tire pumps had been worth a try, even if the old goat behind the counter did laugh mighty rudely. Stringer bought throw rope, a lot of throw rope, instead, and met Murdstone in the doorway as he was heading back with his somewhat unusual automotive supplies. Murdstone said, “The sons of bitches have all gone up the mountain by cog rail, all but Bert and a few others who wanted to watch the beginning. But you’ll never guess what I just found under the seat of my fool Panard! I didn’t even know it folded forwards like so. One of the others over yonder said he’d read where some horseless carriages had tool kits built-in like so and, anyway, we don’t have to worry about fluffing up my tires no more.”

  Stringer started to agree. Then he hefted the coils of stiff springy manila twist he’d just bought and said, “We’re talking tires that may or may not have been seriously damaged, on a rocky road at high altitude where Lord knows what the proper pressure ought to be. So with your permission I aim to make sure those tires don’t go flat on us again.”

  Murdstone never got around to giving his direct permission and the rat-faced Dusty Rhodes assured his own patron that Stringer was crazy as they all watched what he was doing, some in the crowd even helping as each wheel was jacked in turn and each inner tube got replaced by coiled rope under the red rubber casing. The whole chore took a little under an hour and then they were off, or at least Dusty Rhodes was off in that flashy blue Buick as Stringer tried in vain to start the infernal Panard with Murdstone at the throttle and him cranking. The cranking seemed to result in back-fires louder than a twelve gauge could manage, even when the backlash of the crank didn’t threaten to break Stringer’s arm. He kept checking the way Murdstone had the spark and choke levers set, and though they seemed right, the results remained about the same while Ritter’s rival machine became a tiny blue dot way the hell up the rising slope. Stringer finally got the softer Murdstone to trade places with him. He saw he’d made a mistake when T.S. cranked the engine like a damned sissy. Then a mine owner who’d worked with his hands before finding his fortune told T.S. to let him give it a whirl and the engine caught on his first try. So as everyone near the bottom of the slope shouted their blessings or their curses, depending on how they’d bet, Stringer threw the French machine in gear and lit out after Dusty Rhodes, who seemed to be living up to his nickname if that was his dust, Jesus, over a mile up the wagon trace already!

  Then, as he steered around the first serious turn and felt the rope-stuffed rear wheels sliding sideways on the dusty gravel roadway, Stringer saw he’d have to pay more attention to the motor car he was driving if he meant to drive it anywhere near the top. For while he’d driven these contraptions before, albeit on much straighter roads, it was all too easy to forget how brainless a horseless carriage ran, next to the real thing. For even that runaway pony cart he’d stopped earlier, had been tear-assing to destruction behind a critter, loco or not, who’d no-doubt draw the line at smashing head first into a brick wall or running smack off the road into blue sky. Stringer’s generation had in fact learned to drive mostly behind much more sensible horse power that tended to get you home safe, drunk, sober or screwing. Perched in this speeding Panard, with nothing out in front of him but more sharp turns, he knew this new breed of travel called for the traveller keeping a sharper eye on where he might be going than travelers had ever been called upon before. As he swung around a barn-sized boulder to find himself staring ahead at a hundred-mile view of the high plains to the east, he swore, swerving sharply to his left and as the Panard skidded sideways gunned the engine for more traction, hoping that pool hall advice might work and, when it d
id, just inches from the edge, he swore and added, “Jesus, this is worse than that chariot race in Governor Wallace’s book about Ben Hur and we haven’t even gotten to the steep climbing yet!”

  Staring up the rocky slopes ahead he couldn’t, in fact, tell just where on the mountain he might be now. Pikes Peak rises in a series of undulations, great and small, so some rises and dips you don’t even notice, viewing the whole massif from any distance, turn into good-sized hills in their own right, bouncing over them.

  By the same token, while the wagon trace ran nowhere along the edge of a sheer drop to sea level, those more modest but steep enough inclines the roadway did flirt with offered plunges sure to bust anybody going over the edge to smithereens. A couple of times he glimpsed the remains of wagons, way down, that had gone off in the past to be smashed and scattered among the boulders and juniper scrub. For they were above Timberline now, and so far he hadn’t caught so much as a blue flash of that other son of a bitch in that other son of a bitching motor car!

  Unless he spied it somewhere down below him, Stringer knew there was no way now, to beat the nasty but knowledgeable professional up this nasty single lane road to the sky. But whether he lost or not, halfway up had to be the dumbest place to stop, so he just had to keep going. At least he did until the engine started to cough and sputter on the steeper rises. He stopped in a draw before it could really die on him and left the drive train in neutral while he got out and got cracking, telling the gasping tin beast, “Just hold on, damnit. We have to be more than ten thousand feet up and to tell the truth my lungs are commencing to feel it, too.” As he readjusted the carburetor yet again he added, “If they’re ever going to seriously race these things cross-country, they’re going to have to race ’em with two-man crews, one to keep the engine going and one to keep „em on the road. I wish I was better at both, for I feel dumb as hell about that money I bet on us, now, Mademoiselle Panard!”

  He got the engine purring again, climbed back aboard, and lit out after Dusty Rhodes, if that was the little shit’s name. Stringer couldn’t decide whether he’d seen that shifty rat-face before, perhaps on a reward poster, or whether the motor jocky was just a type one saw around race tracks and pool halls for some reason old Charley Darwin might be able to explain. Such human rodents hardly seemed cut out to make it among more wholesome competition.

  Stringer didn’t like the way the fuel needle waved at him as the grade got ever steeper. He was sure he’d started this infernal climb on a full tank and, hell, the critter had to get at least twenty miles to the gallon unless he’d read all those promises in the papers wrong. One of the main selling points of the horseless carriage was how cheap it was to keep one, next to a horse and buggy, whether one drove every day or not, for out on the road or out back in its stall, a horse had to be fed and watered more than once a day, seven days a week. But some still argued that whilst filling up a gas tank and just forgetting about it for days at a time was sure less troublesome than keeping a live critter, the oil and gasoline cost way more than water and oats. Old John D. and those gushers gushing clean out to the west coast now, had cut the cost of rock oil products, but nobody could afford to burn gasoline at the rate this infernal machine seemed to be burning it. So once more Stringer stopped, with the motor running idle, to get down and see if perhaps the cap of the fuel tank had come unstuck or something.

  It was something dirty, he saw, after he’d tried the cap, found it screwed on tight, and gotten fixed to just go on and do his best before he’d sniffed, blinked, and hunkered down to stare soberly at the cluster of dusty spit balls in the gravel betwixt the rope-stuffed rear wheels. Another drop of gasoline plopped down to gather its own cocoon of flour-fine and cobweb gray dust as Stringer swore and ran his hand under the tank to discover that, sure enough, there was a wee pinhole bleeding drop by drop, enough to matter somewhere betwixt here and the top, even if he managed to get there without the leaky tank catching fire on him!

  He rummaged under the rear seat everyone but him and the owner of the damned Panard seemed to have heard about. He didn’t need the spanking new or at least unused air pump. The rope trick had given him a rough but solid ride up to now. He was looking for some of that rubber tape they sold for fixing inner tubes, fuel lines and so forth. But there wasn’t any. He wondered, idly, how come there was half a pack of spearmint gum, made by that Yankee outfit in Chicago, if nobody had been under the back seat since they’d built the fool machine in France. But stopping that damned leak was more important right now than the history of the leaky motor car, or even how it had gotten to leaking everything from tire pressure to its infernal fuel, so he popped a couple of sticks of chewing gum in his mouth and while he tried to soften the stale shit with some effort and spit, had a look-see at the dipstick, to discover he was a tad low on crankcase oil as well!

  As long as he had to crawl under anyway, Stringer checked the drain plug of the crankcase, swore, and tightened it hard as he could with the pliers he’d been smart enough to crawl under with. Then he stuck the wad of gum to the bottom of the fuel tank, rubbing it in hard with his now mighty greasy fingers. He couldn’t tell if it was fixing to hold or not. He could only wipe his hands in the road dust until they looked more filthy than slippery, and get back up to do what he might about the damned mountain, now that he had the Panard running more reasonably. He was sure he’d lost the race, by now, of course. Dusty Rhodes had not only started well ahead of him but hadn’t had to keep stopping, unless he’d sabotaged his own machine as well. Stringer could only keep plugging away, braced for the ribbing he was in for once he got to the top, if ever he got to the damned top. It had to be somewhere up ahead. But each time he caught sight of a good-sized bulge against the cobalt blue sky above, he found out once he got there, that there was another one just like it rising even higher. So, as he slowly drove up yet another steep incline, at full throttle, he was braced to see more mountain, or with any luck the windswept shingles of Summit Lodge. He’d found out what it looked like at that postcard shop more than a mile below and a lot more miles sideways, so he was more than a little surprised to see Dutch Ritter’s big blue Buick silently blocking the narrow right-of-way ahead, with the booted feet of its wiry little driver sticking out from under the running board.

  By the time Stringer braked to a stop near the rear bumper, Dusty Rhodes was out from under and back on his feet, with a nickel-plated Harrington & Richardson .32 in one hand. Stringer called out, “Howdy. Air getting too thin up here for Miss Buick’s delicate lungs, Dusty?”

  The smaller but dangerous acting Rhodes snarled, “Never mind what’s wrong with my engine. You just cut your own, if you know what’s good for you, MacKail!”

  Stringer had to study on that as he stared soberly at the unwinking gun muzzle trained on him from mighty dicey range. His own gun was closer, of course, and threw heavier lead. But while Stringer felt no false modesty about his own quick draw, there were limits to how fast one could get one’s own gun out, let alone aimed and fired, and this sure looked like one of them.

  So he said, “You got the drop on me, Dusty. But would you mind telling me what you hope to prove by behaving so unsociable?”

  The rival driver snapped, “The summit’s just a few hundred feet over that next damned rise. I’ve been up here before. But it may as well be another ten miles, with both our engines stopped. So stop your engine. I’ll kill you if you don’t cut that switch!”

  He sounded like he meant it. So Stringer grimaced, switched off the ignition, and as they were both enveloped in snow-scented stillness, told the rat-faced Rhodes, wistfully, “I’ve heard of sore losers but you’re a real shit, no offense. Wasn’t it enough to let the air out of my tires and fix this poor bucket of bolts to leak both oil and gas?”

  The runt holding him at gunpoint looked sincerely puzzled as he answered, not too nicely, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It don’t matter. With neither machine able to make to the top, all bets are off.”

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nbsp; Then he moved closer, keeping his whore pistol trained on Stringer every step of the way as he added, “Get out, hands polite, if you aim to view the sunset from up yonder this evening.”