Bell traced on the map the rail line they would follow to Wichita. Then he traced those converging at Junction City, the nearest town to Fort Riley. “He’ll move the guns by train, then freight wagon or motortruck.”

“So he can attack anywhere between Kansas and California.”

Bell had already concluded that. “We know by now that he doesn’t think small. He’ll hire more men for the second gun and spread them apart on either side of the railroad track we’re flying along. They’ll rake her coming and going from both sides.”

Bell did some quick calculations in his head, and added darkly, “They’ll open up at a mile. If she somehow makes it past them, they’ll whirl the guns around and keep firing. As she’s coming down the line at sixty miles per hour, they will be able to fire accurately for two full minutes.”

STEVE STEVENS SHOOK a copy of the Wichita Eagle under Preston Whiteway’s nose and roared indignantly, “They’re quoting your San Francisco Inquirer quoting me saying I’m glad that crazy Russian is helping that English feller because everyone’s in the race together, like we’re all one big family.”

“Yes, I read that,” Whiteway said mildly. “It didn’t sound like you.”

“Darned right, it don’t sound like me. Why’d you print it?”

“If you read it carefully, you will see that my reporters quoted Mr. Platov, who quoted you saying that the Great Whiteway Atlantic-to-Pacific Cross-Country Air Race for the Whiteway Cup and fifty thousand dollars is for everyone, and we’re all one big family.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You might as well have. Everyone believes it now.”

Stevens hopped angrily from foot to foot. His belly bounced, his jowls shook and turned red. “That crazy Russian put those words in my mouth. I didn’t say—”

“What’s the trouble? Everyone thinks you’re a good man.”

“I don’t give a hoot about being a good man. I want to win the race. And there’s Platov sashaying off to help Eddison-Highfalutin-Sydney-Whatever when my own machine is rattling to smithereens.”

“You have my sympathy,” said Preston Whiteway, smiling at Stevens’s confirmation of happy rumors his spies had reported: the fast-flying farmer might not go the distance. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, sir, I want to see my own entry—which is not rattling to smithereens, thank you very much—take to the air in the capable hands of Josephine, America’s Sweetheart of the Air, who will win the race.”

“Is that so? Well, let me tell you, Mr. Fancy-Pants Newspaperman, I hear tell folks is losing interest in your race now that we’re so far west there’s no one to watch it but jackrabbits, Indians, and coyotes.”