THE BLACK TIGER

                          By PATRICK O'CONNOR

                          IVES WASHBURN, INC.
                               NEW YORK

                COPYRIGHT © 1956 BY IVES WASHBURN, INC.

         All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
           this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except
          for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

             MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

                              _Dedicated_

                   to Bill and Steve Dredge and the
                 happy fraternity of sports-car racing
               drivers in the United States of America.
                     Also to their hero mechanics.

                      _Also by Patrick O'Connor_

                         THE SOCIETY OF FOXES
                         FLIGHT OF THE PEACOCK
                        THE WATERMELON MYSTERY




                            THE BLACK TIGER




                                   1


Woody Hartford, seated upon a four-legged stool of uncertain design,
examined the pieces of a carburetor that lay on a bench before him, and
contemplated a problem of the nicest delicacy.

The problem had nothing to do with the carburetor. Woody at seventeen
could put that back together without even thinking of what he was
doing. He'd cleaned and adjusted a score of them since he first started
working at McNess Union Service Station, Hermosa Beach, California,
two years ago. The problem concerned the matter of whether to spend
ten dollars on Cindy Lou or on Mary Jane. It was not one that could be
lightly decided.

There were, Woody was dimly aware, certain ethical factors involved.
Cindy Lou needed the money spent on her in the worst way. On the other
hand, if Mary Jane ever found out about it, she would, in a ladylike
manner, raise a great deal of trouble.

Again, if, to avoid strained relations with Mary Jane, Woody spent the
money on her, it would be a long time before he would have a ten spot
to spend on Cindy Lou.

"A guy with a hot rod and thirty bucks a week," Woody said to the float
chamber of the carburetor, "has no right having a girl friend, too.
On the other hand," he added, "a guy with a hot rod is going to wind
up with a girl friend whether he wants one or not. There's no arguing
about that."

He sighed, reached for one of a number of remarkably dirty rags on the
workbench, and thrust it into the float chamber of the carburetor. He'd
have used a clean rag if one was available. Clean rags were delivered
every Monday to the McNess Union Service Station, but Mondays were
Woody's days off. When he arrived for work on Tuesday the rags were all
uniformly dirty. This was one of the minor oddities about the service
station that Woody had long ago ceased to trouble himself over.

Cindy Lou was Woody's hot rod. Or to be more precise, she was Woody's
1940 Ford coupé, which he was converting into a hot rod with the hope
one day of competing in drag races. He'd already milled her head,
worked over the chassis, changed the gear ratio, and moved the engine
so that it was no longer in front of the driver's seat. Instead it was
alongside the driver, and separated from the driver by a makeshift
firewall. All that was needed now was to buy a four-carburetor manifold
and Woody figured that Cindy Lou would hit a hundred miles an hour in
a quarter mile from a standing start. A hundred miles an hour wasn't
championship speed or anything like it. Some of the boys were getting a
hundred and thirty out of their mills. But it would be good for Cindy
Lou, and with more expansive engine modifications, it could be improved
even further.

But the final payment on the carburetor rig, secondhand, would cost ten
bucks. And Mary Jane was expecting to be taken out that night with the
same ten bucks.

"Maybe," said Woody hopefully, still cleaning the float chamber, "I
could give the guy five on the manifold and squeak by with Mary Jane
on the other five." But he knew even as he said it that the compromise
wouldn't work. Bob Peters, who had the manifold, wanted cash and spoke
darkly of several other offers. And Mary Jane wasn't the kind of girl
you could take to the corner drugstore for a lemon coke, then to the
movies, and call it an evening.

Every now and then Mary Jane got it into her head that she wanted
to go out in style. And Woody knew he'd better take her. She went
through phases of being very sophisticated and looked upon drugstore
entertainment as kid stuff. During her sophisticated intervals, she
read books by Aldous Huxley and talked about the social obligations of
the upper strata.

At such times, and this was one of them, Mary Jane didn't want to hear
a word about Cindy Lou, in which she was normally interested. And the
mention of carburetors and manifolds left her slightly hostile.

The telephone rang, interrupting Woody's reflections. He wiped his
hands briefly on his khaki pants, got down off the stool, and went over
to the phone, which was fastened to a wall of the garage.

"McNess Union Service Station," he said into the mouthpiece.

"Hi," said a cheerful voice at the other end. "That you, Woody?"

"Yep."

"How are things?"

Things, Woody replied, rubbing the end of his nose with an
oil-blackened hand, were pretty good. He knew what was coming. Bob was
on the line and after a little more palaver would want to know whether
he was going to hand over the final payment on the manifold. Bob was
never one to get right to the point. He was studying salesmanship and
had read somewhere that most big sales were made in the course of
friendly discussions with clients about their own problems and affairs.
So Bob asked Woody whether he felt good and whether his dad was in
good health and had he gone to the dry lakes racecourse last weekend
and what he thought of the weather. Woody replied noncommittally to
all these inquiries while he weighed Cindy Lou in the balance against
Mary Jane. Finally Bob decided that he'd done enough of the friendly
discussion part of salesmanship and should get down to the point.

"Say, Woody," he said, "I don't want you to get the idea that I'm
rushing you. But I've had a couple of offers for that manifold, and I
was wondering whether you could give me the last payment and pick it up
today. I'd like to have you have it rather than these other guys, but I
need the dough today."

"Wouldn't settle for five now and five next payday, would you?" asked
Woody.

"No," said Bob. "I'd like to oblige a pal. But I've got a real hot deal
on myself, and I've got to have the skins."

"O.K.," said Woody. "I'll pay it off."

"Swell," said Bob. "You going to be there this evening?"

"Until seven," Woody replied.

"I'll buzz by with the plumbing and pick up the dough about six-thirty.
S'long."

"S'long," said Woody and put down the receiver.

Only when he had hung up did he realize the enormity of his offense.
Without consulting her, he had in one second rejected Mary Jane for
Cindy Lou. And Mary Jane was definitely expecting to be taken out that
night. When he'd paid for the manifold, he would have exactly one
dollar and fifteen cents left. That was not sufficient for even a
lemon-coke-and-movie evening.

Furthermore there wasn't any hope of raising a loan this late in the
day. Woody's father, who would be good for a loan after a slight
lecture, was out of town. His mother, he knew, had only three or four
dollars of housekeeping money around and probably needed that. And Worm
McNess, proprietor of the McNess Union Service Station and Woody's
boss, was as tight as a tappet. His idea of a loan was fifty cents, and
Woody needed at least seven or eight dollars.

Worm McNess came by his nickname fairly enough. His full name was
William Orville Randolph McNess, the initials spelling "Worm." But
beyond that he was long and thin, rather as if a piece of spaghetti
had been brought to man size and given human features and limbs. And
over and above all, this Worm could wiggle and twist around a car in
positions next to impossible for mechanics built on more normal lines.

Woody liked Worm. He was a good boss with a quiet sense of humor and
an inexhaustible knowledge of the insides of automobiles. Woody could
never make up his mind whether Worm really liked cars or not. He seemed
to view them all with a certain contempt. "Bucket" was his terse term
for any automobile brought into the service station for repair--though
it was a term he did not use in the presence of the owner. Cadillacs,
Thunderbirds, or Chevvies--all were buckets to Worm. Yet he worked on
them with the greatest care, and when he was through, had always done
an expert job. It was hard for Woody to understand why he viewed all
automobiles with such contempt and yet worked on them with such care.

Worm was putting the pan back on a Chevvy now--the same car whose
carburetor Woody was busy cleaning. He rolled out from underneath,
got to his feet somewhat unsteadily, and hunched his thin shoulders
forward. This done, he reached gingerly with two long greasy fingers
into the breast pocket of his shirt and took out a cigarette.

"Hurry oop wi' yon carburetor and let's get this bucket o' bolts oot of
here," he said. His accent, after fifteen years in America, was still
straight from Aberdeen, Scotland.

Woody by now had the carburetor back together again and got busy
installing it. All the time he kept wondering whether he ought to
call Bob Peters and tell him he found he hadn't the dough and the
manifold deal was off. Or whether he ought to call Mary Jane and tell
her something had come up and he couldn't take her out that night. Or
whether, just on the chance that this was a day for miracles, he ought
to ask Worm for a loan of six or seven bucks.

He decided, since Worm was close at hand and relaxing with his
cigarette, that he'd try him first.

"Say, Worm," he said in as offhand a manner as he could manage, "how
about letting me have a couple of bucks until payday?"

"Bucket o' bolts," he said ignoring the question completely and shaking
his head more in sorrow than in anger over the Chevvy. "Mon, they ought
to take the poor beastie and gie her a decent Christian burial. She's
eighty thousand miles on her if she's been driven a yard."

Woody was used to these tactics and knew what to do about them. He
said nothing for a minute or two while he connected the gas line to the
carburetor. Then he said, "How about letting me have a couple of bucks
until payday, Worm?"

"It's a wonder her wheels aren't square," said Worm, concentrating with
great determination on the car. "I tell you, laddie, there's no one but
McNess could have got her running again."

"You could take it all out of the first pay check," Woody persisted.

"Her cylinders have been bored so many times, her pistons will be
slapping aroond in water before long."

"Worm, I just got to have the dough."

"Hoot, laddie. What's all your concern aboot money? Ye'll only be
spending it. When I served my apprenticeship in Aberdeen, I worked five
years without getting a nickel."

Woody sighed. "O.K.," he said. "Forget it."

So easy a victory disturbed Worm. He felt that he had been perhaps
something less than generous. He was sensitive about being considered
tight with money (undoubtedly because this was the truth) and would
tell anyone who was prepared to listen that the Highland Scots are the
most generous people in the world. He was a Highland Scot.

"Ah weel," he said, "I recall as a laddie that it was hard to be
walking around without a groat to comfort me fist with. How much do ye
want?"

"Six or seven bucks," said Woody. He hoped for ten, but it was a
desperate hope.

"Whist, mon," said Worm, a look between astonishment and outrage
showing in his pale blue eyes. "Do ye think I'm the Bank of England?
I'll let ye have two dollars to payday and not a penny more."

He went over to the cash box, opened it as if it were the main vault of
Morgan's bank on Wall Street, and came back with a dollar bill and some
silver in his hand. He gave Woody the dollar, solemnly pronouncing the
word "One" and then counted out three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel.

"Ye'll be takin out yere lassie, nae doot," he said when this was done.

"Not on this," said Woody. He didn't want to sound ungrateful, but the
money was just not enough.

"Laddie," said Worm, "I'm a man that knows a great deal aboot
womenfolk. And there's naething truer aboot them than that if they
really love ye, they'll be wanting ye to save yere money and not go
splashing it around on them."

Woody wondered what kind of girl friends they had in Scotland when Worm
was a boy. Mary Jane wasn't a gold digger. But she liked to be taken
out now and again, and he didn't blame her for it. He looked at the
long, pale length of Worm standing before him as solemn as a preacher
and decided that he probably hadn't had any girl friends when he was
serving his apprenticeship in Scotland. From what he could gather, his
closest friends seemed to have been a kit of mechanic's tools and a
book called Davie's _Problems and Principles of Internal Combustion
Engines_.

There was just about time, now that Worm had failed to come through
with a loan, to call up Mary Jane and see whether he could postpone
their date. He hated to do it, because he suspected that Mary Jane
had had her hair done or received some other kind of unnecessary and
expensive beauty treatment in preparation for the evening.

He dialed her number, not knowing quite how he would put it, and was
further distressed when she answered the phone right away. Almost
her first statement was, "Oh, Woody, there's a movie based on one of
Somerset Maugham's books at the Criton, and I'm just dying to see it.
You ought to see it too. It got raves from the really good critics. It
would do you a lot of good."

Woody groaned. Somerset Maugham. That meant that his instincts were
correct and Mary Jane was intent upon an adult-type evening out.

"Gee," he said. "I don't think I can make it tonight, Mary Jane. I've,
er ... well, something's happened."

It seemed to Woody that the temperature around him fell about ten
degrees when he said that, and the slight silence that followed seemed
to last about five years.

"What's happened?" asked Mary Jane, and Woody could have sworn that
there was cold water trickling from the receiver which he held to his
ear.

"Well ... I just haven't got the dough right now," he said lamely.

"Woody Hartford," said Mary Jane. "You knew ten days ago about this
date. You asked for it then. You had plenty of time to call me before--"

"But, honey--" said Woody.

"Never mind," snapped Mary Jane. "I'm going to the movie, and it won't
be with you. I just hope I never see you again--you and that silly
old car of yours." Woody thought he heard a sob before the receiver
clicked in his ear.

At ten minutes to seven, Bob Peters came round with the manifold. He
swept into the service station in a yellow Buick convertible that Woody
knew he'd bought out of spare-time earnings. Woody took one look at
him, and his heart sank. Mary Jane, dressed up as lovely as a princess,
was seated beside Bob, and she looked right through him.

"The manifold's in the back," said Bob cheerfully. "Do you mind getting
it out? I don't want to soil my duds."

Woody opened up the back of the convertible and took out the manifold.
When he had put it on the ground carefully, Bob said, "That'll be ten
bucks--cash."

Woody gave the money, a five and five singles, to Bob, and Mary Jane
said, "Oh," putting more scorn and contempt into the word than Woody
would have thought possible. Then the two drove off, Mary Jane with her
nose very high in the air and her brown eyes surprisingly stony.

"What have ye got there, laddie?" Worm asked when they had gone.

Woody looked at the manifold and after the departing car. He thought of
Worm's book, Davie's _Problems and Principles of Internal Combustion
Engines_.

"I think I've got the same sort of girl friend that you had in
Scotland," he said.




                                   2


In the week that followed, Woody caught only a few glimpses of Mary
Jane. She cut him dead each time. They'd had their quarrels before,
but Woody realized that this time it was pretty serious, and there was
little he could do to alter the situation.

"When a dame spends five bucks fixing up her hair to be taken out
and you spend ten bucks fixing up a hot rod and don't take her out,
you're back in the stag line again," his friend Steve Phillips told
him philosophically. "Why don't you forget about that pile of junk and
spend your time straightening things out with Mary Jane? She's a nice
kid. You ought to take more care of her."

"Wouldn't do any good," said Woody. "Besides, if she's going to be my
steady, she's got to take the hot rod as well. I'm not interested in
dames that want me to spend the rest of my life catching up on Aldous
Huxley and Somerset Maugham. Betcha neither of them can drive a car."

Woody spent the week fixing up Cindy Lou in the intervals between
working in Worm's garage. He wanted to get her ready for a trial run at
the salt lakes out in the Mojave Desert by the following Saturday. The
salt lakes were where the drag races were held. But there could be none
that weekend. However, the quarter-mile, half-mile, and mile markers
would be there, and he would be able to test Cindy Lou's speed.

In the drag races, hot rods do not compete directly with each other.
They go singly over the measured straightaway. Their speeds are
electrically timed and the winner picked on a fastest-time basis. Steve
had agreed to come out to the salt lakes to help with the timing. And
even Worm began to show an interest in Cindy Lou now that she was
nearing her test run.

He came over one evening while Woody was adjusting the tappets and
looked at Cindy Lou with enormous disfavor.

"Mon," he said, "ye're not intending ta drive that contraption, are ye?"

"Sure," said Woody. "Ought to go like a bomb. Figure I can get her up
past the hundred mark."

Worm made no reply to this other than to give a disapproving cluck of
his tongue. He was fascinated by the weird engine position and got down
on the ground on his back to examine it and the differential hook-up.

"It's all contrary to Davie's _Problems and Principles of Internal
Combustion Engines_," he said when he emerged from beneath the hot rod.
"That Davie was a sound mon, now. Ye'd do better ta spend more time
studying his book, of which I have a copy in the office. How many gears
do ye have on this beastie?"

"Two," said Woody highly flattered, despite Worm's disapproval, that he
was taking any interest in Cindy Lou at all. "Low will take her up to
about sixty-five from a standing start. I have to hit sixty before I
can shift up. Then she'll really take off."

"Hae ye figured out yere flywheel revolutions?" asked Worm.

"About six thousand revolutions per minute at maximum torque," said
Woody.

"Mon, mon," said Worm. "Davie would na' like it at all."

Nonetheless, Worm was obviously fascinated by the hot rod and gave
a grunt of approval at the way in which the various engineering
problems of its unorthodox design had been solved. Indeed, he became
so interested that after inquiring cautiously whether it would be very
expensive, he agreed to come out to the salt lakes and help with the
speed trials.

"Ye'll be needing some cold plugs, I'm thinking," he said. "The ones ye
have there'll never do the trick. I've eight I can lend ye. But ye must
gie them back when ye're through wi' them." He went into his office
while Woody looked in wonder at Steve. He'd never known Worm to show so
much interest in a car before.

"Wonder what's come over him," he said.

"Maybe he's trying to make up for not lending you that dough the other
night," Steve suggested.

Woody shook his head. "He thinks he did me a favor," he said. "His idea
of dames is that the more money they let you spend on them, the less
they are worth."

"Maybe he's got something there," said Steve.

Worm now returned with the eight plugs. They were of an Italian make,
each wrapped in a piece of greased paper on which instructions on their
care and setting were printed. Happily these were printed in English as
well.

"I'll set them myself for ye," said Worm. "But ye'd best not use them
until the speed trial. Hoo are ye going tae get yon bucket of bolts
oot to the track? Ye canna drive it through the streets wi' only two
gears. Onyway, I don't think the police would let ye, wi' the engine
beside the driver."

Woody explained that the car would have to be towed. He had a tow bar
and hoped to borrow somebody else's car for the job.

Again Worm surprised him.

"We can use the Dodge," he said. This was indeed a concession, for the
Dodge, a 1928 model, was Worm's greatest love. He'd bought it in a junk
yard for ten dollars and rebuilt it himself. Every year he took the
whole engine apart, renewed any parts that were worn, and put it back
together again. New parts he had to make himself or have made. Yet he
would not consider buying another car and puttered back and forth in
the Dodge at a maximum speed of thirty miles an hour.

The Dodge had solid wheels and strange thin tires. Its seats compelled
their occupants to sit bolt upright. It was a roadster, with a canvas
top set on oak supports. When it rained, and the top was put up, side
curtains of isinglass had to be installed to keep the rain out. The
windshield wiper operated spasmodically off the manifold vacuum, and
the gas tank, made of brass, was outside the car, slung in the rear.

Nonetheless, it never failed to start at the press of a button,
and since it couldn't go any faster than thirty miles an hour, its
two-wheel mechanical brakes were adequate.

That evening Woody worked late making up a batch of dope for Cindy
Lou. The highest octane gasoline available was not good enough to give
her top performance. She needed special fuel of which the base was
gasoline. But, to this, Woody added alcohol and nitro-methane, the
whole concoction smelling vilely and promising an explosion at any
moment.

He mixed up a total of six gallons, which he placed in three two-gallon
containers and put them in a cool part of the garage.

When he got home that evening--it was Friday--he was dog tired and
almost too excited to eat. Cindy Lou was hopped up as well as he could
do with his present equipment. She ought to do well. And if she did,
he'd enter her in the Southcal Drag Races at the old Burbank airport in
two weeks. That could mean winning a cup.

"Woody," his mother said when he came through the kitchen door.
"Somebody called you on the phone about ten minutes ago. But she hung
up without giving her name when I said you weren't in."

"Any idea who it was?" Woody asked.

"It sounded like Mary Jane," his mother replied.

"Gosh," said Woody and went immediately to the telephone. His father,
now back from his business trip and sitting in the living room reading,
sighed. He served on the City Council at Hermosa Beach and was having a
hard time analysing a report on street improvement.

"Try and keep it short," he said, but he didn't think it would do much
good. Telephone conversations with Mary Jane seemed to last a minimum
of half an hour.

"Hello," said Woody into the phone. "Mary Jane? Were you calling me?"
There was a short interval of silence during which Mr. Hartford was
shocked to discover from his report that it had cost the city $217 to
replace damaged rubbish-disposal bins during the year. Then Woody said
plaintively, "Gee, Mary Jane. I can't. I've got Cindy Lou all fixed up
and I'm going to try her out--" He didn't finish the sentence but hung
up despondently.

Mr. Hartford looked up from his report. Vague memories of similar
unsatisfactory conversations many years before with Woody's mother came
back to him.

"Something wrong, son?" he asked.

"Oh, Mary Jane wants me to go to somebody's birthday party, and now
she's mad because I have to take Cindy Lou out for a fast run."

Mr. Hartford took off his glasses and looked at his son strangely. It
was as if he had suddenly discovered a completely new aspect of his
character.

"Cindy Lou for a fast run?" he said.

"Cindy Lou is Woody's hot rod," Mrs. Hartford explained, and his father
relaxed.

"Oh," he grunted. There were times when he realized that Woody lived in
a world completely different from his own, and this was one of them.

"Never mind," said Mrs. Hartford comfortingly. "Mary Jane's a sensible
girl. She'll see things in their right light after a while. Your father
and I had many misunderstandings before we were married."

"Yes," said Woody gloomily. "But there wasn't a Bob Peters with a
yellow Buick convertible hanging around in the background."

"As I recall it," said Mr. Hartford, "there was a young medical student
by the name of Saunders who drove a Stutz Bearcat. But for my happy
intervention, my boy, you might be the son of a doctor, devoting your
life to the dissection of frogs."

Mrs. Hartford laughed, and for a moment she seemed, even to Woody, a
young girl.

Woody was up at four in the morning and met Steve and Worm at the
garage. Steve had brought two stop watches as promised, and everything
was ready, including the sandwiches that Mrs. Hartford had prepared for
the three of them. It took six hours in the Dodge to get to the Mojave
salt lake where Cindy Lou was to undergo her trials. Nobody else was
there, and during the last-minute preparations for the first run even
Worm seemed a little nervous. The cold spark plugs were put in after
Worm had gapped them properly; Woody drained the fuel from Cindy Lou's
tank and poured in his special dope.

When all was ready, Woody got into the hot rod, which, after a
complaining cough and a whirr or two, fired up.

"Warm her oop a little," said Worm. "Mon, dinna' ye install yer safety
belt?"

"Sure," said Woody. "It's on the floor." He buckled it around him and
squirmed into as comfortable a position as possible behind the wheel.

"Everybody knows what he's got to do?" he said. "Steve, you stand by
the starting line. Worm's going to be at the half-mile mark. Don't
watch me. Watch Worm. The moment I start to move, press the stop watch.
When I pass the half-mile mark, Worm will bring down the checkered
flag. Stop the watch right then. Maybe we ought to try it a couple of
times to see if everybody understands."

He made two trial runs, not pressing Cindy Lou but giving her a chance
to warm up. Everything went as planned.

"Swell," said Woody, "this time it's for real. Ready?" Steve nodded,
and Woody brought Cindy Lou to the starting line. He stopped her
dead, and then, with a slight nod of his head, slipped her in low and
stepped on the gas. The take-off flung him back against the seat. The
flat salt bed of the desert sped beneath him like a gleaming white
ribbon. Woody looked at the speedometer. Forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five.
Sixty. Sixty-five. He slammed the clutch down and flung the gearshift
back toward him. Cindy Lou seemed to leave the ground in a clean leap
forward. Woody grinned. Smooth as silk and swift as an arrow. Boy what
a rod, he thought. He hardly saw Worm as he flashed by. It took him a
mile across the salt flats to slow down. When he got back Steve said,
"Twenty seconds."

"That's an average of ninety miles an hour over the half mile from a
standing start," said Woody. "Man, she goes like a bird. But she ought
to do better than that. This time I'll really pour the coal to her."

The second run showed an average of ninety-two miles an hour from the
standing start.

"Try her over the mile," Steve suggested. "Then you can see what she'll
do when she has time to get rolling."

Woody waited until Worm had driven out to the mile mark in the Dodge
and waved his flag to show he was ready. Then he took off again. This
time he decided that he'd wind Cindy Lou up real tight in low as fast
as he could, and jam her into high with his foot all the way down on
the accelerator. The hot rod fled down the salt flat with a defiant
snarling roar. For the split second when she was in neutral between
gear shifts, it seemed to Woody she would shake herself to pieces.
Then he flipped her into high and again experienced that clean lancing
forward as the gear took hold.

With the accelerator all the way down it seemed as if Worm and the
ground he stood upon were being flung toward him. Then, from the engine
by his side, came a strange and ominous sound. It started as nothing
more than a heavy knocking but in seconds was as if forty blacksmiths
were beating on a boiler with sledge hammers. Cindy Lou slowed down so
fast that it seemed as if her brakes had seized. Woody slipped her into
neutral and turned off the ignition. The clanging and hammering stopped
immediately.

Worm came loping up. "What happened, laddie?" he asked.

"I don't know," Woody said. "She just blew up."

"Turn her over," said Worm. Woody pressed the starter, and the grinding
and banging started immediately. Worm got down and looked under Cindy
Lou.

"Connecting rod," he said. "A piece of it has come clear through the
pan. Yere oil's leaking oot. Worse than that. It must have broken
through the cylinder wall. There's water wi' the oil."

He looked at Woody and decided not to say anything more. There was
nothing more that could be said. Cindy Lou was a wreck. She'd need a
completely new engine if she was ever to run again.

They towed her home in silence.




                                   3


Woody was so depressed after Cindy Lou threw a connecting rod during
the trial runs at the salt lakes that neither Worm nor Steve could do
or say anything to cheer him up. It is possible that Mary Jane might
have been able to remove his depression, for part of it at least
stemmed from the quarrel between them. But if Mary Jane knew anything
of Woody's troubles, she left him severely alone. Woody heard through
Steve that she was going around with Bob Peters, and he wondered at
times whether he ought not to go around to Bob Peters and punch him on
the nose.

"I'd sure feel a lot better," he told Steve, "if I punched him right in
the snoot."

Steve was somewhat undersized, a freckled, sandy-haired youth who was
growing a mustache distinguishable only because it made him look as
though there was something wrong with his upper lip.

"You might feel better right when you punched him," Steve said. "But
one second later you might not feel so good. That Peters is a pretty
big guy."

"Just a sack of hog fat," said Woody savagely. "Coming right here with
my girl so she could see me handing over the ten bucks to him that I
was supposed to take her out with."

"Well, maybe he did," said Steve. "But you gotta admit it was you who
made the deal."

"Say, whose side you on anyway?" Woody asked fiercely.

"Yours, pal," said Steve. "But you won't get anywhere blaming other
people for what you did. Anyway, that's all over. Did you take the head
off Cindy Lou and see how much damage had been done?" For answer Woody
reached up to a shelf above his work bench and threw Steve a piston.
Part of a connecting rod was fastened to it, but it was snapped off in
the middle and twisted like a stick of liquorice.

"Gee," said Steve, deeply impressed. "Sure made a mess of that."

"You should look at the cylinder," said Woody. "There's a hole in the
cylinder wall big enough for an elephant to get through." He led Steve
over to a corner of the garage where the engine block of Cindy Lou lay
on the floor. There was a rent in one of the cylinder walls and deep
score marks on two others.

"What did Worm say caused it?" Steve asked.

"Jeepers, I know what caused it," said Woody. "The connecting rod
snapped in that cylinder, and I busted some rings in those other two.
That's what caused it."

"Don't get sore, pal," said Steve. "I know that's what caused it. Any
kid in the block can tell you that. But why did the connecting rod pop?
What does Worm say?"

"He says it popped because it wasn't according to Davie's _Problems and
Principles of Internal Combustion Engines_," snarled Woody.

"That's right," said Worm coming up unexpectedly. "There's a sweet
little chapter in there that will tell ye all aboot it. Noo, frae
the look of that I'd say that yere crankshaft was no properly in
balance--just enough to set up a bit of a whip in yon connecting rod.
Though it's possible the metal was a mite tired. Ye're lucky it did'na
go clean through the block and spray ye wi' scalding water and hot oil.
But dinna worrit. Nae doot one day ye'll get another and do the same
foolish thing all over again."

Woody, however, for the time being had had enough of hot rods. Every
time he looked at Cindy Lou or at the engine block lying disconsolate
on the garage floor, he felt sick. In the end, he decided to sell what
he could of her. He'd spent a total of four hundred dollars on the car,
not counting innumerable hours of his own labor. Disposed of piecemeal,
he got back eighty, reselling the carburetor manifold to Bob Peters for
eight dollars. He wasn't very happy when he heard that Bob sold it a
week later for much more.

With the eighty dollars he decided that he'd better try to patch things
up with Mary Jane. The point was, should he buy her a present and call
on her, or should he telephone her and get a date and then turn up with
a present?

He decided to telephone, and it was just as well, because she wasn't
in. She wasn't in when he called the next day either, though her
mother, Mrs. Jackson, sounded encouraging.

"I think she'll be in in a few minutes," she said. "Mary Jane just went
down to the library."

"Gee, is she still reading those swell Huxley books?" asked Woody,
determined to ingratiate himself wherever he might.

"Huxley?" said Mrs. Jackson. "No. It's not Huxley, Woody. The last
book she had was called, I think, _The Philosophy of Salesmanship_.
She's become very interested in selling lately. Last night she gave
her father quite a questioning on whether he was carrying sufficient
insurance."

"Oh," groaned Woody. "Well, thanks, Mrs. Jackson."

"Shall I tell her you'll call again when she comes in?" Mrs. Jackson
asked.

"No," said Woody. "I don't think I will, Mrs. Jackson."

"All right," said Mrs. Jackson. "I think I understand."

The next day Steve called him up. Steve was worried about Woody's
attitude, which was very gloomy, and had devised a plan that he hoped
would cheer him up.

"Listen," he said. "Got a real good deal for us. There's a tech
inspection for the sports cars for the Torrey Pines race tonight. How
about going along? Lots of cars of all kinds. Ferraris, Maseratis,
Austin Healeys, Jags, TR2's. What d'ya say?"

"Mickey Mouse stuff," was Woody's reply.

"What d'ya mean, Mickey Mouse stuff?" demanded Steve.

"There isn't enough horsepower in any one of them to go over a
cardboard box without changing gears," said Woody scornfully.

"I got news for you," said Steve. "One of the Type D Jags at the Le
Mans race recently developed two hundred and eighty-five horsepower
with a two hundred and ten cubic-inch engine. And it was running on
just plain old gasoline. You know any hot rods can do that?"

Woody admitted that he didn't.

"Well, you want to come and see these little bugs, or aren't you
interested in anything that hasn't got an engine big enough to drive a
tank?"

"I guess I can take a look at them," Woody said grudgingly.

"I was hoping you'd see it that way, on account of I need a ride."

"Just a minute," said Woody. "What kind of a deal is this? I haven't
got any transportation."

"I know you haven't, pal," replied Steve. "But if you're going, you can
talk Worm into taking us there. Tell him every one of these cars was
built by a guy who studied under Davie that wrote the book on internal
combustion engines. S'long."

Worm, however, was strangely hesitant about going to the technical
inspection. He displayed an odd mixture of keenness and reluctance,
as if half of him was excited at the prospect and half of him deeply
disturbed. His long fingers trembled slightly as he lit his cigarette,
and it took him two matches to achieve the task.

"Och," he said finally, looking queerly at Woody, "I wish ye'd said
naething of it tae me."

Woody thought that Worm was merely reluctant to take them there in his
car but, priding himself on the generosity of the Highland Scots, did
not wish to appear stingy.

"Gee, Worm," he said, "if you don't want to take the Dodge, Steve and I
can find some other way of getting there."

"It's nae that, laddie," replied Worm, remarkably serious even for him.
"It's nae that at all. It's something I had put oot of my mind a long
time ago, and I dinna ever want it to come back again. And here it is."
In his distress his Scots brogue grew thicker. Woody couldn't make any
sense at all of what he was saying.

"Skip it," said Woody. "It isn't that important."

"It's nae so easily skipped, laddie," said Worm and went into his
office.

Woody returned to his work of grinding valves, a task that demanded all
his care. By the time he was done, he had all but forgotten his date
with Steve and his strange conversation with Worm. Indeed it was nearly
time to close down the shop, and it was Worm who reminded him of his
appointment.

"Meet me here after dinner," he said. "I'll take ye tae the tech
inspection. It's a thing I must do."

After dinner he was back at the garage to find Worm there dressed in
a clean suit of coveralls. He had a box of tools with him, and Woody
was surprised that he hadn't changed into his ordinary clothing and
should have the tools with him. However, he said nothing to him about
it. On the way, Steve did most of the talking. He explained that the
inspection had two main purposes. The first was to see that all the
sports cars entered for the race were in perfect mechanical condition.
Every feature would be checked for safety, from the seal of the
gas-tank cap to the amount of tread on the tires.

"Man," he said, "they really give them the works on that safety check.
They go over everything with a fine-tooth comb--safety belts, brakes,
brake lights in the rear, steering-wheel play, anything dangling
underneath that might give trouble--they don't miss a thing. I've seen
guys ruled out because their spare tires were a little worn. It's kind
of hard to get tires for some of those foreign jobs in a hurry."

The second purpose of the inspection was to ensure that cars racing
"stock," that is, without any changes from the factory model, hadn't
been secretly souped up in some way to give the driver an advantage
over his rivals.

"You take air filters," he said. "If the factory in England or France
puts a particular kind of air filter on the car, that's the one it's
got to race with. The same kind of filter may be available over here.
Looks the same and does the job no better and no worse. But if it isn't
the factory filter, the car can't race as a stock model."

"Heck," said Woody disgusted, "if they can't soup them up, what fun is
it? Any stock car will turn in about the same performance as another
from the same factory."

"Tuning, driving skill, experience, and guts, that's what makes the
difference," said Steve. "Wait until you see these babies race. It
isn't like Indianapolis, where they just go round in a circle as hard
as they can lick. Once you get into high gear at Indianapolis, you stay
there until the race is over. These boys race on tracks that are full
of hairpin bends, S-bends, and right-angle corners. They have to know
when to shift down and when to shift up. They have to know how to shoot
a blind corner so as to skid round it and still stay on the track. It's
no game for sissies. You get into a hairpin with a cloud of Jags and
Ferraris steaming around you and about three inches to maneuver in, and
you learn how to say your prayers all over again."

It was not hard to find the building in which the technical inspection
was being held. The streets for several blocks around were jammed
with sports cars of every make. It was as if some kind of automobile
carnival was being held. There was a tenseness and excitement in the
air that was infectious. From being slightly scornful of all the
proceedings, Woody found himself increasingly interested in the cars
and the people who drove them, and a little ashamed of his previous
"Mickey Mouse" label.

With Steve he sauntered over to a green MG whose owner was screwing an
air filter in place. He was surprised at the size of the engine. It
didn't look powerful enough to run a lawn mower.

"What will it do?" Woody asked.

"Ninety. Maybe ninety-five when she's wound up real right."

"With that?" asked Woody in surprise, pointing to the little
four-cylinder engine.

"Sure," replied the owner. "Never seen one of these babies before, huh?
What do you drive?"

"Used to drive a hot rod," said Woody.

"Me, too," replied the other. "But when I found out about these I
switched. That little engine there has a displacement of just under
fifteen hundred cc.'s--"

"What's cc.'s?" asked Woody.

"Cubic centimeters. One thousand cc.'s is sixty-one cubic inches. In
other words, with a displacement of around ninety cubic inches, she
develops sixty-five horsepower. That's darn close to three quarters of
a horsepower for every cubic inch of piston displacement. Not bad, huh?"

Woody admitted that it wasn't bad at all.

"Some of the Jags will turn out one point three six hp. per cubic
inch," the MG owner said. "That's on gasoline. That's better than those
Offeuhausers do at Indianapolis using gas, alcohol, and nitro."

"Let's go look at some of the Jags and Ferraris," said Steve. "Say,
what happened to Worm?"

"Probably crawling around under one of these buggies," said Woody.
"I don't think he's ever really happy unless he's got crankcase oil
dripping in his face. He brought his tools along."

"There he is," said Steve. "Talking to that little guy over there."

They pushed their way over through a tangle of cars, drivers, and
mechanics. The cars looked mostly like toys to Woody, but he had an
increasing respect for them. Worm was talking excitedly to the other
man. The two seemed to be old friends, and this surprised Woody, for
he hadn't known that Worm had any close friends, particularly in
sports-car circles.

"Gee," the stranger was saying as they approached, "I haven't clapped
eyes on you in ten years. What are you doing with yourself these days?"

"Running my own shop and service station," said Worm.

"Anything else?" said the other.

"Nae," Worm replied.

The stranger looked at him in silence for a minute. There seemed to be
some understanding between the two of them that Woody could not fathom.

"Like you tae meet me friends," Worm said, catching sight of them and
breaking the awkward silence. "Woody Hartford and Steve Phillips. Meet
Captain Jim Randolph."

"Randy for short," said the stranger, holding out his hand. Randy was
one of the smallest men Woody had ever met. He was slim, fair-haired,
and almost boyish in appearance. There were wrinkles of humor around
his blue eyes, and he sported a mustache that would have done credit
to a guardsman. Woody guessed that he was British--either Canadian or
English.

"You the same Captain Randolph that drove with the Morgan team in the
last Le Mans?" asked Steve.

"That's me," said Randy.

"Boy, you must have got a kick out of that," said Steve.

Randy nodded. "It was a lot of fun," he said quietly.

"What are ye driving noo?" asked Worm. Randy's whole face brightened.

"Something absolutely new," he said. "I was awfully lucky to get it.
It's the only one in the country, and none of them have been raced
before. Come along and take a look." Without waiting for a reply,
he led them down the road to the back of a large building where the
technical inspection was being held. There was a crowd of drivers and
mechanics gathered around a car parked in the rear of the building,
and it was difficult to get through them. When they did, Woody found
himself looking at an automobile like something out of the next century.

The body was gleaming black, and the hood shaped like the nose of a
shark. There was no radiator, the big wheels had wire spokes, and the
dashboard had so many instruments on it that it looked like the cockpit
of an airplane. Randy pushed his way to the back, the drivers and
mechanics around making room for him, and opened what should have been
the luggage compartment.

"Rear-opposed engine, air cooled, twelve cylinders, four thousand
cc.'s. Develops three hundred horsepower at just under six thousand
revolutions per minute," he said.

"Wow," said Woody. "What do they call her?"

"She's made by Milano of Italy, and she's called the Black Tiger,"
Randy replied.

Woody sighed. Here was a real dream car. No other car could ever take
its place for him. But he would never have anything to do with it, let
alone drive it. The thought left him vaguely unhappy.




                                   4


There are certain cars that those who love automobiles fall in love
with at first sight. The Black Tiger was just such a car for Woody. For
the next few days he could do little but think of it. He longed to be
associated with it, even in the humblest way. He would have cheerfully
washed and polished the Black Tiger for nothing more than the privilege
of being able to look it over in detail, from the small compact
wicked-looking power plant in the rear to the sable tiger emblem, set
on a field of silver on the front of the hood.

It would have been heaven to be behind the wheel of the Black Tiger, a
racing helmet and goggles on his head, taking her down the straightaway
of a race track at full throttle.

He besieged Worm with questions about the Black Tiger, and Worm told
him a great deal about European sports cars of all kinds. Worm seemed
to be familiar with every kind of car that had ever been manufactured,
and Woody was abashed to discover that in Worm's opinion the kind of
mechanical work they were doing in the garage was closer, as he put it,
to butchery than surgery.

"These buckets o' bolts don't call for a real mechanic," Worm said.
This so annoyed Woody that he protested American cars were acknowledged
the finest in the world.

"Aye," said Worm, "for what they're built for--plenty of horsepower so
ye don't have to change gear, fast getaway, and enough springing for
a feather bed. Ye can no beat them there. But they'll no take a sharp
corner fast. They carry aboot a ton of chrome fittings just tae make
them look pretty. They'll nae gie ye more than twelve or fourteen miles
tae a gallon of gas. Hoot mon. Do ye call it engineering when somebody
builds a two-ton car to take a two-hundred-pound man tae work?"

That quieted Woody for a while, and he went back to his dream of the
Black Tiger.

In the meantime, Mary Jane was beginning to find that the philosophy
of salesmanship and the company of Bob Peters left something to be
desired as a steady diet. It was fun, to be sure, to drive around town
in a yellow Buick convertible with the wind whipping through her dark,
curly hair. Bob had taken her out three times since their first date
and each time for the kind of adult evening that she wished Woody would
get interested in. The first time he'd taken her to a nice quiet place
where there wasn't a juke box (always a mark of sophistication for
Mary Jane) and then to a lecture at the civic auditorium. The lecture
was given by the sales manager of a big rubber company, and he had
discussed selling techniques for an hour and a half.

Bob had spent the hour and a half taking notes in a black notebook with
his name in gold letters on the front of it. Mary Jane was slightly
piqued because he hadn't said anything about her hair, which she had
fixed specially for the evening. But she reminded herself that she
was being childish and told Bob that she had found the lecture very
exciting.

This had the effect of encouraging Bob to invite her to two more
evenings of a similar nature. At one of them, a personnel manager had
discussed factors in the making of young executives. Bob took notes on
that too. At another, an advertising manager had discussed the results
of an experiment in which five hundred people had been sent circulars
in which they were promised a dollar if they returned the circular with
their names and addresses on it.

The only bright point in that lecture was that somebody had apparently
collected twenty copies of the circular from other people's trash
barrels and so got twenty dollars for himself.

When, therefore, Bob called her again with a proposal to hear a
visiting psychologist lecture on "Egotism as a Factor in Sales
Resistance," she decided she had had enough and said she was busy.

"I just don't know what's the matter with men," she said putting the
phone down. "When Woody takes me out, all he does is talk about cars.
And when Bob takes me out, he keeps trying to improve my mind. Isn't
there anybody who will take me out just because I'm _me_?"

Her mother, busy with ironing, made no comment.

"Didn't Daddy ever take you out just for you before you were married?"
Mary Jane asked.

"Oh, yes," her mother replied.

"What did you talk about?" Mary Jane asked, intrigued.

"His business mostly, I think," said Mrs. Jackson.

"Didn't he take you dancing, or for a ride in a horse and buggy in the
moonlight?"

Mrs. Jackson put down her iron and contemplated her daughter. "Horse
and buggy!" she said. "How old do you think I am? Your grandmother
probably went on dates in a horse and buggy. I went in my car. It was a
Chrysler two-seater--one of the first they ever produced. And, young
lady, I owned it. Sometimes I used to think that your father dated me
just to drive the car. He said when we were married he'd buy me a much
better one."

"Did he?" asked Mary Jane.

"No, dear," her mother replied. "He bought me a house full of
furniture. It was much more practical. But anyway, if you're not doing
anything this evening and you want to, why don't you call up Woody?"

"Oh, Mother, I can't," said Mary Jane. "We're not speaking. Besides,
he's probably busy with his silly old hot rod."

Mrs. Jackson said nothing but went on with her ironing.

"Do you really think I ought to call him?" Mary Jane asked. "Sometimes
we used to have a lot of fun together. Though he's so boyish."

Mrs. Jackson still remained silent, and Mary Jane said, "I wonder if
he's still at the garage?" She went to the phone and dialed the number.

Woody was so surprised by the call that he could only answer Mary
Jane's seemingly very casual questions in nonsyllables. He said yes he
was feeling well, and no he hadn't been sick. He almost let Mary Jane
hang up before he recovered himself sufficiently to ask her for a date.
And when he came away from the phone, he was grinning as he hadn't
grinned since he sold the wreckage of Cindy Lou.

"Ye'll be taking yere lassie out tonight, nae doot?" said Worm.

"Yes, _sir_," said Woody all smiles.

"Nae doot ye'd like a leetle advance on yer pay," Worm went on. "Or are
ye fixed for money? I could let ye have maybe a dollar."

"Thanks," said Woody, "but I think I've got enough."

"Weel," said Worm, "dinna spend a lot on her. Them that takes yere
money aren't the housekeeping kind."

When Woody called for Mary Jane he had the whole evening planned. He'd
borrowed his father's car--a '54 Merc--and was dressed in the dark
blue suit that Mary Jane liked. He had spent half an hour cleaning the
grease from under his fingernails, and passing a drugstore, had had the
happy inspiration to buy a box of candy.

Mary Jane kept him waiting for only twenty minutes. When she appeared
she looked slimmer and more vivacious and more attractive than Woody
ever remembered. She was not an exceptionally pretty girl but had a
certain grace to her ways and walk that completely captivated Woody.
Her nose was perhaps a little too snub for perfection, but her dark
brown eyes, set wide apart, gave her a frankness of expression that was
especially appealing.

"Hi, Woody," she said as she entered. "Sorry to keep you waiting. My
hair just wouldn't stay in place this evening." Woody glanced at her
hair, thick, dark, and curly, and didn't mind the twenty minutes of
thumb twiddling in the Jackson living room.

When they were in the car, he suggested that they go to Merton's for
dinner. Unfortunately Merton's was the place to which Mary Jane had
been with Bob Peters, and she now associated it with a certain amount
of boredom.

"We could eat there and then go to the civic auditorium," he suggested.
"There's somebody giving a lecture there on something to do with
psychology. I thought you'd like to hear it." Woody had been briefed
on tactics by Steve, who knew that Mary Jane had developed a passion
recently for lectures.

"Woody Hartford," said Mary Jane. "If you mention the word 'lecture'
to me again, I won't speak to you all evening."

They went instead to the College Try, a place halfway between a soda
fountain and a restaurant. It had a juke box, and Mary Jane played all
the new swing records she could find, and they danced. Woody decided
that Steve had given him a bum steer, but he didn't mind. He was having
a wonderful time, and Mary Jane was even more vivacious and attractive
than usual. She even asked him about Cindy Lou, and Woody told her that
it had blown up and he'd sold what was left of the hot rod.

If he'd been a little more observant, he'd have noticed that there
was the tiniest expression of satisfaction and even victory on Mary
Jane's face when she got this news. But Woody went on to describe how
he'd gone to the tech inspection and seen the Black Tiger. And when he
talked about the Black Tiger, it was with such enthusiasm and devotion
that Mary Jane realized Cindy Lou had merely been replaced by another
rival.

"I don't see what you get out of all this car business," she said a
little pettishly. "It's all so boyish. You just work in grease and dirt
all day long and then you take a car to a race track and perhaps drive
it two or three miles an hour faster than anyone else. And that's all
you get for your pains."

"Oh, it's a lot more than that," said Woody. "There are things in it
that are hard to explain. There's making an engine work better. It
gives you a sense of having done something. And there's challenge to
it. And some danger. And there's a feeling of belonging to a bunch of
really good guys. It's exciting all the time. Look. Steve and I are
going to the road races at Torrey Pines near San Diego next weekend.
It's a two-day event--Saturday and Sunday. And the Black Tiger will be
racing for the first time in America. Why don't you come along? You'd
really get a kick out of it. I know you would."

"Oh, I don't think Mother and Daddy would let me," said Mary Jane.

"Worm's going," said Woody, "and he'd take care of you. Your Mother
and Dad both know him. And Randy will be there." He launched into an
enthusiastic description of Captain Randolph that made it quite clear
that the owner of the Black Tiger was now Woody's hero.

"Well, I don't know," said Mary Jane. "We'll just have to see."

Mr. Jackson was at first reluctant to let Mary Jane go to the Torrey
Pines race. But Mrs. Jackson came to her daughter's aid.

"She's almost eighteen," she said, "and you've just got to get used to
the idea that she's very nearly grown up. She isn't a child any longer."

"Young people these days haven't any sense," grunted Mr. Jackson. "I'm
just concerned about whether she'll get hurt at the races. That's all."

"Well, she could just as easily get hurt crossing the main street
here," said Mrs. Jackson.

"Oh, all right," said Mr. Jackson, who had suddenly recalled that
his grandmother came West in 1865 in a wagon train at the age of
fifteen. Secretly he realized he was rather pleased at his daughter's
enterprise. It would be something to mention casually at the club next
time Wilson mentioned his son's speedboat.




                                   5


The Torrey Pines Road Race shaped up even better than Woody had
expected. He and Steve had proposed to pay their own admission, which
would not have allowed them to mix with the cars and their drivers in
the pits where the cars were serviced and given emergency repairs. But
on the Wednesday before the event, there was an unexpected development.

Woody was busy installing a new set of points on a V-8 on one side of
the garage when he heard the deep throbbing note of a car pulling into
the garage. It was not an engine he had heard before, and he looked up
quickly from his work. There was the Black Tiger and Randy stepping out
of the seat without going through the formality of opening the door.

Woody dropped his work on the V-8 and went right over.

"Hello," said Randy genuinely pleased to see him. "Busy?"

"Just putting some new points on that job," said Woody.

"I didn't realize you were a mechanic," said Randy. "Been working at it
long?"

"I've worked with Worm nearly two years. But I studied automotive
engineering for three years at night school."

"Hmmm," said Randy. "Say, is Worm around? I've got a problem for him."

Worm had by now come out of his office, where he was totaling up the
day's business with a stub of a pencil in a notebook whose pages were
gray with greasy thumb marks. It was an invariable practice of his.

"What's the trouble?" he asked.

"Got a job for you," said Randy. "I didn't want to bring it anywhere
else because I think you're the only mechanic in this area who can
tackle it. I've tried a couple of other places, but the Tiger is so new
I'm not quite satisfied that they can do the work. It takes the kind of
special training that you have."

"I'll do what I can," said Worm. "What's the problem?"

"Basically it's a matter of tuning," said Randy. "She's not tuned
right. We've been working on her all week, and she's sluggish at around
fifty-eight hundred rpm. That's just where I need to get real power.
What do you think?"

"I can do it," said Worm for false modesty was not one of his vices.
"But it'll take all day. I'll have tae shut doon on all me other work
tomorrow if the job's tae be done right."

"You couldn't work on it tonight, could you?" asked Randy. "I'd like
to get her tuned really fine and then try her out sometime tomorrow to
make sure everything's super. The race is the day after."

"Aye," said Worm. "We can work taenight for old time's sake. I'll close
the shop tomorrow, anyway. Woody, can ye stay and help a bit, laddie?"

Woody said he could with such enthusiasm that Randy smiled. They closed
the garage doors after driving the Black Tiger into the building,
and in the overhead electric light the car gleamed sleek, powerful,
exciting, and yet oddly menacing. The thought occurred to Woody that
here was a car it would take a real driver to master. It seemed to have
almost the spirit of a pedigreed stallion. With the right, sure touch
at the controls, it would perform obediently. But any unsureness, any
hesitation, and the car would master the driver.

Randy lifted the engine cowling in the back, and they set to work.
Woody could follow most of what the two were doing easily enough. They
checked the distributor, coil, points, spark-plug gaps, and timing.
All were in tiptop shape. Tappets, tiny as toys, were checked also and
proved to be correctly adjusted.

Then Worm did something that Woody had never seen before. He went to
his own tool kit, which he always kept locked, and brought it over.
He opened it up, and inside lay his tools, each contained in a velvet
covering and glittering like the operating instruments of a surgeon. He
took out the two top trays and laid them carefully on a cloth on the
workbench. From the bottom of the toolbox he extracted a stethoscope
such as doctors use for chest examinations. Woody nearly laughed. Worm
with the stethoscope around his neck, dressed in his soiled coveralls,
looked like a caricature of a mad doctor.

"Fire her oop," said Worm. "She's no breathing right."

Randy turned on the ignition and pressed the starter button, and the
Black Tiger purred contentedly to herself.

"Rev her oop tae five thousand," said Worm. The Black Tiger snarled
in anger and impatience as Randy pressed the accelerator down. Worm
put the stethoscope to his ears and the listening apparatus to the
carburetor intake pipe. How he could hear anything above the deep roar
of the engine Woody could not understand. But Worm was listening as
intently as any doctor to the chest of a tuberculous patient. He raised
a long finger in the air, and Randy depressed the accelerator further.
The Black Tiger's roar was now such that it seemed it must bring down
the building. Worm nodded and took off the stethoscope as the roar of
the engine died to a quiet purr again.

"It's as I thought," he said. "She's no breathing right around five
thousand eight hundred. The air's no ramming through as it should. It's
a delicate matter, and I hae me doots whether we can fix it."

"Have to change the contour of the intake and exhaust ports, huh?"
asked Randy.

"Aye," said Worm. He saw the mystified look on Woody's face and
explained. "It's a matter of using air pulsations tae shoot air through
the intake port and suck it oot of the exhaust. I've not got the time
tae explain it further. Ye'd find it in Davie if ye ever looked. But
it's controlled by the size and contour o' the intake and exhaust
ports. It's like using the air as a supercharger for itself."

Woody now began to understand what Worm had meant when he talked about
the difference between butchery and surgery in servicing automobiles.

"I'm thinking," Worm said to Randy, "that if the intake ports were
polished a bit it might do the trick."

Worm bent over to look. "Somebody installed the wrong gaskets," he
said, straightening up. "Yon gaskets are too thick. A sixteenth of an
inch will make a difference."

He took the intake manifold off and found two gaskets had been used
on them in place of one. Then he took off the exhaust headers and
found the same. When they fired up the Black Tiger once more, and Worm
listened to her breathing with his stethoscope, he smiled his approval.

"She'll do all right noo," he said.

That, however, was not the end of the evening's, or rather the night's,
work. Worm went over every detail of the engine, working slowly but
expertly, and Woody's job was mostly to listen and supply cups of hot
coffee. He had called up his mother to explain he would be home late,
but it was nearly one in the morning before Worm pronounced himself
satisfied.

"Ye can try her out tomorrow," Worm said to Randy, "and if there's
any further trouble, bring her in and we'll tickle her again tomorrow
night."

"Look," said Randy to Worm, "I don't know whether I can swing this, but
I've got a vacancy on my pit crew. One of my men is sick. In any case
I'd sooner you worked in the pit than he. Do you think you can do it
for me--as a favor for old time's sake?"

To Woody's surprise, Worm hesitated. He himself would have jumped at
the opportunity of being one of the crew of mechanics who would service
the Black Tiger during the racing. But Worm seemed loath to take the
job. Then Randy said something that surprised Woody.

"You've got to get over that, Worm," he said. "It was a long time ago.
You've got to turn round and face it, and you might as well do it with
your friends."

Worm didn't reply immediately. Woody sensed that there was a great deal
of tension in the moment, and that Worm was being asked to make some
critical decision in his life. Worm fished into the breast pocket of
his coveralls for a cigarette, put it in his mouth, and lit it, his
hands trembling slightly.

Randy was looking at him steadily--a look between sympathy and
challenge.

"I made oop me mind fifteen years ago to hae nae more tae doo with it,"
Worm said.

"That was the wrong decision," said Randy calmly, "and you know it. The
only way you can get it straightened out is to get back into the game
again. Otherwise you'll spend the rest of your life with this thing in
the background." Both seemed to have forgotten Woody's presence.

"I won't think any less of you if you refuse," Randy said slowly. "I
could never think any less of you, Worm. You've done too many splendid
things. But let me put it this way. If you accept, then you're an even
bigger man than I thought you were."

Worm took a long drag on his cigarette and looked at Woody for the
first time during the conversation. There was a softness in his eyes,
and quite suddenly Woody felt a great warmth for both Worm and Randy.

"All right," said Worm still looking at Woody. "I'll do it."

Randy didn't say anything. He just grinned and gave Worm a firm little
punch in the chest, and Worm looked a little foolish.

Woody, Mary Jane, Steve, and Worm went down to San Diego in the Dodge,
starting early on Friday morning. In San Diego they met Randy and all
had dinner together. Mary Jane said afterward that Randy was the most
fascinating man she had ever met. Certainly he was an excellent talker,
full of wit and optimism. Perhaps in deference to Mary Jane, he didn't
limit the conversation to racing and racing cars but spoke as readily
of the different countries of Europe, with an anecdote to adorn each of
them, as a man would speak of his own home town.

He talked of sailing on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland, and of the
mistrals, or sudden winds, coming out of the mountains, which made the
sport dangerous; of the Casino at Monaco and the Tivoli gardens in
Copenhagen. All in all he enchanted everybody, so that Mary Jane wanted
to know all about him and both Steve and Woody made him number one on
their hero list.

Woody noticed when dinner was over that Randy was a little awkward in
getting out of his chair. He thought nothing of it at the time, but the
detail had not escaped Mary Jane.

When they returned to their motel and Randy had left them, Mary Jane
turned to Worm and asked, "Has Randy got something the matter with his
legs?"

"Ye're a noticing young body," said Worm. "His legs are all right, but
he's only got five toes."

"Five toes?" said Mary Jane, horrified now that she'd said anything at
all.

"Aye," said Worm. "He lost his right foot about fifteen years ago. But
it doesn't trouble his driving, and he walks without a limp. I've no
doot it took him a lot of practice. There was some talk of barring him
from racing, but he proved he's as good a driver as men wi' two feet of
their own. He has a cupboard full of trophies won all over Europe. But
this is the first time he's racing in America."

"You mean he's racing an unknown car on a course he's never seen before
and with only one foot?" cried Woody.

"Hoot, mon," said Worm, "I mind the time he climbed the Matterhorn in
the avalanche season wi' the same one foot. It comes to me that yon
Randy wouldna enjoyed himself half as much if he had both his feet.
He's a mon that likes a challenge."




                                   6


Woody, Mary Jane, and Steve were out at the track early the following
morning after a hurried breakfast. Worm and Randy went out in the Black
Tiger together, and Woody took Worm's Dodge. They would not see each
other until the day's racing was over because Woody and Randy would be
in the pit area while they would have to stay behind the low fence of
wood slats, called a snow fence, which separated the track from the
spectators.

Woody bought a program and found a map of the track on it.

"Boy," he said, "take a gander at that."

The track looked in shape like a wire loop that had been badly
mangled. From the starting line, there was about four hundred yards of
straightaway. Then a right-angle left turn, followed after two hundred
yards by a hairpin bend to the right. There were a series of S-turns,
another right angle, and another hairpin, though not as acute as the
first. Then a straightaway of about three-quarters of a mile, followed
by two more right-angle turns, and so back to the starting position to
complete the first lap.

All the turns were numbered on the map and there were ten in all. The
track was just under three miles.

"We ought to try to get over to that first hairpin," said Steve.
"That's where we'll see the fun. Say," he said turning to a man
standing nearby, "how do you get to turn number two?"

"Butcher Bend?" said the stranger laconically. "Right over by that
clump of eucalyptus. You'd better hurry, though, if you want to get a
good place."

They had hardly got there when a loud-speaker over their heads said
in a peculiarly flat and distorted voice, "Attention all drivers and
pit crews. There'll be a drivers' meeting by the judges' stand in ten
minutes. All those competing in the first event for cars under fifteen
hundred cc.'s please have somebody there. You must get this briefing to
learn the rules of the course." The message was repeated.

"What's that for?" Mary Jane asked.

"To tell them about the flags and the rules of racing," replied Steve.
"For instance, if a flagman waves a black flag to a driver, it means
that he has to go round to the pit area and get out of the race."

"Why?" asked Mary Jane.

"Any number of reasons," said Steve. "His car might be leaking gas on
the track, which is real dangerous, or he might be driving so badly
as to be a danger to the other drivers, or he might have deliberately
fouled somebody. You can't just get into one of these cars and drive it
as fast as you want without regard for anybody else. It's a real risky
business, and even with every safety precaution that can be taken,
fellows crack up."

"I thought everybody just went as hard as they could go," said Mary
Jane.

"They do. But they've got to do it with judgment. Wild stuff is
strictly out."

The loud-speaker started to blat again:

"Today," the announcer said, "we have an event of very great importance
to West Coast racing and to road racing in the United States. A new
Italian car of revolutionary design will make its first appearance
on this track this morning. This is the first time that this car,
the Black Tiger, has ever been raced anywhere in the world. And it's
being driven by none other than the owner, Captain Jimmy Randolph, who
has competed in three of the Le Mans events in France and is one of
Europe's best drivers. Randy, how about saying a word to the folks?"

"Hush," said Mary Jane, though this was quite unnecessary, for both
Woody and Steve were standing stock-still listening.

"I'm very happy to be here," said Randy over the loud-speaker. "This is
a really sporting course, and I'm looking forward to an enjoyable day."

"What do you think of your chances in the Black Tiger?" the announcer
asked.

"We'll know more about them at the end of the race than we do now
before it's started," Randy replied. "I'm up against some hot
competition, and whatever driver wins will deserve everybody's respect.
There are eighteen other cars in the event--Jags, Ferraris, Maseratis,
and a couple of Thunderbirds--and I'm going to have to keep my eye on
every one of them."

"Any particular driver you're worried about?"

"At this point, I'm worried about them all," replied Randy. "Some of
the boys have raced against me at Le Mans. Tom Wisdom in Ferrari number
four is tops, and so is Kurt Kreuger in his Jag--I think it's number
six. But as I say, I'll have to keep my eye on everybody. They're all
tiptop men driving fine cars."

"Isn't he wonderful?" said Mary Jane, and Steve and Woody nodded their
agreement.

A few minutes later there came another announcement over the
loud-speaker. "Attention in the spectator area," the announcer said.
"Will Woody Hartford--that's W-o-o-d-y H-a-r-t-f-o-r-d--report
immediately to gate three? Woody Hartford to gate three immediately."

"That's me," said Woody in astonishment.

"That's right," said Steve. "Get moving."

"Where's gate three?" Woody asked.

"You, Woody Hartford?" a flagman who was standing on the track within
earshot asked.

"That's right."

"O.K., get over the fence and cross the track. Gate three's right over
there where all those cars are parked. By the big white building.
Hustle, because they're going to close the track in a couple of
minutes."

Woody scrambled over the fence and ran toward the white building as
fast as he could. At gate three he found Worm waiting for him and very
excited.

"Here," said Worm. "Sign this. It means that if you get hit or get
hurt, you can't sue the race track or anybody." He put a mimeographed
form before Woody. "Randy's other pit man didn't turn up," said Worm,
"and I can no handle everything meself. We've got forty minutes tae get
the Black Tiger ready, and because it's a new car, the officials are
letting ye join the pit crew. Hurry, mon. Did they never teach ye tae
sign yere name in thot silly school ye went tae?"

Woody scrawled his signature in indelible pencil on the bottom of the
form, and the two sprinted over to the pit area where Randy stood,
looking worried, beside the Black Tiger.

"Awfully glad you were able to come," he said. "Tape up my headlights
for me, like a good lad." He threw Woody a roll of adhesive tape.

Woody glanced at the headlights of the Jag in the adjoining pit. They
were covered completely with strips of adhesive tape. He guessed the
reason was to prevent them being pitted by gravel flung up by the rear
wheels of cars ahead in the race. He taped the Black Tiger's headlights
in a similar way.

"Get the fenders now," said Worm, and Woody put overlapping strips of
adhesive over the fore part of the Tiger's fenders.

"Can you help adjust these rear-vision mirrors?" said Randy when he
was finished. "Just move them the way I tell you." The Black Tiger had
three rear-vision mirrors, one on each front fender and one on the
dashboard in front of the driver. They had to be adjusted so that by
looking into them Randy could see the area around his two rear fenders
and behind him.

By this time the first race for cars under fifteen hundred cc.'s had
started. But Woody was so busy with the Black Tiger that he saw very
little of it. Eventually all was done and only just in time.

"Cars for event number two, report to the starting grid," the
loud-speaker instructed.

"That's us," said Randy. "Coming?"

Worm pushed Woody into the seat beside Randy and climbed up on the deck
behind the cockpit. From all around there rose a series of roars as
Jags, Ferraris, Maseratis, Allards, and Thunderbirds eased out of their
pits and slid slowly toward the starting area. The noise was deafening
and exciting beyond expression. The cars seemed to be challenging each
other, showing their strength like gladiators about to meet in a Roman
arena.

In this mass of automobiles, some snorting, some purring, some roaring
as drivers sought to keep spark plugs from fouling, the Black Tiger
slid forward through the pits out to the paved court that formed the
starting area. Positions for the start of the race had already been
allocated. Only three cars could be placed abreast on the actual
starting line. The others were lined up three abreast behind them. The
Black Tiger's position was in the fourth row of cars, with a cloud of
Jags and Ferraris ahead of her.

Randy, when he had the Tiger in position, buckled the strap of his
crash helmet under his chin and pulled on a pair of pigskin gloves.
The noise around was deafening. Woody was surprised to find himself
trembling slightly with excitement. But Randy seemed completely calm.
Worm walked around the Tiger making a last-minute inspection of the
tires.

He nodded his head, finding them satisfactory. Woody was watching
Randy, who had taken a casual look around at the cars behind and the
cars ahead. Randy now cramped his front wheels hard over to the right,
but did it without attracting attention. He caught Worm's eye, and Worm
gave him a quick wink.

"Good luck," said Worm. Randy waved, and Worm signaled to Woody to
leave the starting area and get themselves a position by the racing
pits, which were right opposite the starting line.

"Why did he cramp his front wheels around?" Woody asked.

"Just as soon as they drop the starting flag," Worm replied, "he'll be
around that Jag in front of him and have only six cars ahead instead
of nine. That is, if he's lucky."

Everything now became swiftly quiet. There was no more roaring from
the pack of cars, whose drivers were tensely watching the starter. He,
a rubber ball of a man, dressed in white pants with a multicolored
shirt of violent pattern, was standing to one side with his back to the
drivers. He had a flag in his hand and was casually scratching beneath
his chin with the end of the stick. Suddenly he leaped into the air,
his two hands above his head, and brought the flag down like a comic
ballet dancer.

With a roar, almost of rage, the pack of cars leaped forward. Woody saw
five of them flash by so fast that he couldn't even get a glimpse of
the numbers, and then the Black Tiger sprang by screaming down to the
right-angle bend a quarter of a mile away.

"Och, he's a bonny driver," said Worm, his face glistening with
excitement. "Did ye see that, mon? They had him positioned eleventh,
and he lopped off three cars right at the start." Woody was hardly
listening. He was watching the Tiger, which flung after the cars ahead
like a hound after deer. The first eight were in a bunch when they
reached the corner. There were a series of roars as they changed down
to negotiate the turn, and then they were gone, screaming up to the
hairpin that lay ahead.

"Yon Butcher Bend is a bad one," said Worm. "I'm hoping he'll use mair
care than courage in getting roond it."

Neither could see anything of the race now, though they could hear the
roaring of the engines and the squeal of tires as the pack slid around
the first hairpin.

"They'll be here in a minute," said Worm. "Count the cars ahead of the
Tiger."

It seemed less than a minute before the first of the cars appeared. It
was Tom Wisdom, driving his big red Ferrari, with the figure 4 making
a white splash on its side. After him, hardly a quarter length behind,
came Kurt Kreuger in a blue Jag. Then a Thunderbird, number eleven, an
Allard, another Jag, and then the Black Tiger.

"Sixth," announced Worm. "Nae! Wait a minute! Watch this!"

The Jag ahead of Randy zipped by them with the Tiger on her tail. Then
the driver changed down to get ready for the right-angle bend ahead. In
that second, Randy slapped his foot down hard on the accelerator. There
was a cry of "Oooo" from the spectators, and the Tiger flashed past the
Jag.

"He's going too fast for that corner," said Worm. "He'll roll her over."

Everybody strained forward to see what would happen. The Tiger
snarled and swerved wide almost to the edge of the track. Then with
a deep-throated roar, she clawed around the corner, her rear wheels
skidding, and was off down the straightaway like a bolt.

"Did you see that?" someone next to Woody called excitedly. "He took
the Jag and didn't change down until he was on the fifty-yard mark."

"Then he changed down twice in two seconds," said another.

"Brother, he'll strip a few gears if he keeps that up," said a third.

"Not that guy," put in another. "He's a real driver. When _he_ gets
into a car, he's part of the engine."

The voice of the announcer on the loud-speaker cut in, "Captain
Randolph in the new Italian car, the Black Tiger, is now fourth," he
said. "Ahead are Tom Wisdom in number four, a Ferrari; Kurt Kreuger,
second, in his XK140 Jag; Pete Nevins in a blue Ferrari, number
thirteen; and then Randolph. Randolph passed two cars ahead of him on
two bends. The first on the right-angle bend, turn number one, right
after the start-finish line, and the second, Fred Manini's Thunderbird
on the hairpin. He's driving beautifully and is out to win. This looks
like the battle of the day. The Black Tiger corners like a cat. But the
Ferraris seem to be a match for her. It's nip and tuck all the way.
This is a real driver's race."

The loud-speaker cut off, and Woody heard a cheer from the far side of
the track.

"The Black Tiger just took Nevin's Ferrari on the S-bends," the
announcer said. "Randolph is now third, battling to get ahead of
Kreuger in his XK140 Jag. This is the same car that did so well in the
last Le Mans race."

"Here they come again," cried Worm.

From far down the track three black bullets hurtled toward them.
Wisdom was in the lead, about a car length ahead, with Kreuger behind
him and then the Black Tiger. They swept by with a roar. The Tiger's
front wheels were abreast of the rear wheels of the Jag. Randy was
sitting back easily in his seat, as cool as if he were out for a
Sunday afternoon drive. There was a slight smile on his face and not a
suggestion of tenseness anywhere about him. Suddenly Randy changed down
and dropped for a second behind the Jag. Then the Black Tiger leaped
forward, and the two of them went into the corner abreast. Woody saw
the Jag sliding crabwise toward the Tiger and held his breath, for it
looked as if it would broadside into her. But the Jag clawed off when
there was nothing but the thickness of a coat of paint between them.
The two disappeared around the bend in a fury of acceleration, still
abreast.

Now he had to await a report on the race through the announcer over the
loud-speaker. It was not long in coming.

"Randolph's still fighting to get by Kreuger's XK140," he said. "He
nearly made it at the right angle after the start-finish line but got
crowded over. At the hairpin he dropped half a length behind. They're
shooting the S-bends now neck and neck. Ah. Here it is! Randolph took
those S-bends at full bore, pulling ahead of the Jag with inches
between them. He must have been doing a hundred and forty. Now he's
second with only Wisdom's Ferrari ahead, and battling for the lead."

The next two laps the Ferrari and the Black Tiger passed by in the same
position. Wisdom knew all Randy's racing tricks and could anticipate
them. The spectators had forgotten the rest of the field, only a few
lengths behind, to concentrate on the two lead cars. It became obvious
that the Ferrari had a quicker getaway and so could make up distance
lost on the corners. But at every bend in the course, the Black Tiger
was on her tail, worrying her, seeking for an opening to get through
and take the lead.

Suddenly there was a roar from the crowd in the direction of Butcher's
Bend. Woody looking over there could see what looked like a small cloud
of smoke arising. Somebody spoke hurriedly to the flagman in front of
him, and he stepped out onto the course waving a yellow flag.

"What's the matter?" Woody asked, turning to Worm.

"Accident," Worm shouted. "Somebody's hurt."




                                   7


An ambulance, its siren screaming, sped down the track in the direction
of Butcher Bend. It was back in a few minutes, drove through the pit
area and out onto the main road. Then the announcer said over the
loud-speaker, "We regret to say there has been an accident at turn
number two. The Black Tiger, driven by Captain Randolph, went out of
control, and Captain Randolph has been taken to the hospital. It is not
thought that he is badly hurt. We'll let you know his condition as soon
as we get a report--"

Woody didn't wait to hear any more.

"Let's go," he said to Worm and jumped into the Dodge.

In all its life, Worm's venerable Dodge had never done more than
thirty-five miles an hour, but on the trip to the San Diego General
Hospital, it made forty-five, protesting at every revolution of its
engine.

When they got there, Woody had some difficulty convincing the
receptionist they should be allowed to see Randy. "I can't do anything
without the surgeon's permission," she said quietly though not without
sympathy.

"Surgeon," cried Woody, "is it that bad?"

The receptionist gave a ghost of a smile. "Surgeons treat cuts as well
as fractures and broken heads," she said. "You'll have to wait."

They waited an agonizing hour without any news at all. Then a young
doctor came through, and the receptionist left her desk and spoke to
him. The doctor came over to them.

"Are you relatives of Captain Randolph?" he asked.

"Not relatives. Friends," said Woody.

"We're his pit crew," said Worm. "We service his car when he's racing."

"I see," said the surgeon. "Well, he says he has a daughter at this
address. He'd like to see her. She's in San Diego apparently. Can one
of you go and get her?"

"I'll go," said Woody. "How is he, doc? Is he badly hurt?"

"Well," said the doctor, "he's a lucky man. It's lucky for instance
that he has an artificial foot. That was crushed. Had it been his real
foot, the bone would have been splintered so badly we might have had
to amputate at the knee. As it is, he has a leg fracture, a dislocated
shoulder, and bad burns on the torso and thighs. He's a remarkable man.
He should be suffering from shock and in need of sedatives. But his
main concern is his car. Otherwise he's quite calm, and his mind is
clear."

"Gee," said Woody. "I'm sure glad to hear it isn't too serious."

The doctor laughed. "If it happened to me, I'd call it very serious
and give up racing for the rest of my life. Here's the address. He's
anxious to see his daughter so she doesn't get any false reports on his
condition."

Woody took the slip of paper, which had the address of an apartment
house on Front Street in San Diego. Without asking Worm, he got into
the Dodge and drove over there. On the way over, he kept thinking about
the best way to break the news. When he arrived, he still had not
reached a formula. He pressed the bell and when the door opened it is
probable that even if Woody had memorized what to say, he would have
forgotten it.

The girl who opened the door was about his age. She had red hair that
looked like burnished copper. It was cut in a page boy and came down
to her shoulders. She wore a black turtle-neck sweater and a skirt of
a dark green material that spread out like a ballerina's from a tiny
waist. Her skin was milk white, and her eyes had a trace of a teasing
look in them.

"Yes," she said politely when she opened the door.

"Are you Miss Randolph?" Woody asked.

"Yes."

"I'm Woody Hartford. I was working in the pit with your father at the
races today."

"Oh," she said. Now Woody was stuck. He could find no appropriate words
that would not alarm her. He decided to plunge on.

"He's not badly hurt, but he's been in an accident," Woody said. "The
Black Tiger turned over and he's at the hospital and--"

"Wait until I get my coat," the girl interrupted. She dashed into the
apartment and was back in a second, struggling into a white lamb's-wool
half coat. She pushed past him and down the stairs with Woody in
pursuit.

"There's my car," he said pointing to the Dodge.

The girl gave it a brief glance. "We'll take mine," she said and ran to
a red MG parked by the curb. Woody had just time to get in before she
had started it and was speeding down the streets. Woody was surprised
at the MG's acceleration and cornering ability. On the way to the
hospital he told the girl all he knew of Randy's injuries. Sitting
next to her, he realized that she was even prettier than he had thought
at first glance. And she drove like a wizard, snaking surely through
the traffic without a second's indecision.

At the hospital she was quickly admitted to the ward. Woody followed
her to the door with Worm. He hadn't been invited but realized this was
a good chance to find out how Randy really was and talk to him.

"Hello, Daddy," said the girl rushing through the door to her father's
bed.

"Hi, Rocky," he replied. "Had a little bad luck. The Tiger went out of
control and turned over on me, and I busted my leg. Got a few scratches
as well but nothing much." The words were silently contradicted by the
bandages that swathed the side of his head. He looked up and saw Woody
and Worm standing at the door.

"There's my pit crew," he said. "Come on in. Have you met my daughter,
Rocky?"

He introduced them, and Rocky explained that Woody had brought her over.

"What happened to the car?" Woody asked. "How did it get out of
control?"

"Hard to say," replied Randy. "She behaved beautifully right up to the
time of the accident. I'd just taken that right-angle turn right after
the start-finish line and was going into the hairpin. I had an overlap
on Tom in the Ferrari, and the steering went. Wheel just spun around
loose in my hand. Luckily I was on the outside, otherwise I'd have hit
the Ferrari. Instead I sideswiped a stack of hay bales and turned over.
I hope the Tiger isn't too badly damaged. There was a small fire, but
they put that out in a hurry."

Nobody said anything for a while. Then Randy said, "She handled like a
dream. She's a beautiful car--the best I've ever driven. I don't see
how she can fail to beat any competition that's offered her."

In all this time Worm had said nothing. Now, speaking very slowly, he
said, "If ye've any sense in yere head, ye'll forget all aboot the
Black Tiger and racing. This is the second time for ye. Yere luck is
going tae run oot one of these days." But Randy only laughed.

A nurse came in then and shooed them all out of the room. Down in the
lobby, Steve and Mary Jane were waiting. They'd come over after the
accident, which had taken place within a hundred feet of where they
were standing.

"Man," said Steve. "He's lucky to be alive. The Tiger rolled over on
him twice and then caught fire. They had to put out the fire to get at
him."

Mary Jane gave Woody a questioning look. "Oh," said Woody, "pardon
me. I'd like you to meet Randy's daughter, Rocky." He made the
introductions all around. It seemed to him that Mary Jane was a little
cool with her "How do you do?" but Rocky didn't notice it.

She turned to Woody and said, "If you wish I'll drive you back so you
can pick up your car. It was really sweet of you to come for me, and
I'm very grateful."

"It was nothing," said Woody. He could feel himself blushing and was
angry at his reaction.

"Well," said Rocky, "shall we go? I'm going to come back here and see
whether I can talk them into letting me stay in Daddy's room. He'll
need company, and maybe I can at least spend the night here."

The two went out to the MG together, and Woody felt the same sort of
lowering of the temperature he had experienced when he called Mary Jane
to say that he couldn't take her out because he'd spent his money on
Cindy Lou.

When he got back, Mary Jane had gone to the motel with Steve, but Worm
was waiting for him.

"We'll have tae go oot and get the Black Tiger," he said. "I've had a
word wi' Randy aboot it, and he wants it towed to my garage. We'll take
a look at it and see if it can be towed behind the Dodge."

They drove back to Torrey Pines then and found the Black Tiger had been
taken to a service shed in the back of the pit area. Worm jacked her up
and crawled underneath to inspect the steering linkage. He was there
ten minutes, and when he came out he had a piece of shiny metal shaped
like a large marble in his hand.

"Steering knuckle," he said. "Sheered clean through."

Woody stared at it. He'd never known of a steering knuckle breaking
before. It might happen on an old car, but hardly on a new one.

"How could that have happened?" he asked.

Worm shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Car may have been dropped in
shipping and yon knuckle slightly fractured. But there's some cars,
laddie, that are just not built tae drive. They're man-killers. And it
comes tae me noo that this is one of them."

Woody recalled the time he'd seen the Black Tiger in Worm's garage
under the electric lights. There had been something menacing about it
then.

"Horseradish," he said. "A car's a car. They haven't any feelings of
their own."

"Maybe not," said Worm. "Yet I've known cars in my day that were
never driven but they hurt or killed somebody." He looked almost with
malevolence at the Black Tiger. "I'm wishing Randy had wrecked ye all
together," he said with surprising feeling.




                                   8


It was a month before Randy was able to get up to Hermosa Beach to see
Worm and find out for himself what had been done on the Black Tiger.
In that time, Woody had been down to San Diego twice to see him, and
had seen quite a bit of Rocky too. In fact, he'd seen enough of her to
become aware that Mary Jane, despite an elaborate unconcern, didn't
approve of their meetings at all. He tried once to explain that since
Rocky was Randy's daughter, he was likely to see her as well as her
father when he went to San Diego, and that was all there was to it.

"You don't have to go driving around the city in that midget car of
hers," Mary Jane said.

"It's a full-size MG TF," Woody said. "And if I get half a chance I'm
going to race it."

"Why doesn't she race it herself?" countered Mary Jane.

"She's going to, in the women's races. But she said she'd let me drive
it at Hansen Dam."

"Woody Hartford," said Mary Jane. "If you drive that car in a race, you
can say good-by to me. I don't ever want to see you again."

Woody was thinking over this ultimatum when Randy came hobbling into
the garage on crutches, with Rocky at his side.

"Hello," cried Randy as cheerfully as a wedding guest. "I see you're
busy as usual. Where's my old friend Worm?"

"There," said Woody pointing under a big Buick. One thin foot of Worm's
showed, revealing cotton socks of a pale lemon color. This foot wiggled
a greeting, and Worm's voice came from underneath the automobile. "I'll
be oot in a minute," he said. "When I get this bell housing back again."

"Take your time," said Randy. "Just a social call."

Woody grinned across at Rocky. "How's the MG?" he asked.

"Just super," she said smiling back. "All ready for Hansen Dam. I sent
in my forms last night. How about you?"

"Well, er," said Woody. "I didn't get around to it yet."

Rocky looked at him out of her teasing, half-mocking eyes. "You'd
better hurry," she said. "You've only got two more days. Unless you'd
prefer not to race."

"Oh, I want to race all right," said Woody. "I just didn't get around
to it, that's all."

"I had her tuned yesterday," Rocky continued. "Purrs like a sewing
machine. Daddy says she's in tiptop racing form right now. If you can
get off for a minute, why don't you drive her around the block a couple
of times? I could come with you." The last sentence was said very
casually. But there was no escaping the invitation it contained.

"Gee," said Woody, "we're right in the middle of installing a clutch
here. After work, if you're still around, I'd sure like to try her out."

Worm had by now slid from under the Buick. Watching him come out it
seemed as if there would never be an end to him. First came two long
shins. Then two longer thighs. Then a narrow waist and torso and then a
long arm which fluttered upward to grasp the running board of the car.
By the time he had completely emerged, Rocky was laughing.

"Do that again, please," she said. "I've never seen so much person come
out from under one car before."

"Lassie," said Worm, "the Highland Scots are all big people. It's a
short man in the Highlands who doesn't top six feet two inches." He
said this solemnly, without anger or humor, as if he were acquainting
her with a piece of interesting information of which he was proud.

"How's the Tiger?" asked Randy.

Worm looked at him sourly. "She's fixed oop as much as she's ever
likely to be," he replied.

"As much as she's ever likely to be?" repeated Randy puzzled. "Is there
something wrong that can't be repaired?"

"Nae," said Worm fishing for a cigarette, for whenever he got out
from under a car, he saluted his liberation by lighting one. "There's
naething that can't be repaired. But there's some cars, as ye well
know, that hae hidden traps and faults in them. The best mechanic in
the world canna find them. And I'm thinking that yon Black Tiger is one
of them."

"You mean that there's something basically wrong with her design?"
asked Randy.

"Nae," said Worm. "There's naething wrong there. She's as perfect a
piece of automobile engineering as you or I are ever likely tae see.
Davie would have approved of her entirely. But think of it this way,
mon. There's several thousand moving parts in an automobile like that.
They're all moving at high speed--faster than an ordinary car--and
under peak pressures. Yon car has never been tried on a track before
ye took it oot. It's full of bugs ye can no eliminate on a designer's
table or in the factory. They have to be found out on the race track.
Some cars they never get the bugs out of. They're man-killers from
the first time they're driven to the time they give them up. It's my
opinion that the Black Tiger is one of them."

Randy listened to all this very seriously. He was looking straight at
Worm and never took his eyes off him while the latter was talking.

When he had finished he said, "This is an old difference between us,
Worm. You think that there are certain cars that are man-killers. And
I think that there are cars that kill or maim drivers until they've
found out how to build them better. That, from my point of view, is one
of the objects of racing--to design fast, efficient, safe automobiles.
The Black Tiger probably has a few bugs in her. But I think she's the
finest designed automobile I've ever seen. I intend to drive her and
find out what the bugs are.

"By the way, I wrote the company about that broken steering knuckle.
They've replied that they're checking with the shippers. Their only
explanation is that the car must have been dropped. The knuckle is made
of the finest chrome steel, and they cannot understand how, except
through some very heavy blow, it could have sheered off.

"They're going to foot the bill for all the repairs. They are anxious
to know whether I'll enter her in the Santa Barbara Road Races in
September."

"Ye're daft if ye didn't write an tell them no," said Worm sourly.

Randy laughed--a laugh of almost boyish glee. "Nobody will ever change
you, Worm," he said. "Of course I didn't. I wrote and said that the
Black Tiger will be at Santa Barbara and I'll be behind her wheel.
Furthermore, I hope you and Woody will agree to form my pit crew."

"Och, mon," said Worm desperately, "why do ye ask me?"

"Because you're my friend," said Randy soberly.

"It's because ye're my friend that I dinna want tae be there," replied
Worm.

"You'll be there just the same. Won't you?"

"Aye," said Worm with resignation.

The two went over to the Black Tiger.

"Daddy," Rocky said, "if you're going to look over the Tiger, can Woody
and I take the MG around the block?" Woody knew that she wasn't really
asking her father's permission but was hinting to Worm to release him.
Worm took the hint.

"Be back in half an hour," he said. "We've got tae get that clutch in
before we close the shop."

When they got into the MG, Woody turned to Rocky and said, "What's with
Worm and racing? Why does he seem to be half afraid of it, as if he was
always expecting trouble?"

"Didn't he ever tell you?" countered Rocky.

"No. Was he a racing driver once?"

"Yes," Rocky replied. "He and Daddy were great friends. They were the
two most promising racing drivers in Europe. Of course this was before
I was born. Daddy was about twenty and Worm the same age."

"What happened?" Woody asked.

"I don't think I ought to tell you," Rocky said. "It's Worm's secret,
and maybe you really ought to ask him. Though I'd advise waiting until
he's ready to tell you. I think he will one day. Here, you take over."
She pulled the MG to the curb. Woody climbed out, and she slid over
into his seat.

As Woody got back into the MG behind the wheel, he saw the Jacksons'
car going by. Mrs. Jackson was driving and Mary Jane was sitting beside
her. She stared at him in disbelief and then suddenly turned away and
looked straight ahead.




                                   9


For the next two weeks Woody saw a great deal more of Rocky than he did
of Mary Jane. He felt vaguely guilty about it. The business of getting
the MG ready for the Hansen Dam races put him constantly in Rocky's
company. They went to the tech inspection together, and Woody, with
Worm's assistance, remedied the various defects in the MG that the
inspectors demanded be repaired. They were minor--a new tire, a stop
light that didn't work, some adjustment to the brakes so that all four
wheels locked evenly, and one or two other odds and ends.

Woody had to admit to himself that he liked Rocky. As a matter of fact,
the more he saw of her and the more he was with her, the more he liked
her. But he also liked Mary Jane, and he wondered whether there might
not be some character defect in himself, hitherto undetected, because
of this. Could a guy be keen on two girls at the same time? He hadn't
read much on the subject, but what little he had suggested that this
was contrary to human nature. Most fellows seemed to have just one
girl. Yet there he was with two and loath to give up either of them.

Rocky had all the things that Mary Jane didn't. She loved cars and
would talk about them for hours. She drove like a wizard and was quite
skillful when it came to making repairs. As a matter of fact, she knew
more about sports cars than Woody did, though she was very tactful at
concealing this.

Mary Jane, on the other hand, was more feminine. Maybe she didn't know
much about cars and was somewhat averse to them. But she was more of a
girl and, indeed, prettier than Rocky. Woody sometimes wished that the
two could somehow be combined, for the result would have been ideal for
him. Woody would hardly think of taking Rocky to a dance, nor would
he think of asking Mary Jane to help take the head off an engine.
Combined, he would have a girl who could go dancing and work on cars
with him as well.

Steve was not a great help in this dilemma. "What you think you're
doing?" he asked. "Getting together a harem?"

"If you want a punch in the nose you came to the right guy," said Woody.

"Who? Me?" said Steve innocently. "Your old pal? All I have is your
welfare at heart. Just don't like to see a promising young mechanic
getting dame trouble so early in his career." He skipped quickly out of
the garage as Woody threw one of Worm's dirtier oil rags at him.

The matter came to a head one evening shortly before the Hansen Dam
race when Woody had a date with Mary Jane.

She was tight-lipped through the dinner and Woody was careful not to
talk very much about either the race or cars. When they were sitting
over a dessert of sherbet, Mary Jane said suddenly, breaking an awkward
silence, "Woody, are you going to race at Hansen Dam?"

"Sure," said Woody, pretending to be surprised by the question.

"I suppose Rocky has talked you into it," said Mary Jane.

"No, she didn't," Woody replied. "I'm racing her car. But she didn't do
anything to persuade me. I wish I could get you to understand that I
just like racing cars. It means a lot to me. It's the one thing that I
really like doing."

"If you cared anything about me at all you wouldn't race," Mary Jane
said, looking straight into Woody's eyes.

"Gee," said Woody, "this hasn't got anything to do with whether I care
for you or not. You know I care for you. It's just that I like racing,
that's all. And I've got a swell chance to race Rocky's car--"

"Don't mention that Rocky to me again," Mary Jane flared. "She's just
a scalp-hunter. She's out to collect all the scalps she can. And I can
see that she's already added yours to her collection." And with that
Mary Jane got up and headed for the door.

Woody had a hard time paying the check in time to catch up with her.
He tried to explain more to her about racing, but people kept looking
at them, and even when he drove her home, he knew that she was not
listening to him.

Her parting words were "You can make your choice between Rocky and me.
And don't expect me to stand around weeping while you do."

This time Woody got mad.

"There isn't any choice between you and Rocky," he said. "That's just
your excuse. The choice is between you and racing. And right now, for
your information, Miss Jackson, I'm choosing racing."

With that he slammed the door of the car and drove off. He hadn't
gone more than a quarter of a mile before he regretted such an angry
parting. He wondered whether he ought not to go back and try to patch
things up. But then he recalled how mad Mary Jane had been over the
money he spent on his hot rod, Cindy Lou. And at the memory he gritted
his teeth and drove on. It was time for a real showdown with Mary Jane,
he told himself. She would either have to take him, cars and racing, or
find some other guy. He wasn't going to give up his chief interest in
life for Mary Jane, and he found it selfish of her to ask him to do so.

Early Saturday he was at Hansen Dam with Rocky and Steve. Rocky had
raced her MG before and was well known to many of the other drivers and
their crews. They drifted over to her pit and were introduced to Steve
and Woody. She seemed to be very popular with the racing crowd and held
in considerable respect by them. One driver in particular, a long,
dark-haired youth named Pete Worth whom Woody had never seen before,
seemed exceptionally friendly with Rocky. Woody decided that he didn't
like the guy though he couldn't say why.

"Racing today?" Pete asked Rocky when they met.

"Of course," said Rocky. "Second race. Woody's driving the MG in number
four."

"That so?" said Pete looking Woody over. "Haven't seen you on any of
the tracks before. You from back east?"

"No," said Woody shortly.

"This is his first race," Rocky explained.

"Hope you know the track," said Pete. "Lot of hero drivers have wound
up on the hay bales on this one."

"What are you trying to do, scare him?" asked Rocky.

"Me? No. But that number-four turn is a pistol. Well, see you." He
turned to Woody. "Good luck," he said.

"Who is he?" Woody asked when the other had gone.

"He races a lot," said Rocky. "He's a first-class driver. If you can
keep him in sight, you're doing good. But he likes to go around before
the race and find out what kind of competition he's up against. And if
he finds a new driver he tries to throw a scare into him. He's only
joking, of course, but some of the boys don't like it."

"What kind of a bend is that number four?" asked Woody.

"Oh, it's not really bad," Rocky replied. "Where is that map of the
course? Here it is. Look, there's a long run out, about a quarter of
a mile, then a full hairpin bend back again. That's number four. The
only trouble about it is that it's narrow and it's flat. No camber
on it to help you get around. The thing to do is to change down at
the hundred-yard mark to second and then gun her around. If you do it
right, you can drift around the bend. But if you take it too wide,
you'll hit the hay bales on the far side.

"Remember this. If you do leave the track, don't get back into the race
until a flagman gives you a high ball. And if you spin out and your
engine quits, hold both your hands up over your head as a signal to the
other drivers to miss you--that is if they can.

"Tell you what. I know this track pretty well. I've raced on it twice
before. The track will be open for practice in a few minutes. Why
don't you take the MG and get in five or six laps to familiarize
yourself with the turns? It'll help a lot."

"Gee, thanks," said Woody. He climbed into the MG and settled behind
the wheel.

"Fasten your safety belt and take this," said Rocky. She handed him a
heavy white crash helmet. "Here," she said, "I'll fasten it for you."
Her fingers, when they touched the side of his face to fasten the chin
strap, seemed cool and comforting.

Woody gave a little wave of his hand, put the racing goggles from
his helmet down over his eyes, and drove the MG from the pit to the
starting area of the track. A flagman signaled him to stop, and five
cars, all in a huddle, zipped past. Then came two more. The flagman
waved his arm and Woody swept out onto the track. He revved the MG
up, and she took off so fast that he could feel himself pressed back
against the seat. There was an angry roar from behind and a Singer
stormed past him. Woody started to move over to the left instinctively.
In the same instant a Porsche Speedster swept by him on the left.

"Cripes," said Woody to himself, "I'd almost forgotten. They pass any
side they want to."

He felt his knees shaking a little from nervousness, and his hands were
a little unsteady on the wheel. Then he thought of Rocky watching him,
changed from second to third and third to high and blasted down the
track after the two cars.

There was a corner in front of him before he realized it. It seemed to
be hurled out of space toward him. He dropped down into third, revving
up for a second in neutral. He heard a tire scream as he pulled the
steering wheel over to the left. The MG picked up a rear wheel skid,
careened over to her right a little, scrabbled around the corner, and
was off again. But Woody had hardly time to congratulate himself before
there was another bend ahead. Again he changed down, braking hard to do
so. He turned the wheel to the right, hit the accelerator, and with a
car on either side of him, skated, his rear wheel protesting, round the
bend.

"So that's how it's done," he said. "You slam on the brakes, change
down, rev her hard, pick up a rear wheel skid, and get around." He
began to feel a little more confident.

His confidence was nearly wrecked, however, when he came to bend
number four. A series of signs before it marked off the distances from
the hairpin; two hundred yards, one hundred yards, and fifty yards.
He remembered Rocky's advice and changed down at a hundred. But he
was still going too fast when he entered the hairpin. He picked up a
four-wheel drift, and the steering wheel spun around crazily between
his hands. Woody hit the accelerator hard three or four times and
turned the steering wheel in the direction in which he was skidding. A
monument of hay bales, stacked around a concrete telephone pole, loomed
before him. Then they flew past, the steering wheel steadied, and he
was off down the straight again.

He made five laps before he decided that he was at all familiar with
the course.

"You did swell," said Steve when he got back to the pits. "But, boy,
for a moment I thought you were going to wind up among the hay bales."

"Didn't you tell me that you'd never raced before?" Rocky asked.

"That's right," said Woody.

"Well, it's hard to believe," she replied. "A lot of drivers I know
wouldn't have got out of that four-wheel skid. If Daddy had seen that,
he'd have said you didn't have to learn to drive. You were born knowing
how."

"Thanks," said Woody and he could feel himself blush.

"The track is now closed," said the announcer over the loud-speaker.
"Cars for the first event please come to the starting grid."




                                  10


The first event was for the big cars--three thousand cc.'s and over. By
common consent the three watched it from the start-finish line where
they also had a fair view of what was happening at turn number one.
Rocky, indeed, went out onto the starting grid to talk to some of the
drivers who were friends of her father. Tom Wisdom was there in his
Ferrari, and Woody could see him talking seriously to Rocky. He guessed
he was asking her about Randy.

"Is this big stuff much tougher to handle than the MG's?" Woody asked
when she returned.

"Some people say so. But Daddy says no. He says although they are
faster and heavier, they are also more easily controlled than the light
cars. Of course, a Ferrari is a lot more fun to drive than an MG. They
average about a hundred and twenty around the track, including the
hairpins and other bends, while an MG is doing super if it can average
seventy. I think it's just a matter of instinct and experience. And I
can't say which is the most important. You can't do it all on instinct.
And you can't do it all on experience either. Some of the top drivers
are those who have been racing the shortest while."

They only watched the first half-dozen laps of the first race because
Rocky had to get ready for her turn, which followed immediately. Tom
Wisdom won, and he was over in Rocky's pit just as she was ready to
leave for the starting area.

"Congratulations," said Rocky holding out a slim hand to him.

"Thanks," said Tom. "Good luck, kid. I came to tell you there's a
little oil right as you go into bend three. Not much. Nothing to worry
about. But I just didn't want you sharing the same ward with Randy."

"Oh, he's out of the hospital now," said Rocky. "But thanks all the
same. I'll take it easy."

Steve meanwhile had climbed into the driver's seat beside Rocky.

"Pile on in if you're coming," he said, leaving Woody to climb on the
back. Tom swung a leg over the side and crouched down beside him.

"You driving today too?" he asked.

"Yes," yelled Woody over the roar of the engine.

"Saw you during the practice lap," said Tom. "Nice bit of work on that
hairpin. Driven much before?" Woody didn't think he heard his reply.

There were eighteen cars in the race, and Rocky had drawn the ninth
position in the starting line-up. Ahead of her were five MG's, two
Singers, and a Porsche.

Rocky seemed completely calm as she did up her chin strap and pulled on
her racing gloves. Woody wondered whether the calm was all pretense,
whether she didn't feel waves of anxiety going up and down her spine,
and whether her knees weren't trembling a little.

"Good luck, Rocky," he said as they left the starting area. The smile
she gave him was not the least bit strained. It was eager, and her eyes
danced with excitement. In Woody's opinion, she was looking forward
eagerly to the race and had no qualms about it.

"Thanks," Rocky replied. "This is going to be lots of fun." She looked
around at the cars ahead, behind, and on either side of her, waved to
one or two of the other drivers, and seemed in every way completely
relaxed.

Back in the racing pits, Woody said to Steve, "Rocky doesn't seem a bit
nervous."

Tom, who overheard the remark, smiled.

"She and her father have nerves of steel," he said. "Just when other
people begin to get jittery, they begin to feel cool. I've been driving
fifteen years now. And I can tell you there hasn't been a race yet that
I didn't heartily wish myself somewhere else a few minutes before the
starter brought down his flag. There they are! They're off!"

A swarm of cars roared by them, and Woody hardly caught a glimpse of
the big five on Rocky's MG before it had flashed by.

Woody wished he could get over to the hairpin to see how Rocky handled
it. But he was compelled to stay in the racing pits in case the car
developed any trouble. He was able to see only snatches of the race as
the cars passed by the start-finish line at the end of each lap. The
rest, however, he followed through the announcer on the loud-speaker.
He confined his comments for the first four laps to the Porsche and
another MG, number fourteen, which had started a battle for leadership
at once. But by the end of the sixth lap, Rocky had come up to fifth
place and was fighting it out with a Singer ahead of her. Woody saw the
two speed by, and they were almost abreast at the bend. But the Singer
had the inside track and was the first around the bend.

The announcer now was beginning to take some notice of Rocky. "Keep
your eyes on Rocky Randolph in car number five," he said. "Miss
Randolph is the daughter of Captain Jim Randolph, one of the great
sports car racers of the day. She is driving an MG TF and doing a
magnificent job of it. Those who say that driving ability isn't
inherited may think differently after watching her. She and a Singer,
number twenty-two, are going into the hairpin together. The Singer has
the inside track. Boy! Look at that. The Singer, driven by Miss Simmons
of San Diego, took the hairpin a little wide, skidded to the far side,
and Randy slipped through the gap. She's now ahead--fourth in the race
and overhauling the Porsche in front of her."

"Here they come," said Steve excitedly. "There's the first MG, the
Porsche--and there's Rocky--third."

The announcer picked up the rest of the lap for them. Rocky was having
a hard time getting by the Porsche. She could corner better, but the
Porsche had more acceleration on the straightaway. She remained in
third place for the next two laps, and then the announcer said that she
had dropped back to fourth.

"Must be having some trouble," said Tom. They waited anxiously. The
first MG passed, then the Porsche, a Singer, then two more MG's, and
finally Rocky came almost crawling down the track.

She steered into the racing pits, and Woody saw at a glance that her
right-hand rear tire was almost flat.

Nobody said a word. Steve had the jack out and the rear of the MG off
the ground in almost the time it takes to describe it. In the meantime
Woody had taken off the flanged racing hub that held the wheel in
place. It was the work of less than a minute to remove the wheel and
put on the spare, and Rocky was back in the race in three minutes. But
in that three minutes, all the other cars had gained a lap on her. Try
as she would there wasn't time to make it up and get back into the lead
again. She did make up half a lap, but the checkered finish flag had
fallen before she could improve her position.

"Tough luck," said Woody when she drove back into the pit. "You were
doing swell."

Rocky's eyes were still bright with excitement. "It was wonderful," she
said. "I haven't had so much fun since the last time I raced. You boys
did a terrific job changing that wheel. Only lost a lap. Could easily
have lost two if you'd bungled it." Her smile was full of appreciation.

There was time, in the interval provided by the third race, to check
the MG over. Woody took it down to the gas truck to be filled up and
to have the oil checked. Rocky reported that the engine had behaved
beautifully, so he did nothing there but see that all the spark-plug
leads were firm and examine the valve cover for oil leaks. There were
none. When he got back to the pits, he found it hard to appear cool.
Steve and Rocky were watching the race, and he was glad of that. Rocky
had put on such a wonderful performance that for the first time he
became aware that he had better do at least as well if he was not to be
disgraced in her eyes.

He sat behind the wheel and looked into the rear-vision mirrors. They
seemed to be adjusted right. He got out and looked at his tires.
Nothing wrong with them. He opened the hood again, took the cap off the
distributor, and looked at the points. They were in excellent shape.

"What the heck am I doing?" he said to himself, replacing the cap and
shutting the hood firmly.

"Listen, Woody," he told himself, "all you have to do is keep cool and
drive as well as you can. No sense taking unnecessary risks. You've got
a long time to live. Besides, every other guy in the race is probably
just as scared as you are right now."

This thought, comforting for a second, was immediately dispersed by a
voice behind him.

"Feeling O.K.?" somebody said, and he spun around startled by the
unexpected words. It was Pete Worth, to whom he had been introduced
earlier in the day.

"Sure," replied Woody with all the calm that he could summon.

"Just dropped by to make sure you were in the race," Pete said.

"Sure, I'm in the race," said Woody, nettled. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Oh, nothing," said Pete. "I saw that Rocky had some trouble and
thought it might keep you out of it." He was quite cool, almost
insolently so.

"Just a flat tire," said Woody.

"Ah," said Pete. "Well, lucky it wasn't a front wheel. You can lose
control real fast with a front-wheel blowout. See you down there. I'm
in ninety-nine--the green TF." He pointed to his car, which was three
pit places away. Then he sauntered off. Woody fancied that he was
smiling slightly.

"Just trying to throw a scare into me," he said to himself.
"Front-wheel blowout! Bet they don't get one of them in a million
races." Nonetheless, he went around and inspected the tread on his
front tires. It looked good. The left-hand one was a little more worn
than the right. But not very much.

"Both tiptop tires," he said to himself. But he wished the left-hand
tire didn't show as much wear as it did. Probably the front end was a
little out of line. That would account for it. He tried to think of
something else.

When Rocky and Steve came back, Woody was looking very solemn.

"You feeling all right?" Rocky asked.

"Sure," said Woody, "raring to go." But actually he felt just like Tom
Wisdom did before a race. He wished he was somewhere else.




                                  11


Woody didn't feel any better when he was down on the starting grid with
a school of cars snorting roaring around him. In fact he felt a lot
worse, though he would scarcely have believed it was possible to feel
worse. Only Steve seemed to notice, however, for both Rocky and Tom who
came down to the area with him, were chatting away quite gaily. Woody
thought their attitude positively brutal.

"Don't you worry, pal," Steve said. "You'll do all right. Take my word
for it. Have you done up your safety belt?" Woody discovered that he
hadn't. When he got it buckled, the firm clasp around his waist made
him feel better. But it didn't stop the trembling in his knees over
which he seemed to have no control at all. He hoped Rocky couldn't
see the trembling, but she was busy with Tom and not paying him much
attention anyway.

Woody looked around and licked his lips, which were uncomfortably dry.
There wasn't much moisture in his mouth, either. He had drawn a place
well back in the pack. In fact, out of a field of twenty-one, there
were only four cars farther back than his. He got some comfort out of
this. There would be some excuse, perhaps, if he didn't show up too
well. After all, a guy driving his first real race couldn't be expected
to pass seventeen other drivers. He figured that if he passed one or
two of them, he'd be doing well.

"Where's that guy Pete Worth?" he asked Steve.

"Oh, he's way up in front. About third or fourth," Steve replied. Well,
that was something. He wouldn't have to worry about Pete Worth passing
him and maybe rubbing it in afterward.

"Wish I knew the track a little better," he said.

"Listen, pal," said Steve. "All you have to do is watch the guys ahead.
Watch how they corner. When you see them jam on the brakes, slow down
yourself. When they give her the gun, do the same thing. And if you see
a chance to pass, why take it. And remember, pal, we're all pulling for
you."

Woody was conscious that Rocky was looking at him. He was also
conscious that the corner of his lip was trembling. He could feel the
twitch in it, but he hoped it was not visible. To make sure, he put his
hand casually up to his mouth.

"Good luck, Woody," Rocky said. "Got to leave you now. Put your foot in
it whenever you can. She goes like a bomb."

"See you in about half an hour," said Tom.

Half an hour, Woody thought. This is one half hour I could do without.
The three left, and he was now alone with all the other cars around
him. An almost lazy silence, disturbed only by the deep beating of
the cars around, settled over the starting area. Woody pushed in his
clutch and put the gearshift in low. His foot kept trembling on the
accelerator so that the note of his engine rose and sank. The driver in
the car on his right hand side looked over at him briefly and winked.
He knows how I feel anyway, Woody said to himself. All eyes were now on
the plump rubber-ball figure of the starter. As usual, he had his back
to the drivers. He bent down, seeming to pick up something from the
track. Then, almost before Woody realized it, he had leaped into the
air and brought down the starting flag.

Woody let out the clutch as if it were burning his foot and jammed
down on the accelerator. There was a haze of blue smoke before his
windshield, and the whole pack of cars, with him in the middle, shot
forward. Two passed by him and cut in front into a space barely big
enough to hold them.

"Cripes," said Woody, "that makes me third from last." He changed into
second, into third, and into high, and before he knew it, there was a
knot of cars braking ahead of him to get around the first bend. How
he made it himself he could not recall. He got around in a screech of
tires with glimpses out of the tail of his eye of other cars, inches
from him, swaying and screeching around with their drivers crouched
over their steering wheels.

When he was around the turn, he glanced, by instinct, into his
rear-vision mirror. It showed the clear view of the track behind him.
There was not a car in sight. He'd dropped to last place in the first
three hundred yards.

The thought angered him. It angered him as much as the fact that his
legs were still trembling, his mouth as dry as blotting paper, and his
hands unsteady on the wheel.

He jammed his foot down on the accelerator and watched the needle of
the speedometer creep up to sixty-five, then to seventy, hover there a
fraction of a second, and then move on past. He grinned as he saw he
was steadily overhauling two cars ahead. The stop light on one of them
flashed red. Ahead were a series of S-bends. Woody remembered them
from his trial runs around the track. He glanced at his speedometer.
Seventy-two.

"O.K., brother," he said, "you're going too fast. But you just might
make it." He entered the first S-bend abreast of the Singer that had
been ahead of him. He left him behind as if the Singer were standing
still. But when he brought the steering wheel over to the right for
the next turn, the MG seemed to lie down on two wheels and started
skittering toward a pile of hay bales. There wasn't time to change to
a lower gear. Woody took his foot completely off the accelerator, and
it seemed for a second as if the car were going to turn over. He was
thrown hard against the side and stabbed his foot on the accelerator
again. For a second the car teetered. Then the MG recovered and flashed
off so close to the bales that he felt a slight thud as his nearside
fender tipped the edge of one of them.

Ahead now lay two more cars. And another bend. This time Woody changed
down. He revved the engine to a roar in neutral and let the clutch
out hard as he slipped the gear lever over into third. The MG jerked
forward, and Woody headed for a gap between the two cars in front of
him. If the gap remained he could get through. But if it closed he
would be flung against one car or the other. He jammed the accelerator
down and crept into the gap. His front wheels were level with the
driver's seat of the first car and six feet from the rear wheels of the
second car.

"Come on, baby," he said and urged the MG to more speed. Slowly he
crept abreast of the first MG and was now fully in the gap. The car
beside him started to slip behind. Woody felt a tinge of pleasure and
triumph. He was now ahead of the first MG but not enough to swing
over and pass the second. Suddenly he saw the brake light on the car
ahead flash red for a second. He was braking for a bend. Woody made a
split-second decision. If he braked now, he'd lose the ground he had
made. If he speeded up, it would be to go into a corner again faster
than he should. He hit the accelerator.

To the spectators it looked as if he were a bolt shot from a crossbow.
His car leaped forward swiftly to pass the one ahead right on the
curve. There was a cry of "Ooh," which Woody heard clearly above the
roar of the engines.

He had to take a chance now. He was going much too fast. He had to step
on the brakes and risk being hit by the car behind. It was either that
or spin out on the corner. He hit the brakes hard--so hard he could
hear his tires scream and feel the back of his car slew around. Then
he stepped on the accelerator again and pulled the steering wheel over
to the right. For a second it looked as if he was going to spin around
completely on the track. Woody did indeed spin around at a right angle.
But this served to help him around the corner and when he hit the gas
again, he was safely on the straightaway and had passed three of the
cars that had passed him in the early seconds of the race.

He hardly saw Rocky, Tom, and Steve as he flashed by the start-finish
line. If he stopped for a second to think of what he was doing and the
risks he was taking, the trembling and anxiety would return. Instead,
he concentrated on urging the MG to even greater efforts.

On the next three laps he passed three more cars. A fourth dropped out
for a pit stop, and that put Woody seventh from the end. Since he had
started out fourth from last he was doing well. He began to feel much
more confident of the MG's ability to stay on the track when other cars
would have skidded off into the hay bales, and began also to enjoy
himself.

The crisis of the race came at the beginning of the hairpin in the
sixth lap. In the five times he had passed it previously he had noticed
that there was a tendency for the cars to bunch up there. Everyone
slowed down and concentrated more upon getting around the bend than in
passing each other on it. There was a straightaway of about a quarter
of a mile leading to the hairpin, and Woody tearing down this caught
up with a huddle of five cars that had changed down to get around the
hairpin. They were all hugging the inside to give themselves a chance
to skid wide over to the far side of the track when they got around the
hairpin.

Woody decided to reverse this process. He would start into the hairpin
from the uncrowded far side of the track and try to cut the MG hard
over to the inside when he was around. There would be great risk of a
collision in doing this. But there was also the chance of passing two
or three cars on the one bend if the maneuver came off.

He approached the hairpin then on the outside and picked a place on
the inside as his target, toward which a red Porsche was speeding. If
things went well the Porsche would be out of the way when he wanted to
get in there. He changed down from fourth to third and third to second,
and, with his engine roaring, cut hard over.

Then everything happened at once. There was a scream from behind, and
a Singer squeaked by right under his front wheels. It went by as a
black blur, and in so doing, trapped the driver of the Porsche so he
had to step on his brakes to avoid a collision. The gap that Woody had
expected to appear just wasn't there. The Porsche still half filled it.
Woody glanced in his rear-vision mirror. There were two cars on his
tail, the Porsche dead ahead, the Singer, and another car blocking him
on the left.

His only chance was to cut off the track onto the dirt shoulder and
make room for himself there. He headed the MG for the shoulder,
picked up a skid, slewed sideways, straightened, caught a glimpse of
a telephone pole, pulled his steering wheel hard over to the left,
hit the gas, and then, to his astonishment, found himself around the
hairpin with only the Porsche ahead.

Woody swallowed hard. He must have passed two or three cars on
the hairpin. But he had nearly broken his neck doing it. The old
nervousness, now forgotten, returned in a flood. His legs began to
tremble. The Porsche fled before him down the straightaway. Woody
changed up instinctively. But when he came to the next bend, he slowed
down well in advance of it, and took the corner cautiously. He was
scared, badly scared.

He retained his place but didn't pass anybody on the next three laps.
There were only two more to go. But he could not bring himself to take
any more risks. The memory of the skid, of being locked in a whirl of
cars doing sixty miles an hour around a hairpin, and of the telephone
pole hurtling toward him was too fresh in his mind. He made an attempt
at passing the Porsche on the S-bends. But whereas previously he would
have taken a risk and gone hurtling by, trusting that the MG would stay
under control, he now braked and changed down, and the Porsche kept
ahead of him without much trouble.

"You've got to snap out of this," he told himself. "You've got to take
a couple more chances. Otherwise you'll lose your nerve."

He steeled himself for another try at the hairpin. He forced himself
to delay changing down and shot the corner from a wide angle. But
just as he thought he was going to get through and felt a tingle of
self-confidence returning, a blue MG ahead spun out. One second it was
holding the track doggedly before him. The next it gave a sort of lurch
or jump and turned broadside on to him. Woody flung his steering wheel
over with a cry almost of anguish. His bumper just missed the front
wheel of the car, which had turned completely around on the track. In
pulling out, he nearly sideswiped another car on his right, and though
he stepped on the gas and pulled ahead out of the mess, he was in a
panic when he got clear of it.

"I've got to get hold of myself," he kept repeating. "I've got to get
over this." But when the race concluded, he had passed no more cars and
taken no more chances.

When he pulled up to the pit, Rocky was almost dancing with excitement.
"You drove like a wizard," he said. "I went up to the hairpin to watch
you. It was terrific. You knocked off three cars on that corner and
must have finished about eighth. If you'd had any kind of a position at
the start, you'd have won."

Tom and Steve were full of congratulations, too. But their words were
empty for Woody. If they knew how he felt, he told himself, they
wouldn't be saying what they were. They wouldn't want to have anything
to do with him.

For Woody knew that he could have passed at least one or two more cars
except for one thing: he was afraid. It wasn't just nerves or anxiety.
It was plain cold fear. He'd driven his first race and come out of it a
coward.




                                  12


Woody made up his mind that the only way he could get over the fear
and dread that he now had of racing was to race some more. In fact, he
determined to do as much road racing as he could. In this decision he
had a willing helper in Rocky, and in the two months after the Hansen
Dam race he drove in five events. He was no longer considered a junior
driver and had got over some of the thrill of seeing his name in the
list of contestants at road-race events. He had even drawn mention in
one of the Los Angeles sports columns as an up-and-coming driver with a
lot of dash and courage.

When Woody read that paragraph, eagerly pointed out to him by Steve,
he wondered how much the man who wrote it knew of his real reason for
racing. Far from having a lot of dash and courage, he was always filled
with caution and plain fear on the track. He only placed at all in the
events in which he entered because he had a natural driving gift--an
instinctive combination of judgment and timing that took him through
tight spots. But he knew he could do better, a great deal better, if he
could get rid of the black fear that settled on him whenever he came to
a bend with half a dozen other cars roaring around him.

He wished there was someone with whom he could talk over this problem.
He wished he could discuss the way his palms sweated, his limbs
trembled, and his mouth went dry even as he sat down behind the
driving wheel at the start of a race. He wished he could explain how
those symptoms never left him all through the event; how he was filled
with dread from start to finish and heartily wished he had never taken
up racing.

Once he thought of mentioning it to Steve and went so far as to say he
always got the shakes just before the start of a race.

"Shucks, pal, everybody has the same thing," Steve said. "But you get
over it, don't you?"

Woody didn't have the courage to say no, he didn't get over it. Other
drivers did and took chances and won races. But he, although he seemed
to be taking chances, was actually avoiding them and getting through
on sheer driving talent. He didn't drive a race with any courage at
all. He drove it with nothing else but fear in his mind. If he could
find some courage, he might win a couple of times. But fear held him
back constantly--fear of being wrapped around a telephone pole or being
mangled under the wheels of cars behind or turning over and being
pounded to death in his own car.

About the nearest he got to talking to anybody about his problem was
one evening when Randy and Rocky had come up to Hermosa Beach and asked
him out to dinner. When dinner was over, Randy, who by now was getting
along without crutches though he had a slight limp, started talking
about racing. He discussed the subject as if it were a philosophy, a
mode of living calling out the very best in the character of those who
followed it.

Woody had never known him to be so serious before. He wasn't sure
whether the conversation was being held for his own benefit or for
Rocky's.

"Road racing condenses into a few minutes or hours all the problems,
the fears, and the triumphs of life," Randy said, smoothing his fair
hair with a thin sensitive hand. "It demands the one thing that no man
can get through life without successfully. Self-reliance. There are
millions of people quite talented and able who go through life being
unsure of themselves. They haven't enough self-confidence to take a
risk--to change their jobs, their localities, and so on. They live
rather miserably without ever having fulfilled themselves.

"But in racing, such people are soon ruled out. The driver who has no
basic confidence in himself will keep coming in last. Either that or
he will develop self-confidence. If he remains unsure of himself, he
will quit racing. Just as in life, if he remains unsure of himself, he
will quit trying and seek some job that offers security rather than
opportunity."

"You don't think it is possible to get by on just driving skill alone?"
asked Woody. "I mean, suppose there was a man who was just naturally a
good driver. But he really didn't trust himself. Wouldn't he still show
up pretty well on the track?"

"He would for a while," said Randy, "but after, say, half a dozen
races, he'd be fighting himself. He might think he was racing the car
ahead. But he'd really be racing the guy within him. One part would be
telling him to go ahead and take a few chances and rely on his skill in
getting through. The other part would be telling him to save his skin
and not take any risks.

"That's where the real testing comes in, of course. But I've seen some
good men crack up, fighting themselves like that. They'd have been a
lot better off if they never went in for racing in the first place.
Unless they win a victory over themselves and achieve self-confidence,
they remain miserable for the rest of their lives. They drop out of
racing. But they can never be happy."

"What about fear?" said Woody. "I mean you've been in a couple of
accidents. Didn't that make you real scared the next time you drove?"

"It certainly did and does," replied Randy. "But self-confidence
doesn't mean that a man is without fear. You've got to be afraid, to
get any self-confidence that comes from overcoming fear. But some
people never make it. They spend the rest of their lives doubting their
own abilities.

"The time I cracked up and had my foot amputated, I broke out in a cold
sweat whenever I thought of racing again. All my friends advised me to
give up the game. On the surface, it would have been the sensible thing
to do. But they did not realize that if I quit, it would have been a
victory for fear, and I would have to live with it for the rest of my
life."

Up to this point Woody had been on the verge of confessing his own
fears to Randy. But now he found he could not do so. This seemed to
be a battle he had to fight alone. It was one with which none of his
friends could help him. He realized dimly that men always fight their
battles alone--not just in racing cars but in their daily living. They
alone can make the critical decisions, and nobody can help with them.

"How do you feel about the Black Tiger now?" Woody asked instead of
mentioning his own fears.

"To be honest with you, I'm scared stiff," said Randy with a laugh. "If
I wasn't scared, I might put off racing her for a little while. But if
I postponed it now, though other people might say I had good reasons,
I'd know that the real reason was fear. And then I might never race
again." Woody did say that he was always scared himself when he got
behind the steering wheel of the MG. But he didn't say that he remained
scared all through the race and deliberately neglected chances to pass
other cars because he was afraid to take them. He felt that both Randy
and Rocky would be contemptuous of him if he did. And he wanted them
both to have a good opinion of him.

A month remained before the Santa Barbara race. It was a pretty
miserable month for Woody. He got nervous and a little irritable, which
was unusual for him. Both his father and mother noticed the change
in him, and one evening his father put down his paper, took off his
glasses with a swift decision, and nodded to Woody's mother, who left
the room. When she had gone, Mr. Hartford said, "Woody, your mother
and I are both worried about you. You're not eating much, and you seem
nervous all the time. Is there anything the matter?"

"No," said Woody shortly. Mr. Hartford groaned silently. He could
recall a similar occasion in his own youth when his father had tried to
talk to him man to man, and he had withheld his confidence. He was hurt
that his son should do the same to him now.

"Son," said Mr. Hartford, "I never pry into your affairs. I look upon
you as a sensible young man of whom I am proud. But I've lived a lot
longer than you. That's a mathematical fact. I don't say I'm smarter
than you. But I've just had more experience. Now if you've got some
sort of a problem that's bothering you that I, with my experience, can
help with, I wish you'd let me know about it."

"It's nothing, Dad," said Woody.

"Is it money?" Mr. Hartford persisted. Woody shook his head.

"Is it Mary Jane? I notice you haven't been seeing much of her lately."
Woody hesitated. He missed Mary Jane a great deal. At one time he might
have been able to talk his problem over with her. But she was so dead
set against racing that all she would tell him would be to give it up.
She wouldn't understand that there was more than racing involved in the
problem.

"No, Dad," Woody said, "It isn't Mary Jane. It's really nothing at all.
I just don't feel well. I think I'll go for a walk." He left the room
rather hurriedly, for he wanted to avoid further questioning. When he
had gone, Mrs. Hartford came in.

"Did you find out anything?" she asked.

"No," replied her husband. "There's something the matter, but only time
will bring it out. The boy has some problem, and feels he ought to keep
it to himself."

"But we're his parents," said Mrs. Hartford. "Surely he should be able
to tell us."

Mr. Hartford smiled. "Mother," he said, "when a boy decides not to
discuss his troubles with his parents, it doesn't mean that he doesn't
love them any more. It means that he's becoming a man. I'm pretty proud
of Woody. I'd have been just a little disappointed if he'd broken down
and told me what was the matter with him."

For two weeks before the Santa Barbara race, Woody spent most of his
time working on the Black Tiger. Randy made the deal with Worm,
agreeing to pay Woody's wages. Randy and Rocky rented an apartment in
Hermosa Beach so they could be near the car, and the Black Tiger was
given a thorough overhaul from rear axle to fan belt. In those two
weeks Woody became more and more fond of Randy. The man had a buoyancy
of spirit and a quick humor that was completely captivating. It was
hard to believe that he had any fears at all about the forthcoming
race. He spoke of it with enthusiasm and excitement, as if it were
something he was looking forward to eagerly.

Woody often wanted to ask him whether he still felt nervous about it,
but could not bring himself to do so.

The Thursday before the race, which was to be held over the weekend,
they took the Black Tiger out to the salt flats, and Randy let Woody
drive her. Woody had once wanted nothing more in life than to be seated
behind her wheel. But now that the opportunity was offered him, he
sought to get out of it.

"I'm not used to the car," he said. "I might chew up your gearbox."

"Nonsense," said Randy. "Hop in. She's getting maximum torque at six
thousand. Rev her up to that before you change. Then change fast and
with full throttle. You'll get a real thrill out of it."

When he got going, Woody did get a thrill out of it. For a while he
experienced the old exhilaration at his effortless arrowing forward
in the Black Tiger, with the landscape around reduced to a blur. The
car handled much more delicately than the MG. It was, he told himself,
a real racing machine. He glanced at the speedometer and saw he was
hitting a hundred and sixty in high. But when he got back and climbed
out he was trembling slightly and his mouth was dry.

"How'd she feel?" asked Randy.

"Beautiful," Woody replied.

"One day," Randy said, "you might be able to race her yourself." Woody
hoped heartily that that day would never come.




                                  13


There were two other events before the Black Tiger was due to race at
Santa Barbara. In the first, for cars under fifteen hundred cc.'s,
Rocky raced the MG, and drove better than Woody had ever seen her drive
before. She came up from seventh at the starting line to second when
the race was over, and if the race had gone another lap she would have
been first.

"This is our day, Randy," she told her father when she got back to the
pit. "You're bound to win in the Black Tiger now. I just feel it."

"If I drove like you, I'd feel it myself," said Randy.

The second race was for old-style racing cars and more of a novelty
than a sporting event. Woody saw little of it, being busy with
last-minute details on the Black Tiger. The car was in tiptop shape. It
was still the magnet of attention among the other drivers and mechanics
in the pit area. They came over in twos and threes to look over the
engine and comment on the streamlining. Tom Wisdom and Kurt Kreuger,
old rivals of Randy's who were to race against him again, were there.
They were obviously delighted to know that Randy's leg was in good
enough shape for him to race again.

Woody overheard Tom say to Kreuger, "If it was a matter of guts alone,
Randy would be sure to win. Boy, he's got more guts than all of us put
together."

"You can say that again," said Kurt. He looked back at the Black Tiger
and shook his big head solemnly. "Hate to say it," he said, "but that
car just bothers me. Too new. Too many unknown bugs in it."

Tom nodded his head solemnly, and the two drifted off.

Randy made different pit-crew arrangements for the race than those at
Torrey Pines. "Rocky and Worm stay here at the racing pit in case I
develop some trouble," he said. "Woody, I'd like you to go out to bend
number five and pick a spot by the fence where I can see you as I come
out of the bend. Take along that blackboard and a piece of chalk. When
I come out of the bend, hold the blackboard well up so I can see it,
and chalk on it the number of the lap and my position. If I'm more than
sixth or seventh don't bother giving me the position. But if I'm among
the first five or so, let me know. Understand?"

"Yes," said Woody. "I'll put the lap number at the top of the board,
and your position down below it."

"Swell," said Randy. "The race is for thirty minutes. Toward the end,
you can forget about the lap number and just let me know the number of
minutes left. O.K.?" Woody nodded and went off to pick a good spot near
bend number five.

The Santa Barbara track is laid out roughly in the shape of a
horseshoe. The cars travel around the inside of the shoe and then
around the outside to complete one lap. But it is a horseshoe that has
been badly bent, so that instead of just two hairpins at the feet and
a long slow curve at the top, there are a number of near right-angle
bends as well.

Woody found a good place behind the snow fence and waited, nerves
tingling, for the race to start. Over the loud-speaker he could hear
the commentator briefing the crowd on what was going to take place.

"This race," he said, "will commence with a Le Mans start. The cars are
parked on one side of the track and their drivers opposite them on the
other. When the starter brings down his flag, the drivers will sprint
to their cars, jump in, fasten their safety belts, switch on their
engines, and get going. The start, then, is a critical moment. A driver
who can get under way quickly can get ahead of three or four cars he
might not have a chance of passing on the track.

"Well, there they are, all sitting down waiting for the starting flag.
There are three veteran Le Mans drivers in this event--Kurt Kreuger in
Jag number eight, Tom Wisdom in a red Ferrari, number ten, and Jimmy
Randolph in his new Italian job, the Black Tiger, number two. Randy
has raced this car only once before and was doing well when he broke a
steering knuckle and turned over. He's a great guy to be racing today.
But he has every confidence in his car. Here it is. They're off--"

The rest of what the announcer said was drowned in a roar of engines.
Woody strained over the snow fence, his eyes on bend number five about
a hundred yards down the track. It was a particularly savage bend with
buildings on either side and a house dead in front when the driver
was halfway around. The house was protected with hay bales. Any car
that didn't get around would run straight into them. A further hazard
consisted of a thick telephone pole at the end of the bend, where most
cars would be swinging wide after making the turn. There were hay bales
around that also.

Suddenly there was a roar, and the first car appeared around number
five. It was a red Ferrari, number twelve. Then came two more and then
a Jag. Then three in a huddle, the one on the outside just missing the
telephone pole. Woody began to wonder where Randy was. Suddenly the
Black Tiger flashed by in eighth place. Randy, with his newly mended
leg, had not been able to sprint over to his car as fast as the other
drivers. It was typical of the man that he had made no mention of this
additional handicap before the start.

The announcer picked up the rest of the first lap for Woody. Wisdom
and Kreuger, old rivals, were battling for third place. Ahead of them
was Ben Wedger in a Maserati. There was no mention yet of the Black
Tiger. Woody suspected that Randy was still in eighth place. He waited,
his eyes riveted on turn number five. Suddenly two cars flashed around
it wheel to wheel. The outside car swerved off the shoulder of the
track and looked as if it were going to hit the telephone pole. Woody
could see the driver fighting to bring it back again. He succeeded but
dropped to second place. Then came two more, one on the tail of the
other. The first was Kreuger's Jag, number eight. Then Tom Wisdom in
his red Ferrari. Then a Maserati, number eleven, and then the Black
Tiger. She came around the corner like her namesake, clinging to the
inside of the track and passed the Maserati, going full bore as they
came abreast of Woody.

"He's fifth now," Woody yelled excitedly. He chalked a big three for
the lap number on the top of the board and a big five for Randy's place
in the last lap below it.

"They're going into the north hairpin now," said the announcer. "Dave
Kingston is still ahead in number twelve, Kreuger and Wisdom are
fighting it out wheel to wheel. They've come up to second and third
respectively. Wait a minute. What's this. The Black Tiger, driven by
Jimmy Randolph, just shot between Wisdom and Kreuger to take over third
place. That makes it Kingston, Kreuger, and Randolph in the Black Tiger
third. But it's still anybody's race with twenty minutes to go."

Woody forgot about the sign board in his excitement. He leaned as far
as he could over the snow fence to see the Black Tiger come around
turn number five. There was a tense silence in the crowd, above which
he could hear the roar of the engines. He heard the squeal of wheels
and the coughing spit of Kingston's Ferrari as he changed down for the
bend. Then Kingston was around and after him. Turning the corner in the
same instant was Kreuger's Jag and the Black Tiger, wheel to wheel. As
they flashed by Woody caught a glimpse of Randy, sitting quite relaxed
behind the wheel. There was a slight smile on his face, and then he was
gone, headed for the right-angle bend half a mile down the track.

"It's Dave Kingston against Jimmy Randolph in the Black Tiger now," the
loud-speaker blared. "Randolph cut in from the far side of the track
on bend six to take over the second place from Kreuger. He's battling
Kingston now for the lead position. As they pass the start-finish line
on the sixth lap it's Kingston, Randolph, Kreuger, and Wisdom.

"Randolph had an overlap on Kingston's Ferrari twice. This is a great
race--perhaps the greatest we shall see this year. Here they are going
into the hairpin. Kingston is skillfully blocking all Randolph's
attempts to pass. He's holding that inside position and has just a
little more speed than the Black Tiger on the straightaway. Now they're
entering bend number five. It looks as though Randolph is going to take
it wide, relying on the cornering ability of the Tiger to take him
around--"

Woody didn't have to listen to the rest. He saw it. Kingston's Ferrari
hurtled around the bend on the inside with the Black Tiger on its tail.
The big Ferrari skidded for a fraction of a second, picked up traction,
and hurtled down the straightaway.

But something went wrong with the Black Tiger. The car took the corner
wide, and Woody could see Randy fighting to get control. It looked as
though he was going to hit the telephone pole, but he managed to miss
it by inches. The car came roaring and fishtailing toward the crowd.
People scattered like dust before a heavy gust of wind. Woody caught
a glimpse of the Tiger hitting the shoulder of the road not a hundred
yards from him. Then it leaped into the air, turned slowly on its side,
and hit the ground upside down. It slithered bumping and screaming,
sparks flying from it, and the wheels spinning, for fifty yards before
it came to a standstill.

Woody was over the snow fence before anybody could stop him. Flagmen
appeared is if by magic, waving the red accident flags. Woody was
conscious that several cars flashed by, slowing down near him, but he
had no eyes for them. He ran to the Black Tiger, which lay beside the
track, its wheels still spinning in the air.

"Randy," he shouted, "Randy."

"Get back," somebody yelled at him and pulled him by the shoulder.
Woody yanked himself savagely free and grabbed the side of the Black
Tiger, attempting to right it. Several other men came to help. Together
they got the Tiger back on its wheels. Randy was in the driver's seat,
but his shape was all wrong. One hand was nothing but a red hunk of
meat. It lay on his safety belt, and it was obvious that he had been
fumbling with it. Blood dripped quietly from it onto his pants. He was
slumped sideways beside the steering wheel but in such a way as to
suggest that his back was broken. His head lay on the seat, and his
face turned up toward them.

He looked at Woody and attempted a smile, but coughed instead. A little
pink foam came to his lips.

"Brakes," he said and closed his eyes.

The ambulance was there in a second, and everybody hustled away to
make room for the ambulance attendant. Woody stayed as near as he was
allowed and saw a doctor bend over Randy. When the doctor stood up,
he didn't say anything. He just shook his head and got back into the
ambulance.

Then Woody knew that Randy was dead. The Black Tiger had killed him.




                                  14


In the weeks that followed Randy's death, nobody made any mention of
road racing or the Black Tiger around Worm's garage. There was a tacit
understanding that both topics should be ignored. Woody worked harder
than ever at his job and tried to put both subjects out of his mind. He
saw Rocky only at the funeral, and then she went back to San Diego to
live with an aunt. Woody did not know what happened to the Black Tiger.
And he hoped he would never hear of it or see it again.

Worm made only one comment on the fatal accident that killed Randy.
"Yon Black Tiger is a killer car," he said to Woody. "I told Randy so
and tried to warn him against racing it. But he was no a man that ye
could warn."

It was not, however, as easy to get away from road racing as Woody
hoped. When he went into a drugstore for a hamburger, he found himself
eying the road-racing magazines. When he bought a newspaper, the sports
pages with their columns on road racing had an irresistible fascination
for him. He did not want to look at them. Yet he found that he could
not refrain from doing so. Names seemed to leap out of the pages at
him--Tom Wisdom, Kurt Kreuger, Dave Kingston. It was strange how out of
several thousand printed words on a page, one word would stand out as
if it were printed in a different color.

A week after Randy's death, Woody called up Mary Jane and asked her for
a date. She sounded neither cold nor very friendly on the phone, and
said she was doing nothing that night. Woody asked her out to dinner.
When he called for her, he began to realize how much he had missed her.
It seemed as if he had been only a portion of himself and now he was
made whole again. They spent a pleasant evening, not saying anything
about what was past or about any plans for the future. It seemed as if
the two of them just wanted to enjoy the present for the moment.

Mary Jane seemed much more grown up to Woody that evening. She talked
neither of Somerset Maugham nor of boys she'd been out with while they
were quarreling. Woody felt peaceful while he was with her for the
first time in many weeks. When he went home, he slept well, and the
following day was whistling at his work and much more his old self.

Worm noticed the change and was pleased by it. He was not a man to pry
into others' affairs, but he had been worried about Woody, toward whom
he adopted an attitude part father and part elder brother.

For the next month things went smoothly in this fashion, and Woody
almost managed to forget about road racing and the unconquered fears
with which the whole subject filled him.

Then one day the telephone rang, and when he answered it Rocky was on
the line.

"Hi, Woody," she said. "How have you been?"

"Pretty good," Woody replied. "How are things with you?"

"Just fine now that--now that everything's settled. I called you up
because I just had some wonderful news. Guess what?"

"What?" said Woody and he felt curiously ill at ease.

"The Italian factory that made the Black Tiger had a representative
over here to look at Daddy's car. You know there are only three of them
in the world. They were worried about the two accidents"--she hurried
over the words--"because they gave the car a bad name. You know people
have been saying that the car's a killer, and nobody can be found to
drive it. Anyway, they've offered to pay the expenses of repairing
the Black Tiger, and they'll provide all the new parts needed and
everything if someone will race it again over here."

"Oh," said Woody, trying to keep the dismay out of his voice.

"Daddy really believed in that car," Rocky continued. "He said it was
the finest he'd ever seen in all the time he'd been driving. I thought
that since you'd worked with him on it that you'd like to know the news
right away."

"Gee," said Woody. "I'm sure glad to hear it. Let me know if they find
a driver, huh? Maybe Tom Wisdom. He was a friend of your father's."

"No," said Rocky. "I asked Tom. But he has the same opinion of the
Black Tiger as the others. He says it's a killer--too unorthodox a
design to be raced safely. Kurt Kreuger says the same. He won't touch
it. But I'll find somebody. Of course, there are lots of people who
would do it, but they haven't got the kind of driving flair that the
car needs. Anyway, I'll let you know if anything happens."

She sounded a little disappointed.

"Thanks," said Woody and hung up.

"Who was that?" Worm asked when he put down the phone.

"Rocky," replied Woody. "They're fixing up the Black Tiger, and they're
going to race her again."

Worm gave him a queer look. "Come into the office," he said. "I've
something I want to tell ye. And I might as well tell ye noo."

When they were inside Worm's tiny office and Worm had lit a cigarette,
he took a long hard drag at it, examined the glowing end, and addressed
himself to the smoldering cigarette rather than to Woody.

"Ye may have been wondering," he said, "for ye are a noticing body,
how it was I came to know Randy so well mony years ago. And ye may
have heard some remarks pass between us that made nae sense tae ye at
the time. Ye'll recall, nae doot, that the first time he came tae the
garage here to ask me tae work on his pit crew, he said that that was
something I had tae face and I'd do better tae face it wi' me friends."

Woody nodded but said nothing.

"Weel," said Worm, "the fact o' the matter is that many years ago,
before ye were born likely, Randy and I were both racing drivers over
there in Europe. We raced against each other in the Tourists' Trophy
in Ireland and in the Le Mans in France and sometimes in road races
that took us frae the Channel ports tae the toe of Italy and back.
Clean across the Alps, mind ye, on narrow roads, twisting and curving,
through the passes, wi' snow all aroond, and sometimes ye couldna' see
tae the end o' yere headlight beam.

"Ah weel, that was when I was young and foolish. Well, there came a
time when I was approached by a Swiss company tae race a new car for
them in the Le Mans. 'Twas a car ye probably never heard of, for they
don't make it any more. 'Twas called an Albinet."

Woody shook his head. The name was completely strange to him.

"Well, 'tis as I thought. Few these days have ever heard of the
Albinet, though at the time 'twas the wonder car of the year. Like that
Black Tiger noo.

"No tae make too long a tale of it, I agreed tae drive the car, and
Randy was in the race too, driving a Bugatti if I remember right.

"Now I don't know if you know anything about the Le Mans. 'Tis held
in the city of Le Mans in France, and the roads are blocked off tae
form the track. The race is laid down through the streets of the city,
and there's every kind of a turn and twist and hill and blind corner
and every kind of surface ye can think of to be negotiated. 'Tis a
twenty-four-hour race. There's cobbles in some parts and asphalt in
others and concrete and all the rest. And sometimes it's raining and
sometimes it's dry, so ye've never seen a race like the Le Mans over
here, and I hope ye never will.

"I mind I was third on the eightieth lap. There was a Frenchman ahead
of me in a Hispano-Suiza and a German in the lead with a Mercedes-Benz.
Randy was on my tail, and we were going hell for leather down a cobbled
hill with a wall on one side all covered wi' sandbags and houses on the
other. At the bottom of the hill there was a sharp right turn and then
a sharp turn to the left and up another hill.

"The trick was to change doon and brake hard, drift aroond the first
corner, regain traction on the second, and on your way.

"The crowd was as thick as flies along the sandbags lining the wall as
I came roaring down the hill. I hit my brakes to change doon, and my
foot went tae the floor. The brakes had failed. I was doing a hundred
and ten down the cobbled hill when I passed the Italian and tried to
make the turn tae the right. The car swung around like an ice skater
and hit one of the sandbags. I got doon on the floor and Randy piled
intae me. There were five cars in that wreck, and three of the drivers
were killed. Four people who were watching from the sandbags died too.
Randy lost his foot.

"After that, I swore I'd never race again. And I never have. Randy
tried tae get me back driving. He said if I didn't go back I'd be a
beaten man all me life. Well, maybe I am a beaten man. But to this day
I canna' look at a racing car without being filled wi' mortal fear.
When I agreed tae go wi' you and Steve tae the technical inspection, I
was trying tae get over some of that fear. I thought it might have left
me. But it hadn't. And when I agreed tae work in the pit wi' Randy, it
was for the same reason.

"I'm sorry now I did. Randy would hae been killed, nae doot. But
I'd have had no part in it." He paused and flicked the butt of his
cigarette deftly into a bucket of water.

"Ye'll be wondering why I'm telling ye all this, nae doot," he said.
"Weel, it's on account of yon Black Tiger. Mark my words, they'll no
find any racing driver wi' any experience that'll undertake tae handle
her. Yon car's a killer as I said before. I'm thinking that they'll be
asking you. Ye drive well. I've watched ye. Ye drive like I used tae
drive when I was racing. I've looked at ye going roond the track and
seen meself twenty years ago.

"But dinna make the mistake I made--Randy too. Dinna' go on wi' yere
driving until ye've killed seven people just because ye wanted tae
drive a new car first past the finish line.

"I'll never forget those people, laddie. Never. And I've a horror of
racing now that won't leave me until I've drawn my last breath."

Woody now understood fully Worm's strange reaction to the Black Tiger
and his reluctance to be associated with road racing in any way. But
there was something else he wanted to know. He remembered how Randy,
over dinner, had told him that road racing condensed all the challenges
of life into a few minutes. He recalled Randy's saying that all drivers
were scared but if a man gave way to fear he would be beaten for the
rest of his life.

"Tell me, Worm," he said. "Did you quit racing because of the
accident--because of the people you killed though it was not your
fault? Or did you quit because you were scared of getting killed
yourself? Because you didn't want to take any more chances."

"'Twas the people," said Worm, slowly.

"But they knew the risk they were taking when they came to watch the
race," Woody persisted. "They knew a car might get out of control. Yet
they came and sat on top of the sandbags."

Worm made no comment on this for a while. He got up moodily from his
seat and looked out of the window. "Randy told me that mony a time,"
he said. "If I face the matter squarely, I quit because I was afraid."
The sentence was uttered in almost a whisper.

"I've been afraid ever since," said Worm. Woody felt a deep compassion
for him.




                                  15


Worm's forecast that Woody would be asked to drive the Black Tiger was
not long in coming true. A week after her telephone call, Rocky dropped
in to see him. She drove into the garage in her MG, and although Worm
was delighted to see the daughter of his old friend, it was plain that
he was worried too.

"Mind what I told ye," he said privately to Woody. "Dinna' let her talk
ye into driving yon Black Tiger. It's nae worth the risk."

Woody and Rocky went to dinner and then for a drive and a talk. For
a while nothing was said about the Black Tiger, though Woody knew
very well that that was the object of the visit. Rocky was apparently
waiting for Woody to bring up the subject, and he was determined that
he wouldn't.

Eventually she brought it up herself.

"The Black Tiger is being completely overhauled and repaired," she
said. "It will be ready to race again soon. The factory sent a man over
to supervise the work. They installed a completely new brake system.
The factory man said the car had been dropped on the way over, and that
was why the steering knuckle broke and also why the brakes went out.
There was just the tiniest rupture in the master cylinder, but with the
constant braking during two races the rupture widened and the fluid
drained out."

"Gee, I'm glad to hear they found the trouble and the car is being
fixed," Woody said.

"We haven't been able to get a driver," Rocky continued. "I'd drive it
myself, but it wouldn't be the same thing. They have special races for
women, as you know, and to prove its worth the Black Tiger has to be
driven in a man's race."

Woody made no reply to this other than to grunt.

"It's the old trouble," Rocky went on. "The car has got the reputation
of being a killer. Nobody wants to risk driving it because it's so new.
But it isn't a killer at all. I believe what Randy used to say. No cars
are killers. New ones may have bugs in them that have to be found out.
But that's been true of every car ever designed. Racing finds out the
troubles and provides better and safer cars for people to drive.

"Lots of safety features on automobiles today were developed out of
experience gained in road racing," she continued. "Four-wheel brakes
are one of them. So are rear-vision mirrors and better tires. More
people are driving with safety belts on long trips, and that's saving
a lot of lives. In the early days of racing, Daddy told me, fly-wheels
used to explode and kill drivers. But who ever heard of a flywheel
exploding these days? Racing drivers showed how to make better ones.
Every time there's an accident on a track, people say that road
racing should be banned or that a particular car is a killer. But the
automobile industry would not be where it is today if it wasn't for
road racing."

Still Woody said nothing. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his
stomach because he knew what was coming. The palms of his hands
felt moist, and he could feel his heart beating faster. He tried to
temporize.

"Why was Randy so interested in the Black Tiger?" he asked.

"Because he said it was way ahead of any other racing car yet
designed," Rocky replied. "The factory is planning to put out a small
family car based on the Black Tiger engine. It would give about fifty
miles to a gallon of gas, could be driven in any climate because the
engine is air-cooled. That means no radiator to overheat in summer or
freeze in winter. And it would sell for less than a thousand dollars.
But all that depends on the Black Tiger being shown to be an efficient
engine and chassis design.

"Daddy never said anything to me about it. But I found out through his
will that he had put all his savings into the project. He believed
in the Black Tiger that much. He used to say he'd spent all his life
looking for a perfect automobile and had found it in the Black Tiger.
Now his life's work will be wrecked unless we can find someone to drive
the Tiger." She looked across at Woody, hesitated, and then said.

"Daddy was very fond of you. He told me that you'd make a great racing
driver someday. He said you had a natural flair for it, and the sort of
courage that it takes. Woody, I hate to ask you, knowing the reputation
the Black Tiger has. I'm only asking because so much of Randy's hopes
were tied up in the car. Will you race it--not for me but for him? For
all he did for automobile racing and design?"

Woody had his answer ready, but he couldn't get it out. It seemed
to him that Randy was nearby and hanging on his answer. He wanted to
say no. He wanted to say that he, too, believed the Black Tiger was a
man-killer. He wanted to break down and confess that he was scared to
death every time he raced a car and that fear, heavy as a shroud, clung
to him through every moment of a race. But he could not get the words
out of his mouth.

"I'll have to think about it, Rocky," he said feebly.

Rocky brightened immediately. "Woody," she exclaimed, "you're
wonderful." And she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

"I haven't said yes," Woody said hurriedly.

"I didn't expect you to answer right away," replied Rocky. "I know you
have to talk to your mother and father. But if you explain everything
to them, I know they will agree."

"Worm warned me not to race the Tiger," Woody said. Rocky frowned.

"Did he tell you about himself yet?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Daddy always felt bad about Worm," Rocky went on, slowly. "He believed
up to the last that all Worm had to do was turn around and face his
fear and he would be happy again. He's not happy now, you know. That's
why Daddy got him in his pit crew and brought the Black Tiger to his
garage for tuning. It wasn't really that he couldn't get the tuning
done anywhere else. He thought if he could get Worm back into racing,
he would get over his fears. Daddy was always doing things like that
for people without their knowing it. He used to say that fear was just
a continuing sense of shock. It could be cured, he thought, if faced."

Rocky didn't know how deeply these words affected Woody. He felt that
Randy was talking to him; that Randy knew the struggle in his mind and
was trying to sort it out for him. He could almost hear the bright,
gallant voice, not blaming him but understanding and trying to help him
get over his own fears.

"When do you think you'll know whether you can drive the Tiger?" Rocky
asked.

"Oh, in about a week," Woody replied.

"Whatever your answer," Rocky said, "I'll always be grateful to you.
The others just said no. You at least are willing."

That evening Woody bitterly regretted that he also had not given a
flat no to Rocky's request. If he had done so, it would be settled and
he would have been saved a lot of mental and emotional turmoil. When
he got home he found his father was out of town on business and would
not be back for two or three days. Woody would have liked to talk to
his father about driving the Black Tiger in the hope that he would be
forbidden to race. That would solve the matter by putting the blame for
the decision on someone else. Woody didn't feel exactly comfortable at
that thought but was looking for a way to escape making the decision
himself.

It was no good talking to Worm. Worm would only insist that he refuse
to drive the Black Tiger. And Worm was really in the same position in
regard to racing as himself. If Tom Wisdom or any of the other drivers
he'd met had been around, he would have consulted them for their views.
But Woody didn't know where they lived and had no way of finding out.

In the end, desperate for someone to talk his problem over with, Woody
took it to Mary Jane. He didn't really think she could help him with
it. He already knew her views on road racing. But at least she was
someone to talk to. He was too ashamed to unburden himself to Steve.

To his surprise, Mary Jane's reaction was quite different from what he
had expected. He told her everything, not sparing his own feelings in
any way. Though he blushed while doing so, he confessed that he was
scared of racing and had many times missed chances on the track through
sheer fear. He said he had been afraid even to talk of his fear and
now was in the predicament of being asked to drive the Black Tiger. He
confessed that he was mortally afraid of doing it and also afraid of
refusing, both because of his reputation and what it might do to his
morale.

Mary Jane didn't interrupt once while he was talking. When he had
finished, she said:

"Woody Hartford, you're the most mixed-up person I ever met. There's
nothing for you to do but drive the Black Tiger. I'm surprised you
can't see that yourself."

"What?" cried Woody, amazed.

"Look," Mary Jane continued. "You know how I hated the way you were
always spending time and money on Cindy Lou. I still don't see that
it's important for one driver to prove he can go faster than another.
And I don't see that it's important for people to keep building faster
cars. If you were going to drive the Black Tiger just to show that it
would go faster than those Ferraris or what-nots, I'd tell you not to
be so silly.

"But that's no longer the reason. The reason now is to show that you've
got the courage to drive the car even though you're afraid of it.
That's a very important reason. It's much more important than all that
stuff about developing safer cars and so on.

"You've just got to drive the Black Tiger. That's all there is to it.
Otherwise you won't be Woody Hartford any more. And the person I'm
interested in is Woody Hartford."

Woody was stunned.

"You really mean you think I should drive it?" he asked.

"Certainly. I wouldn't want to have anything more to do with you if you
didn't. If I was afraid of it, I'd drive it. You don't have to win. All
you've got to do is try to win and show that you're prepared to take
the same chances that other drivers in the race accept.

"I used to say that all your interest in racing and racing cars was
juvenile. So it was. All you were interested in then was the speed and
the roar of the engines and the glamour. But now it isn't juvenile at
all. You're growing up. If you race the Black Tiger, it will show that
you've grown up enough to be called a man.

"And," Mary Jane concluded, "when I get married, I want it to be to a
_man_, even if he does have to spend the rest of his life in greasy
overalls."




                                  16


The biggest opposition to Woody's driving the Black Tiger came from
Worm. Woody had thought that both his mother and father would be dead
set against it. They did not, indeed, welcome the prospect. Woody
decided to tell his father about it when they were alone and again to
explain all his reasons fully. When he had finished Mr. Hartford said,
"Woody, is this what has been on your mind all the time?"

"More or less," Woody replied.

"I see why you didn't feel you could discuss it with me. In any case,
discussion is rather futile. There are some things people just have to
decide by themselves and this is one of them. I don't pretend that I
like the idea of your driving that car. I wish there was some honorable
way out of it. But there isn't. You'd better let me tell your mother,
though. I think I can explain the situation better than you.

"This is where being a parent is really tough," he added with a faint
smile. "My whole instinct is to forbid you to race--to protect you from
danger. But I know that would be the wrong thing to do. Son, promise
me that.... Well, I was going to say promise me that you won't take
any unnecessary chances. But that would be silly. Promise me that if
the car shows any serious defects before the race, you will have sense
enough to realize that you don't have to go through with this."

"I promise," said Woody. "The car will be in perfect mechanical
condition. Otherwise the deal will be off. I'll go over it myself, and
I'll get Worm to help me."

Worm was furious when Woody told him. His face went white, and for a
while he was unable to say anything. When he did he called Woody a fool
and a lunatic and said he wouldn't have anything to do with the Black
Tiger and would not help Woody in any way.

"I'll not be a party tae ye killing yere foolish self," he stormed.

This was a heavy blow. Woody didn't really know enough about the
mechanics of racing cars to check the Tiger over thoroughly. He waited
for Worm to calm down and then decided to tackle him again.

"Worm," he said, "you don't understand about me and the Black Tiger.
I'd like to explain to you."

"There's nae explanation for a mon deciding tae drive a car that's
only been in two races and has had an accident each time, other than
lunacy," Worm snapped.

"Well, maybe it is lunacy," replied Woody. "But Dad doesn't seem to
think so. And neither does Mary Jane."

"Ye mean tae tell me yer father is going tae let ye drive yon
man-killer?"

"Yes," said Woody. "Because I explained the reasons to him."

"And what might be yere reasons?" Worm demanded.

"There's only one! I'm afraid. I'm afraid to drive any racing car. I
became afraid the first race I was in when I nearly hit a telephone
pole, and I've been scared ever since. I was even more scared after the
Black Tiger--after Randy was killed in the Black Tiger. And the only
way for me to get my courage back is to drive the car in a race. That's
all."

When he had finished, Worm's long pale face was a study. He opened his
mouth to say something and then snapped it shut without uttering a
word. He stared at Woody in silence for several seconds and then walked
out of the office where the conversation had taken place. He stayed
away for several minutes, just standing outside the garage with his
thin hands on his hips and staring at his feet. Then he fished for a
cigarette, lit it, took a puff on it, threw it away, and came back into
the office.

"Gie me yere hand, laddie," he said. "I'm ashamed of meself. Ye've
got more guts than I have, for ye're doing the thing I should have
done meself fifteen years ago. If I'd driven in just one more race
after that accident, I'd have been a happier mon today. Instead, I've
been fifteen years wi' a nightmare. Ah, well. 'Tis never too late tae
mend, they say. I'm wi' ye in this. I'll go over yon Black Tiger wi'
a fine-tooth comb and a magnet. I'll do more than that. I'll take it
out on the desert roads wi' ye and test it meself. I'll corner it and
brake it and pour the coal tae it until I've driven oot any bugs there
are in it meself, or me name is not William Orville Randolph McNess of
Aberdeen.

"Have ye told yon Rocky that ye'll race the car?"

"Not yet," said Woody. "She's in San Diego."

"Weel, get on the phone and tell her noo. Dinna' worry aboot the
charges. I'll stand them meself. The Hieland Scots, ye understand, are
a generous race of people, and 'tis one of the main faults in them."

When Woody in the next few minutes called Rocky to say he'd drive the
Black Tiger for her, she was jubilant. She said she'd bring the car
up the very next day so that there would be ample time to check it and
test it before the Pebble Beach race, which was the event in which it
would be entered.

It was not long before the news that the Tiger was to be raced again
reached the sports columns. And Woody found himself a combination of
hero and lunatic over night. One Los Angeles evening paper devoted
half a page to an article and pictures of the Black Tiger. A reporter
interviewed Woody for the story, and the gist of the article was that
Woody was prepared to stake his life to show the car was the fastest
and safest racing machine ever to come into the country.

Other columnists dredged up stories of other "wonder cars" that had
been wrecked and scrapped as unpractical. Woody was asked to lecture
at the local high school on racing and road safety and was voted by
the Junior Chamber of Commerce as the young citizen most likely to
succeed. Some papers tried to draw a likeness between him and some of
the old-time racing greats like Barney Oldfield, and all in all, he got
more publicity than he ever would have thought likely in his entire
life.

Worm was as good as his word both in checking and testing the car.
He closed down his garage for a week to devote his time to the Black
Tiger. He crawled all over it, with Davie's _Problems and Principles of
Internal Combustion Engines_ open on the workbench for ready reference.
And then, one Saturday, he and Woody drove the Black Tiger out to a
deserted piece of highway in the Mojave desert to give it a thorough
road test.

The piece of road selected was an old highway now replaced by a modern
four-lane thoroughfare. Because it was old, and therefore full of
turns and twists, it was ideal for the purpose, and the Highway Patrol
gave permission for the tests to be held.

The Highway Patrol also co-operated in not saying anything about the
tests, so Woody and Worm had the strip of road, three miles long,
to themselves. They worked out a route, partially on the disused
road, partially across a desert track, so they had a rough circle to
represent a race track.

"I'll put her through ten laps, laddie, just tae see how she handles,"
Worm said. "You stay here and time me wi' the stop watch. It's
aboot three miles aroond, which is average for race tracks here in
California."

Woody nodded, and Worm got into the driver's seat. His white face
seemed even whiter, but his thin hands were quite steady as he buckled
on his safety belt. Then he put on his crash helmet and adjusted the
goggles over his eyes. He squirmed around in the seat, feeling the
controls with his feet. He switched on the ignition and fired the Black
Tiger up. Woody caught a glimpse of his eyes behind the goggles. They
seemed big, and there was a dullness that suggested fear. Worm turned
his head slowly and looked full at him. Then he gave Woody a wink, made
monstrous by the glass shield of the goggles, took a deep breath, and
let out the clutch.

The Black Tiger roared into life and shot down the old asphalt road.
Woody grinned. It had been a bigger struggle for Worm, he knew, to
drive the Black Tiger, than it would be for him. And Worm had made it.

Worm's first two laps were anything but impressive. He seemed to be
driving with such extreme caution that it would not have been difficult
to keep up with him in a much less powerful car. But when Worm passed
Woody for the third time, he took one hand off the steering wheel,
waved, and hit the accelerator. It seemed to Woody as if the Black
Tiger was melting in the sun, it disappeared from view so fast. There
was a corner about two hundred yards from the starting place, and Worm
took this without even skidding his wheels. He reappeared over the top
of a hill and plunged down again, the Tiger roaring its enjoyment of
the game. As he flashed by again, Woody saw that Worm was driving like
Randy used to. He was sitting well back in his seat, almost lolling
there. His hands held the steering wheel in a light grip. And there was
a smile on his thin face.

Worm did more than ten laps. It was fifteen before he stopped the Black
Tiger, unfastened his safety belt, and climbed out of the seat.

"How did I do?" he asked.

"Gee," said Woody, "I was so nervous about you that I forgot to use the
stop watch."

"Nervous about me!" exclaimed Worm. "Why, laddie, I was driving cars
wi' twice the horsepower of yon Black Tiger before ye were born." But
he gave Woody another of his rare winks, and his face was beaming. He
looked, in fact, quite young again.

It was now Woody's turn, and he got behind the wheel and fastened his
safety belt. "There's nothing wrong wi' her that I can find," said
Worm. "She corners better than any car I've ever handled. The main
thing is tae get the feel of her. Take her aroond slowly at first till
ye know how fast she turns when ye pull the wheel over. Change doon and
try tae make her slide on corners. Find oot when she breaks out of a
slide. Take it easy at first. We've got all day. Make her do what you
want her tae do--not what she wants tae do. That's the whole secret of
driving."

Woody looked along the low slim hood in front of him and at the
dashboard with its telltale dials. Tachometer. Speedometer.
Oil-pressure gauge. Water-temperature gauge. Gas gauge. Each was a
separate dial. He slipped the gearshift into low and started off.

His confidence had been restored to some extent by watching Worm, but
he took the first two laps slowly, studying the reactions of the car.
She seemed all power and eagerness. Corners taken at sixty-five miles
an hour on the asphalt didn't bother her. She slipped smoothly in and
out of gear but seemed to be constantly straining to go faster.

On the fourth lap of the makeshift course, Woody decided to let the
Tiger go all out. He flashed passed Worm, his engine roaring, changed
down at the first corner at the bottom of a dip, was around and over
the top of a small hill before he realized it, and headed down a
quarter mile of straight at the end of which was a right-angle bend
onto the desert strip. Woody hit his brakes, changed down again for the
bend, then stamped hard on the accelerator. The Black Tiger screamed
off the asphalt onto the dirt strip of the desert, broadsided for a
second, righted herself, and was off again.

Five laps, and Woody felt that he knew the car. He also felt more sure
of himself. There were one or two moments when his old panic threatened
to return. But he managed to fight it down. He did well for eight laps
going full bore around the course. The Black Tiger was certainly all
that Randy had ever said of it. Acceleration in all four gears was
instant and powerful. She cornered without any fuss. He never had to
fight to get her under control after a full power drift around a bend.
One touch of his foot on the accelerator and she came out straight as
an arrow.

And yet Woody was conscious of being tense all the time. He couldn't
lean back in the seat relaxed like Randy and Worm and become, as they
did, part of the engine. There was a tiny spark of uneasiness and
distrust in the bottom of his mind all the time.

He was waiting, he knew, for something to go wrong; for the steering
to go out or a tire to blow. He couldn't quite trust the Black
Tiger--couldn't quite shake out of his mind the thought that it was
waiting to spring some unsuspected trap upon him.

When he was through with the trial runs, Worm said, "Weel, laddie, how
did she handle?"

"Fine," said Woody. "Fine. I just hope she'll hold together."

They both looked at the sleek black lines of the car. Even in the hot
desert sun they seemed menacing.




                                  17


Woody had a bad headache and a strong suspicion that the meager
breakfast he had eaten that morning was not going to stay with him very
long. He wished he could go away somewhere out of the bright, merciless
sunlight and be quietly sick all by himself. It occurred to him that if
there was just half a chance of getting away with it, he'd sneak off
into the crowd on the other side of the snow fence and disappear among
them. But that was impossible. Someone would spot him and he would be
brought back again for the sacrifice.

For that's exactly what he felt like--a sacrifice that was about to be
offered to a god called the Black Tiger for the edification of a lot of
worshipers who called themselves sports-car fans.

Woody was sitting on the grass on one side of the starting area of
the Pebble Beach racecourse. Across the track from him was a row of
cars facing outward as if they were in a parking lot. Among them was
the Black Tiger. They all seemed to be grinning malevolently. The
Black Tiger was sixth in line, and there were twenty-two cars in all
drawn up for the Le Mans start of the fifth event. That was the race
to which he was committed--the race in which he was to be given his
chance to recover and demonstrate his courage; the race in which he was
to prove that the Black Tiger was, despite its record of accidents, a
first-class racing machine.

Woody was glad of one thing. Mary Jane wasn't nearby, nor were his
father and mother, nor Rocky, Steve, nor Worm. His mother and dad
were somewhere in the mass of spectators with Mary Jane. Rocky,
Steve, and Worm were in the pit area forming his pit crew. He was
glad they weren't with him, because in their presence he had to keep
up a pretense of confidence. And right at that moment he hadn't a
hairsbreadth of confidence in his whole body.

It had been tough trying to hide his fears all morning while four other
races were run. He had become so nervous with everybody wishing him
well and fussing over the car that he could hardly do a simple little
thing like adjust his racing mirrors to get a clear view of his rear
and two rear fenders.

Worm, he was sure, had noticed that he was nervous. But Worm hadn't
said anything, and Woody was glad. Worm had just busied himself
checking the ignition and the spark-plug gaps and taping the headlights.

When Rocky had asked him how he felt, he'd replied, in a voice that
didn't sound like his own at all, that he felt fine.

Then Rocky had suggested that he look over the map of the track. But
try as he would to memorize it, none of the details would stay with
him. He told himself that it didn't matter anyway. He'd had enough
racing experience to know that what the track looked like on paper
wasn't at all what it was like when you drove over it. Turns that
seemed like slow curves turned out to be pretty sharp. And there was no
indication of whether they were banked or not.

Furthermore, the map of the track didn't have anything to say about
road surfaces. It didn't say anything about trees, and the Pebble
Beach track was studded with trees. There were a lot of hills on it
too, and most of the corners leaped up suddenly at you from behind
a clump of trees or beyond the brow of a hill. That much he learned
from talking to the other drivers. It was, they all agreed, the
most difficult track in Southern California. Or as they put it--the
sportiest.

Tom Wisdom was sitting beside Woody in the sun, looking at his driving
boots. He had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, but it
had gone out.

"Got a match?" he said, turning to Woody.

Woody said he hadn't without even looking through his pockets. He
wished he hadn't been asked. He just wanted to be left alone right at
the present moment.

"Feeling a little shaky?" Tom asked. His voice was friendly, and he
smiled in a kindly way as he put the question.

Woody decided to abandon all his pretenses. "I sure am," he said. "If I
could get the heck out of here and disappear for five years into China,
I would."

Tom laughed. "You wouldn't be alone," he said. "Look at Kurt over
there." Kurt Kreuger was squatted on his heels carefully taking a
cigarette to pieces. Even at a distance of several yards, Woody could
see that his hands were far from steady.

"Kurt always tears paper when he's keyed up," Tom said. "I smoke
cigarettes that have gone out." He took the dead cigarette from between
his lips, examined it with a smile, and flicked it onto the track.

"We've three or four minutes yet," he said. "Did you look over the
track?" Woody nodded.

"It's pretty rough," Tom continued. "But remember, it's just as rough
for the other boys as it is for you. There isn't much I can tell you
at this point that would do any good. But remember, when you jump into
your car, fasten your safety belt. Don't take off without doing that."
He lapsed into silence, got out another cigarette, found an old match
folder with one last match, took a puff or two, and looked down toward
the starter.

For the next two minutes it seemed to Woody everything around became
very quiet. The row of cars on the opposite side of the track looked as
grim as gladiators about to enter an arena. Woody eyed the Black Tiger,
and in that moment he hated her. She seemed both impersonal and cruel
to him. A cricket started a shrill chirruping in the grass behind him,
and he experienced a sudden flush of irritation at the sound. The sun
beat down bright and merciless on the asphalt before him. The starter
stood talking to two other men. He seemed cheerful and untroubled, and
Woody conceived an enormous dislike of him. Why didn't he just drop his
flag and get it over with? Why stand around there chewing the fat when
everybody was sitting with his nerves on edge?

The loud-speaker blared suddenly. "One minute to go," the announcer
said. "I'll count out the seconds. Fifty-five. Fifty. Forty-five...."

It's coming now, Woody said to himself. Just a few seconds more. He
felt suddenly panicky, as if he were paralyzed and wouldn't be able to
run to his car. Kurt Kreuger was still shredding a cigarette.

"Twenty-five. Twenty. Fifteen," said the announcer. Suddenly it was
time. The big green flag in the starter's hand came down, and Woody
found himself sprinting on wobbly knees over to the Black Tiger. He
was hardly in the seat before a Jag beside him started with a roar
and shot off down the track. He saw Tom Wisdom and Kurt Kreuger take
off while he was still fumbling with his safety belt. Two more cars
roared by, and at last he got the belt fastened. He switched on the
ignition, pressed the starter button, let out the clutch, and roared
away himself. His hands and arms were trembling violently. He wanted to
be sick, and he could hardly see. He denounced himself as a fool for
having ever got into the race. But there was no getting out of it now.
He couldn't call into the pits. He couldn't get out of the car. He had
to go on.

The first lap Woody did in a kind of nightmare. Turns appeared
unexpectedly before him, and he took them, fighting down a rising
panic. Cars roared by, sometimes on one side and sometimes on the
other, and he let them go. His only concern was to get around as many
times as was necessary and then get out of the Black Tiger and leave it
and never see it again.

Actually, in the first lap, he lost only two places. In the starting
line-up he had been sixth. At the end of the first lap, he was eighth.
He caught a glimpse of Worm as he passed by the start-finish line after
the first lap. Worm was holding up a blackboard with the figure 8 upon
it. Woody was surprised. He had been sure more cars than that were
ahead of him. The news served to steady him a little. He pushed down
on the accelerator and concentrated on a Mercedes ahead. It was green
and had a big twelve on the back. He could scarcely see the top of the
driver's helmet, and he did not know who he was. But he decided he
would try to pass.

The distance between the two cars diminished slightly. Woody pressed
the accelerator down farther. The Black Tiger's note changed to a
piercing scream. Woody could feel the car pick up speed, and the
Mercedes seemed to be drawn toward him. Then he saw the tail light
flash red and knew the driver was braking for a corner. Woody touched
his brakes also and in the same moment changed down.

Something inside of him said, "Now," and the voice sounded like
Randy's. Woody stomped on the accelerator and pulled over to the right.
He went by the Mercedes in a flash and found a sharp corner ahead. He
braked again, changed down to second, and hit the accelerator once
more. The rear end of the Black Tiger slewed around as he turned the
steering wheel. But she straightened out like a champion and was off
down the straightaway in a second. In his rear-vision mirror Woody
caught a glimpse of the Mercedes he had just passed. It was gaining on
him. Ahead was a sharp hill, and he could not remember what was beyond.
He left the car in second and accelerated. The Black Tiger roared,
breasted the top of the hill, and there ahead were three cars in a
huddle, braking for what must be a sharp bend.

On either side of the track, perhaps ten feet from the shoulder, were
pine trees, with barricades of hay bales among them. There was no room
to get through the cars ahead, and the Mercedes was now pressing on his
tail. Woody braked and skittered around the corner on the heels of the
three cars. Then he saw, just for a second, a gap in them. It was about
a foot wider than the Black Tiger. No more.

"Here goes," Woody said to himself and opened the throttle. The effect
was as if a jet engine had been added to the Black Tiger's power plant.
She literally leaped through the gap. There was a slight bump, and he
knew that he had touched the rear fender of one of the cars. But other
than that he got away clear. The Mercedes that had been challenging him
was left in the melee of cars he had just passed.

Ahead now the road was straight but ran over a series of hills. Woody
recalled that stretch and knew that there was perhaps three-quarters of
a mile of it with a series of S-bends, followed by a hairpin at the end.

"Give her the gun," the voice inside him said again. It was still
Randy's voice. Woody opened the throttle, his foot pressed to the floor
board, and the Black Tiger flung down the track. Woody looked at his
speedometer. One hundred and ten, one hundred and twenty, one hundred
and thirty. He saw a Jag ahead and flashed past so close he could,
for a second, feel the warmth of the other's exhaust. He was doing a
hundred and forty plus when he entered the S-bends and braked down.

On the first bend, the Black Tiger nearly turned over. She seemed to
crouch over on her side, and Woody's foot slipped off the accelerator.
But then she recovered, veered a little under his unsteady hands at the
wheel, and shot off for the next bend. Woody decided to straighten that
one out. He would cut the corners on it and take the risk that there
might be a car ahead hidden from him. There wasn't a car ahead, but on
the third of the S-bends, which lay just over the top of a hill, there
was one right in the spot he was aiming at.

Without knowing quite why he did it, Woody changed down to third and,
reacting instinctively, pulled the Black Tiger over and hit the gas.
She went by the car--a Jag--in a cloud of dust.

Then came the hairpin. If Woody had not changed down on the last S-bend
he would certainly never have made the corner. As it was he had to hit
his brakes until all four wheels screamed their protest. But he managed
to claw around the hairpin.

The next time he passed the start-finish line he saw Worm again for a
brief flash holding up the blackboard. On it was a big figure 4.

For the next four laps Woody held his position, neither passing anybody
nor being passed. But he became more familiar with the track. Bends no
longer appeared unexpectedly before him. He found the reason why he had
nearly turned over on the one S-bend before the hairpin. It was banked
in the wrong direction so that the weight of a car cornering on it was
thrown downhill.

This piece of knowledge tucked into his mind he determined to put to
good use if he could get within passing distance of the Ferrari ahead.
If he could get on the near side of the Ferrari on that S-bend, the
driver would either have to let him by or run the risk of turning over
in making the corner.

It took him two laps to get into position for the try. All the while
he studied the driver's tactics. He belonged to the close-cornering
school. He went into all his bends as near to the inside as he could,
and only skidded away from that position when he was most of the way
around. If he did that on the first S-bend, he wouldn't be able to do
it on the second, for he would have skidded wide, Woody told himself.
That would give him an opportunity to take over the inside position and
pass.

The plan worked to perfection. The driver of the Ferrari took the first
S tight in against the corner and went wide for the second. Woody
saw his braking lights flash and a gap just big enough for him to
get through on the inside of the track. It would be there for only a
second. But Woody jammed his foot down hard on the accelerator and shot
through. When he passed Worm again, the figure on the blackboard was 3.

Now a curious reaction set in. Woody had started the race in panic and
had somehow fought that down, becoming too absorbed in the driving to
think of anything else. But now he thought of Randy. In his two races,
Randy had always done well until he got to second place. Then the Black
Tiger had gone out of control.

His fears and distrust of the car, which had for a while left him,
began to return, though he fought against them. He knew who was
ahead--Kurt Kreuger in his Jag and Tom Wisdom in his Ferrari. They
were the same two that Randy had been killed trying to pass. Woody's
heart started to pound, and unconsciously he took his foot off the
accelerator. The Black Tiger seemed to slump as if it had hit a patch
of thick glue, there was a loud roar, and the Ferrari, which he had
been at such pains to pass, buzzed by him. He was back to fourth place
again.

A Mercedes and a Cad-Allard were coming up behind him. Only the fact
that they had to slow down for the corner ahead prevented their passing
him. Woody felt his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. The
muscles of his legs seemed to go rigid, and he felt he had no control
over his feet.

Somehow he got around the corner, and somehow he kept his foot down on
the accelerator when he hit the straightaway, but his heart was not in
it. He was afraid again, and this time he knew the fear was going to
remain. He recalled how he had nearly turned over on the S-bend and
how he had skidded broadside around one corner, and the spirit went out
of him. The Jag passed him easily and so did the Mercedes, the driver
flashing him a puzzled look as he went by.

Then Randy said something to him--or so it seemed. He said, "Relax.
Lean back. You can't drive all crouched over the wheel." Woody leaned
back against the seat. The feel of it on the back of his shoulders gave
him comfort.

"You passed those boys before," said Randy's voice. "You can do it
again. Try it on the S-bends. Go full bore and trust to luck. You're
driving a better car than you think."

The S-bends were ahead, and the three cars were just entering them.
Woody looked at his speedometer. A hundred and twenty-five. He wanted
to brake, then change down, and take the bends more slowly. Instead, he
pressed the accelerator and flung into the first bend as if it wasn't
there.

He hardly saw the Mercedes as he went by, taking it on the outside. He
was on the inside position on the second bend--the one that was banked
the wrong way. The Jag ahead had flung wide and was trying hard to get
into position. There was a sharp jolt as Woody streaked past it. But
he didn't bother even to look in his rear-vision mirror. He was fourth
again. There were three cars ahead, and he knew now that he could pass
them. Or rather he knew that he wouldn't hold back from trying. He
couldn't explain why it was that his panic had left. It was there in
full force a few minutes ago, and now there was not a vestige of it.
Instead he was leaning back against the seat. His hands and legs were
steady. His brain was clear, and his emotions were under control. His
only desire was to go faster and drive better.

"I think I'm going to make it, Randy," he said.

"Never doubted it for a moment," was the reply.

By the fifteenth lap Woody had won back to third position again. Kurt
had pulled ahead of Tom Wisdom. Woody had a warm feeling for the two
of them. He experienced a warm feeling, too, for the Black Tiger. The
roar of her engine, which before had frightened him, now made his
heart sing. He loved the way she handled and her enormous gallantry on
corners.

He knew that she had it in her to win the race, and he was ashamed that
he had penalized her with his own fears.

The last two laps were, for everybody, the most exciting of the race.
On the straightaway approaching the hairpin, Woody drew wheel to wheel
with Tom Wisdom who looked briefly at him and winked. But Tom wasn't
giving anything. He hugged the corner tight--so tight that Woody had to
follow him around, for it was too sharp to take wide. Woody drew ahead
briefly approaching the right-angle bend after the start-finish line.
But he was not sufficiently ahead to pull over and crowd Tom behind
him. They took the corner wheel to wheel, but since Woody was on the
outside, Tom was slightly ahead when they got around it. Woody had
only one more chance to pass--on the S-bends where he had made most of
his conquests. But Tom knew those S-bends even better than Woody did.
He never gave the Black Tiger a chance. And when the checkered finish
flag fluttered down before them, it was Kurt Kreuger first, Tom Wisdom
second, and Woody Hartford third.

Rocky was first to greet him when he returned to the pit. "You were
wonderful," she said. "Wonderful. Daddy always said you'd make a great
driver." And she flung her arms around him and gave him a kiss.

Worm somehow got hold of Woody's hand and kept pumping it up and down.

"I knew what was happening, laddie," he said. "For my money, ye won the
race."

When he got free of Rocky and Worm it was to find Mary Jane standing
by the car. She didn't say anything. She just smiled and looked very
proud.




                                  18


That night a victory dinner was held at a hotel in Monterey where the
dining room had been taken over for the occasion. Woody, Mary Jane,
Worm, Rocky, Steve, and Woody's parents attended. It was something of a
battle to get into the hotel, for all the drivers who had participated
in the race were there. There were perhaps three hundred cars crowded
into the parking lot and lining the adjoining streets. The city, in
fact, became a racing center for the night, and radio and television
men were covering the event in full force.

Tom Wisdom and Kurt Kreuger both grabbed hold of Woody as he entered
the hotel lobby.

"You're coming with us," they said, and they dragged him off to a
seat at the head table. The Mayor presided at the banquet, and there
were officials of the state government and a number of sports-car
organizations. Woody couldn't remember how many people he was
introduced to by Tom Wisdom, who had taken him under his wing.

"You drove the finest race I've seen in a long time," Tom said. "Kurt
and I are both agreed on that. Right before the start, to be honest,
I didn't know whether you were going to make it. But you came through
like a veteran. You had me plenty worried those last few laps."

"I had the willies all right," Woody confessed.

"Say, Kurt," said Tom. "What were you doing right before the race
tearing up all those cigarettes?"

"Me?" said Kurt surprised. "I wasn't tearing up any cigarettes, was I?"

"You sure were."

"Well, if I was, I didn't know about it. But right before the start I'd
made up my mind that this was the last race I was ever going to drive
in. That's how I felt."

"How do you feel now?"

"Right now," said Kurt, "I think that was the silliest decision I ever
made in my life."

The Mayor presented Kurt with the trophy for first place--a cup of
such proportions that Worm said afterward it was big enough to boil
a haggis in. When Kurt had accepted it and expressed his thanks, he
paused for a minute, looked around the room, and said, "Most of you
people here tonight are drivers or mechanics or fans who are interested
in sports-car racing. It's a new sport in the United States, but it is
rapidly developing to the point where it's becoming a national sport.
Its long-range results will be better cars, with more safety features
and better drivers.

"Some of you guys, like me, have been in the game a long time. We
know that it isn't the winner who makes the race. It's all the other
competitors who are in there trying to win and their mechanics who put
in a lot of unpaid work fixing up their cars. It takes just as much
guts to lose a race as it does to win one. What I'm trying to say is
that it's the effort that matters and the courage that goes into it.
Not the result.

"In this connection, I think there's one driver here tonight who is
more entitled to this trophy than I. Before I mention his name, I'll
tell you something about him. He's a pretty young guy, and he's been
racing something less than a year.

"He didn't drive any well-known make of car. In fact, the car he drove
had a hundred per cent accident record. It had been on the track only
twice before. The first time its steering went out. The second time the
brakes failed and the driver, Jimmy Randolph, was killed.

"Randy believed in that car, and a lot of us were asked to race it
after his death. I was one of the people asked, and I refused. I
refused because I didn't trust it, and I believed that it might crack
up again. A lot of the rest of us turned the car down for the same
reasons.

"But one guy didn't turn it down. He probably had the same doubts and
fears to overcome that we had. But he had the guts to put them aside
and drive the car anyway.

"He drove a magnificent race, despite his inexperience. And he brought
a great new car to American tracks. It's hardly necessary for me now to
identify either the car or the driver. But I will do so anyway. The car
is the Black Tiger and the driver, Woody Hartford--"

If Kurt was going to say any more, he didn't get a chance for fully
ten minutes. Cheer after cheer filled the banquet room, and Tom and
another man on Woody's left picked him up and stood him upon a chair
for everyone to see. Woody's legs were trembling again, but this time
he didn't care.

When some order was finally restored, Kurt continued. "Just before this
banquet," he said, "without Woody's knowing anything about it, some
of the other drivers and I had a meeting with the track officials and
those who donated this trophy. We all agreed that while I might have
won it by being first, the guy who really deserves to get it is young
Woody Hartford. So come right over here, Woody, and take this trophy,
for it really belongs to you."

Woody got down shakily from the chair and took the trophy. He didn't
know what to say, and for five minutes he didn't have to say anything
for the cheering went on for that time. When finally there was enough
silence for him to make himself heard, all he could get out was, "Gee.
Thanks."

Kurt took the microphone back again. "I think Woody has a lot more to
say than that," he said. "But right at the present time, his clutch is
slipping. So we'll let him off. We know how he feels anyway.

"Just one more piece of news and then I'll sit down. Most of you older
drivers remember a great racing driver who was a friend of Randy's in
the old days. His name is William Orville Randolph McNess, commonly
known as Worm.

"Those who knew Worm ten or fifteen years ago know that he's been
fighting a private battle of his own. I won't go into the details.
All I want to say is that between Randy, Woody, and the Black Tiger,
Worm seems to have won that battle. At least I heard him cautiously
inquiring the price of an XK140 Jag, and I'll be very surprised if at
the next event, we don't have to contend with him as well as young
Woody."

There was another outburst of cheering at this announcement and Worm's
back was thoroughly pummeled to an impromptu chorus of "He's a Jolly
Good Fellow."

When it was all over, Woody and Worm met outside beside the Black
Tiger. Worm patted it affectionately.

"Tae think," he said, "that I called ye a man-killer."

"You should have called it a man-maker instead," said Mary Jane coming
up out of the darkness.