Flanagan's Run by Tom McNab

Author:Tom McNab
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandstone Press Ltd
Published: 2014-03-23T16:00:00+00:00

“Wow,” said Willard Clay to Dixie, both hands on the wheel of the Ford pickup. “lt’s colder than Alaska out there.” Willard’s plump face creased into a frown as he tried to focus through the slow snow-clogged windscreen wipers. They drove south towards Leadville, Colorado, their mission – to purchase warm clothing for over eight hundred ill-equipped Trans-Americans, huddled five miles back in tents whipped by wind and snow.

“Will Mr Flanagan cancel tomorrow’s stage, do you think?” asked Dixie, face close to the misty windscreen.

“Impossible,” said Willard, moving down a gear to negotiate a steep incline.

“Mr Flanagan and me, we got a tight schedule to keep. Sure, we’ve got a little slack, but come hell or high water, tomorrow we got to run.”

Dixie peered out into the thick, fluffy snow at the towering white mountains through which the Trans-Americans would tomorrow have to pass. Up till now, the weather in the Rockies had been unusually mild, and the runners’ main problem had been running up the steep, uneven roads in the oxygen-starved atmosphere. Now they were to face snow and sub-zero temperatures.

Dixie looked to her left at Willard. She had now been with Clay for almost two months, yet she knew virtually nothing about him. But in the first days of the Trans-America, when she had faced the problem of logging the positions of two thousand finishers in the heat of the Mojave, it had been little Willard who had found the time to stand for a moment by her side and point out more effective ways of completing the task. Willard was everywhere, yet it was difficult to imagine him as a person with a life independent of the Trans-America and its needs.

Certainly he was no ladies’ man, and generally presented a complete contrast to his employer. It was the first time that they had been alone together, and Dixie decided to seize the initiative, in the only way she knew how, by asking questions.

“How did you first come to meet Mr Flanagan?” she asked.

Willard’s eyes remained fixed on the road ahead.

“Back in New York, in 1923. Me, I was a smart nobody selling bootleg in Hell’s Kitchen. Mr Flanagan, well, I had known him from way back in his old YMCA days. But he sure had to do some sweet talking to drag me away from my bootleg business!”

“Were you making a lot of money?”

“I’ll say,” smiled Willard, sweat beginning to roll down his bulbous neck. “Three hundred bucks a week. Then Mr Flanagan comes to me with this crazy idea for indoor horse-racing. The scheme was to bring in horses and cowboys from out West and race them round a dirt track in armories in New York and New Jersey.”

“And did it all work out?”

Willard grinned and shook his head.

“I went in with Mr Flanagan, and gave up my bootlegging. Don’t ask me why – I even had to grubstake him five hundred bucks just to get him started. A week later the cops busted my old bootleg operation and my buddies all spent two years in the pen.

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