Shot in the Back by William W. Johnstone

Author:William W. Johnstone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

When they reached the fairground entrance, a policeman was standing at the gate, holding up his hand.

“Pa!” Billy gasped. “What do you think he wants?”

“Relax,” Jesse said. “He’s not holding a gun in his hand, so he damn sure isn’t planning on arresting us.”

Jesse approached the gate, then put his foot on the clutch to disengage the transmission. The engine continued to pop and growl.

“There’s a special lot for parking the automobiles,” the policeman said, pointing. “It’s down at the south end of the park. Don’t go into the same lot as the horses, because these infernal machines frighten them.”

“All right,” Jesse said, following the policeman’s instructions.

After parking the car, they walked toward the Hall of Festivals, which was the largest and most iconic symbol of the entire fair. The dome, a pamphlet said, was larger than that of St. Peter’s in Rome. A flow of water, fifty feet wide, gushed from the north side of the hall and splashed down ninety-five feet through a series of cascades, bottoming out at the grand basin, then splitting into three waterways. These waterways were filled with graceful gondolas, which carried hundreds of visitors to lagoons in various parts of the fairgrounds. Punctuating the system of lagoons, and placed for dramatic effect, were a series of gushing fountains.

ICE CREAM CONES a sign nearby read.

“Hey, Pa, what do you think an ‘ice cream cone’ is?” Billy asked.

“I don’t know. Why don’t we find out?”

A few minutes later Jesse and Billy were walking down ‘The Pike’ eating a scoop of ice cream in a rolled-up waffle.5 The Pike was a solid stream of humanity, moving from one part of the fairgrounds to another. The newspaper article Jesse had read said that, already, three million visitors had passed through the fair, and they expected at least two million more.

“Look at that!” Billy said, pointing to a giant wheel. He read from the pamphlet they had picked up earlier. “‘The giant wheel is two hundred fifty feet high, and each of the cars can hold sixty people. It takes twenty minutes for the Ferris Wheel to make one revolution.’” 6

The first place they visited was the Palace of Machinery.

“Damn, Pa, look at this,” Billy said, pointing to one of the displays. “It says here that this gasoline engine has the power of three thousand horses. Ha! What if we had that engine in our auto? I’ll bet we could go one hundred miles per hour.”

“I don’t know, it’s so big it seems to me like it would weigh so much it would hold the auto back,” Jesse said.

From the Palace of Machinery they went to Transportation Hall, which boasted a network of railroad tracks carrying an array of full-scale models of the earliest engines to the latest and most powerful locomotives. They also had luxurious passenger cars, one of which had been the private car of President Abraham Lincoln. There was even a refrigerated freight car in which a sign proudly proclaimed PERISHABLE PRODUCTS MAY BE SENT WITHOUT RISK OF SPOILAGE.

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