“I hope I don’t seem that old. Besides, you are grown up. You’re driving a flying machine across the continent.”

“That’s not the same. I want to be a straight shooter like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You told me straight off that Isaac overheard Preston asking me to marry him.”

Marion said, “I also told you that I’m very curious what you think of his proposal.”

“I don’t know. I mean, what does he want to marry me for?” She gave Marion one of her big open grins. “I’m just a silly girl two seconds off the farm.”

“Men are strange creatures,” Marion smiled back. “Most of them. Maybe he loves you.”

“He didn’t say he loved me.”

“Well, Preston is not very bright in many ways. On the other hand, he is handsome.”

“I suppose.”

“And very, very wealthy.”

“So was Harry.”

“Unlike Harry, Preston, for all his many, many faults, is no brute.”

“Yes, but he’s big like Harry.”

“And getting bigger,” laughed Marion. “If he isn’t careful, he’ll end up like President Taft.”

“Or Steve Stevens.”

They both laughed. Marion watched her closely, and asked, “Are you considering it at all?”

“Not at all. I don’t love him. I mean, I know he’d buy me aeroplanes. He said he’d buy me aeroplanes at least until we have children. Then wants me to stop flying.”

“Good Lord,” said Marion, “Preston is even a bigger fool than I thought.”

“You don’t think I should marry him. . do you?”

Marion said, “I can’t tell you that. You have to know what you want to do.”

“You see, if I win the fifty thousand dollars, I’ll have my own money. I’ll buy my own aeroplanes.”

Marion said, “Dear, if you win the cross-country race, they’ll be lining up to give you aeroplanes.”

“Really?”

“I am sure of it. They know that customers will buy aeroplanes you fly. So marrying Preston really has nothing to do with aeroplanes, does it?”

“If I win.”

“Isaac says you have no doubt you’ll win. And,” she added with another laugh, “he has no doubt you’ll win. He’s bet three thousand dollars on you.”

Josephine nodded distractedly and looked out her railcar window. The wind was still rattling the glass. She closed her eyes and started to form words with her lips, then pressed her lips tightly together. She was aching to talk, Marion thought. It seemed as if Preston’s proposal was forcing to her think about things she would prefer not to.

“What is it?” she asked. “What’s really troubling you?”

Josephine pursed her lips and exhaled sharply. “Can you keep a secret?” Her hazel eyes bored pleadingly into Marion’s.

“No,” Marion answered, “I can’t. Not from Isaac.”

Josephine rolled her eyes. “Why are you so honest, Marion?”

“I prefer to be,” said Marion. “What do you want to tell me?”

“Nothing. . When I saw Marco shot, I was so surprised.”

“I would think so.”

“It was the last thing I expected.”

“AND THEN,” Marion Morgan confessed to Isaac Bell, “I blundered. Instead of keeping my silly mouth shut while she completed her thought, I said something imbecilic like ‘Who would expect to see one’s husband shoot one’s friend?’ and Josephine shut up tight as a clam.”

“The last thing she expected,” Bell mused, “implying she expected something else to happen. As if she was ‘up to something,’ just like Harry Frost said. . Is she going to marry Preston?”

“She finally said, no, absolutely not.”

“Will she change her mind?”

“Only if she were to fear that she would definitely not win the race.”

“Because she wouldn’t win the fifty thousand dollars, and Preston is rich?”

“You should have seen her eyes light up when I told her that if she wins inventors will give her aeroplanes. I don’t think she ever thought of that before. It’s like she doesn’t think very far ahead. She’ll do anything she has to to keep herself in flying machines. Including marrying Preston. But only for the machines. She’s not the kind of girl who wants a bunch of kids, jewels, and houses.”

“Which reminds me,” asked Isaac Bell, taking Marion in his arms, “when are you going to marry me?”

Marion looked at the emerald on her finger. Then she smiled into his eyes. She traced his golden mustache with the tip of her finger and kissed him firmly on his lips. “The moment you absolutely insist. You know I would do anything for you. But until then, I am very, very happy and totally content to be your fiancée.”

THE KANSAN WIND howled all that day and through the night and into the next morning.

With no one flying anywhere, Andy Moser took the opportunity to completely disassemble Bell’s Gnome and put it back together, cleaned, polished, tuned, and tweaked.

Joe Mudd’s bricklayers, masons, plasterers, and locomotive firemen tore the Liberator’s engine down into small pieces and finally isolated the cracked copper tube that was the source of the oil leak which kept turning the red machine black.

Russian Dmitri Platov directed Steve Stevens’s mechanicians in another futile effort to permanently synchronize the biplane’s twin motors. When Stevens complained rudely and threatened to dock everyone’s salary, the usually easygoing thermo engine inventor stalked away to help Josephine take the head off her Antoinette to replace a leaky gasket.

Isaac Bell watched them. Platov kept talking to her in an urgent, low voice. Bell wondered whether she was discussing Whiteway’s proposal with the Russian – an odd thought, but their conversation seemed so intense. Whenever he drifted close to overhear, they stopped talking.

“ WHY IS DETECTIVE BELL LURKING?” asked Marco Celere, giving Bell a friendly wave with his Dmitri Platov slide rule.

“He’s looking out for me.”

“Surely he is not afraid for your safety in the presence of kindly Platov?”

“I doubt he’s afraid of anything,” said Josephine.

Celere began chiseling the old head gasket off Josephine’s engine block. “You are somewhat prickly today, my dear.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind.”

“Starting with Mr. Whiteway’s proposal?”

“What do you think?” she retorted sullenly.

“I think you should marry him.”

“Marco!”

“I’m serious.”

“Marco, that’s disgusting. How could you want me to marry another man?”

“He’s more than ‘another man.’ He’s the richest newspaper publisher in America. He, and his money, could be very helpful to you. And me.”

“What good will it do us if I’m married to him?”

“You would leave him for me, when the time is right.”

“Marco, it makes me sick to think you would want me to be with him.”

“Well, I’d expect you to postpone the honeymoon until after the race. Surely you could plead the necessity to concentrate on winning.”

“What about the wedding night?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”

THE WINDS DROPPED. The Weather Bureau published reports that it might be calm for a few hours. Late in the afternoon, the racers swarmed off the Morris County Fairgrounds. Before dark, all alighted safely in Wichita, where Preston Whiteway strode dramatically into the glare of Marion Morgan’s Picture World Cooper-Hewitt mercury-arc lamps.

Marion’s operators were cranking two movie cameras, the second being an expense Whiteway had refused to bear until now despite Marion’s insistence that two cameras would create exciting shifts of view that would draw bigger audiences. She had one camera aimed at the publisher, the other trained to capture the reactions of the newspaper reporters.

Tomorrow, Whiteway announced, would be an official off day. It would not count against the fifty-day limit because, “Tomorrow I am going to throw the biggest party the state of Kansas has ever seen to celebrate my engagement to Miss Josephine Josephs – America’s Sweetheart of the Air.”