Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pullman bolted into the crowd. The nurse had headed toward the runway and Pancho’s wrecked plane, undoubtedly assuming that was where she would find her patient. But he happened to know Pancho had gone over to the airplane parking area. He had to get to her first!
It was hard going. People were packed in tight, trying to watch the takeoffs.
“Let me through!” Pullman yelled. No one moved. He used his elbows to make an opening. He jumped onto the hood of a car to look for Pancho, ignoring the complaints of the people sitting on its fender.
“Stay off the airstrip, folks! We’ve got another plane coming into position to take off,” the announcer warned.
He spotted the white-coated orderlies pushing their way to the front of the crowd.
Someone shoved him from behind. “Get the hell off my car!”
He staggered, managing to land on his feet, and then he realized he was on the taxiway and a plane was coming straight at him, its propeller spinning like some gruesome medieval axe intent on lopping off his head.
He dropped to his belly, and the plane’s wings passed over his head, while the propeller sent a huge cloud of dust into his face.
He coughed and spit out dirt as the crowd laughed at him.
“Where is Pancho Barnes?” he called out, not really expecting an answer. But someone pointed toward the stage on the other side of the runway.
Sure enough, Pancho was standing over there, craning to get a look at the planes taking off.
Relief poured through him that she was still free .
. . until he spied one of the orderlies standing at the front of the crowd on this side of the runway, pointing toward the stage.
He swore under his breath. They’d spotted her, too.
The plane that had nearly brained him was turning onto the runway. He shoved frantically through the crowd, heedless of the people he knocked aside. As he reached the front of the crowd, the plane’s engine started to rev up for takeoff.
He risked taking a step out onto the ridiculously narrow airstrip so he could look down it to the cluster of white coats. One of the orderlies held out his arm to stop the nurse from crossing onto the runway.
“Stand clear, everyone!” the announcer yelled.
Pullman took off running. Beside the plane, the starter’s green flag dropped.
He ran for his life, lunging across the runway, which suddenly seemed a mile wide, as the airplane accelerated toward him. The tip of his shoe hooked under the root of some sagebrush that had been cleared away. Stumbling, he half fell, half ran, barely managing to stay on his feet.
He regained his balance at the last possible moment instead of face-planting on the runway and raced the last few feet to the other side.
The crowd was even worse on this side of the runway.
The cars were packed in so tight he couldn’t even slip between them.
He was forced back out onto the runway to make good time as he ran toward the stage.
The next airplane taxied out onto the runway, facing him like an angry bull about to charge and skewer him. He was going to be the next one taken away to a sanatorium.
“Clear the airstrip!” the announcer bellowed.
The stage was just ahead.
A pair of deputies guarding the steps to the stage stepped forward, intent on stopping him.
“Pancho!” he hollered. “Pancho!”
She turned her head, squinted into the sun, trying to see who was shouting at her.
“Stop that lunatic!” the announcer ordered.
The deputies ran for him. Pullman ducked under their open arms, and one of the deputies tumbled right over his back. But his partner hooked him around the waist much the way Pullman snagged Pancho earlier.
Pullman looked up, catching Pancho’s gaze. Her eyes were cold. Angry. Betrayed.
Crap. She had to believe him. He yelled, “They’re coming for you, Pancho! Run!”
The deputy who had fallen regained his feet and grabbed Pullman’s belt from behind.
“They’re going to take you to a sanatorium! Your husband and a judge signed the papers!” Pullman shouted.
As the deputies tackled him, he yelled at the top of his lungs, with the last bit of breath he had, “Run!” The last thing he saw before going down on his back with both men on top of him was comprehension dawning in Pancho’s eyes.
The deputies rolled him over, grinding his face into the dirt. He felt cold metal snap around his wrists. He’d done his best. Problem was, he doubted it would be enough.
A sanatorium? Rankin is really going to put me in a sanatorium? It was so absurd her brain struggled to absorb the idea. She lurched as Pullman was roughly tackled in front of the stage. He’d risked his life to tell her.
“Clear a path. We have a judge’s order to take Mrs. Barnes into our care.”
Pancho jerked her head around. Three big men in white coats were facing off with the lone deputy left standing on the steps that led up to the stage. Into their care? More like into their custody!
“Let them through immediately,” Dr. Ayers called out from just behind her. He grasped both of her elbows from behind, shouting, “Here she is! Come and get her!” Then he muttered into her ear, “I am going to enjoy watching this.”
Time went into slow motion around her.
The deputy was taking a step out of the way. One of the orderlies was shaking out a straitjacket. The look of glee on the guy’s face was nauseating.
Yanking her elbows free, she spun and grabbed fistfuls of Ayers’s suit with both hands. She spun back toward the orderlies, flinging the doctor toward the trio of burly men with all her strength. “Then go and get yourself a closer look,” she grunted.
Ayers stumbled into the orderlies, sending himself and all three men tumbling down the steps. They landed in a tangle of flailing limbs.
She had to get out of here. Now.
“We’ve got Blanche Noyes coming up next, folks!” the announcer called out.
Over the crowd’s heads, Pancho saw Blanche turning to line herself up for takeoff. She was flying a Travel Air with two seats.
“We have a court order!” the nurse screeched. “Signed by a judge!”
“Stop her! Stop Pancho Barnes!” Dr. Ayers bellowed, still sprawled on his back. “She’s turned violent! We need to protect the public from her!”
One of the deputies who’d jumped Pullman was turning toward her.
You’ve got to run! her little voice urged.
She jumped off the front of the stage, pitching into the backs of a couple, who stumbled forward but thankfully didn’t fall.
The crowd formed a solid wall in front of her that looked darn near impregnable.
You can’t stay here. No, she couldn’t. Ayers was going to lie through his teeth and get everyone to help those brutes stick her in that straitjacket.
The sound of Blanche’s engine throttling up sent an idea, nothing short of a revelation, blasting through her brain. She knew how to get away from everyone!
She turned her head and grinned at Ayers, glaring up at her from the ground.
It’s dangerous. Too risky! her little voice shouted. There was no time to debate it. No time to think. She had to act—right now—if it was going to work. And when had risk ever stopped her before? She sprinted onto the runway. The crowd gasped.
“Folks! Folks! Stay where you are!” Ayers had taken over the microphone. “Pancho Barnes is suffering a mental collapse from her earlier crash!”
Bastard. She ran as hard as she could, her legs pumping for all they were worth, focusing her entire being on getting to Blanche’s plane.
“We have psychiatric professionals here to give Mrs. Barnes the care she needs. Make way for them, please!” Dr. Ayers said.
Someday she was going to tell him exactly what she thought of him.
And she was pretty sure it would take more than an hour and would include every curse word and insult she knew.
But she wouldn’t be saying those things today unless she fancied yelling them while that straitjacket was being buckled around her.
A few well-meaning men stepped out of the crowd in front of her. Not good. She had to get around them, and fast. But how?
The starter’s green flag dropped. Blanche released her brakes and started to roll, unable to see the people on the runway in front of her.
People in the crowd screamed warnings at the men who’d stepped out to grab her. They looked over their shoulders, saw an airplane coming at them, and leaped off the runway in alarm.
Praise the Lord and pass the potatoes.
Blanche’s plane picked up speed as it came at her. The tail started to get light, the rear wheel trying to lift off the ground, which meant Blanche was passing through at about twenty miles per hour.
This is a bad idea. Pancho didn’t disagree with her little voice. But what other options did she have? She couldn’t stay here and let them throw her into an asylum. And with this crowd, she would never escape being caught. She’d never been a wing walker, but there was a first time for everything.
Blanche’s plane barreled toward her, the tail lifting off the ground and the nose dropping level, looming large.
Pancho took a quick side step to avoid the propeller and lined up with the lower wing, just outside the wing wires.
She bent her knees, readying herself to jump.
Timing it carefully, she pushed off the ground with all the strength her legs could muster, praying she went high enough not to get slammed in the waist by the wing.
The lower wing caught her painfully across the hips, and she landed face-first across the wing. She swung her legs up and to the side, sliding her body in a one-eighty turn and skidding backward toward the rear edge of the wing.
Frantically, she grabbed for the wing wires, hooking one with her right hand. The steel cable bit into her fingers painfully, but she hung on tightly. She was committed now. If she let go and slid off the wing, the plane was going fast enough that the impact with the ground would kill her.
The plane was getting light on its front tires.
It’s now or never, Pancho.
She managed to snag the wing wire with her left hand as well and drag herself forward until she could get purchase with her feet on the wing and push upright.
She was careful to make sure her feet rested on wing spars so her boots didn’t punch through the fabric of the wing, which undoubtedly wasn’t reinforced for wing walking.
She wrapped both arms around the wing wire and held on for dear life.
She looked toward Blanche, who was staring back, a horrified look on her face.
Pancho let go of one hand just long enough to point up at the sky. Blanche shook her head and started to pull back on the throttle.
“Go! Go!” Pancho shouted desperately, praying Blanche would hear her over the engine noise or at least read her lips.
The plane lifted off beneath her feet, and the ride abruptly smoothed out.
Compared to before, when she’d had to hold on for dear life not to get shaken off the wing by the bumps and ruts in the runway, this wasn’t anywhere near as bad.
The wind was strong but steady. Once she got the hang of leaning into it, it wasn’t so bad.
She held on tight while they climbed away from the ground, gritting her teeth against the increasing pull of the wind as the plane accelerated. The airfield fell behind them, the threat of a straitjacket falling away as well. Elation filled her.
You’re standing on a wing without a parachute, her little voice pointed out. True, but wing walkers did this all the time. Granted, she’d never had any interest in leaving her cockpit in flight. And even though she was daring, she didn’t have a death wish. Current circumstances notwithstanding.
Blanche leveled out the plane a few hundred feet off the ground and powered back, obviously trying to fly as slowly as she possibly could and not blow Pancho clean off her wing. Blanche pointed at the seat in front of her.
As if I need her to tell me to get inside the plane.
Pancho knew she and Blanche would have a good laugh about this as soon as she made it into that seat. And this was going to make for one heck of a war story in years to come. But she had to make it to that seat first.
And then there was Rankin to deal with. But that was a problem for later. Back on the ground.
She slid her foot along the wing. Carefully, she released the wing wire with her right hand and snatched hold of the other wing wire, closest to the fuselage.
Sweat rolled down her back between her shoulder blades as she slid her left foot to join her right foot.
How in blue blazes did wing walkers grab the leading edge of the top wing and swing their feet up and over their heads until they ended up lying on it?
And how did they get the nerve to stand up on the top wing without anything at all to hang on to?
A world of respect for their courage swept through her, along with absolute certainty that they’d lost their minds.
She edged past the top of the diagonal wing wire toward the cockpit.
Now, to step around in front of it and grab the edge of the front cockpit.
Just a few more slides of her feet. Pancho turned to face the tail as she circled the wing wire, refusing to let go of it until she had a solid grip on the edge of the cockpit.
Here went nothing. She let go with her left hand and reached out for the fuselage.
Got it.
The side of the plane felt blessedly solid and secure after hanging on to that skinny wire for her life.
She slid her feet over next to the fuselage and then transferred her right hand to the edge of the cockpit.
Almost there. From here, she just had to swing her leg up and over the fuselage and into the cockpit.
It was exactly like mounting a horse, and she’d done that a thousand times.
Easy as pie. She lifted her right foot off the wing.
Started to throw it into the plane . . .
and saw something out of the corner of her eye that made her foot freeze in midair. She lowered it back to the wing.
Warning bells clanged in her head as she peered down the fuselage. The faint ridged outline of the cargo door was plainly visible from this angle. As she stared at it, something gray wisped out of it, only to be torn away by the wind. It looked like smoke.
She was not a religious person, but she said the sincerest prayer of her life, asking God not to reunite her with Marvel yet. And not like this.
Please, God, not like this.