He guided the animal with ease and
nonchalance when she reared and plunged, and kept her movements confined
to an incredibly small piece of ground, considering her abundance of
action. “Keep to your own side of the road throughout the race. I don’t want to
be collided with by your big beast,” Reilly cautioned, while they were
awaiting two signals from the starter. To this Harry replied in some derision, “I’ll give you a good share of
the road at the start, and all of it and my dust, too, afterward.” And
then the officer who held the pistol fired the first shot. Reilly was well satisfied with the conditions under which the race was
to be made. The road was wide and level, smooth, hard and straight, and
a strong breeze which had sprung up, blew squarely against his back. His
wheel was geared up to eighty-four inches; the breeze promised to be a
valuable adjunct in pushing it along. Awaiting the second and last
signal, Reilly glanced down the two blue ranks of soldiers, which
stretched away into hazy lines in the distance and converged at the
termination of the course where a flag had been stuck into the ground. The soldiers were at parade rest. Their unceasing movements as they
chatted to one another, turning their bodies this way and that and
craning their heads forward to look toward the starting point, and then
jerking them back, made the lines seem like long, squirming snakes. At
the end of the course a thick bunch of militiamen clogged the road and
overspread into the fields. Crack! The signal to be off. Reilly shoved aside the fellow who had been
holding his wheel upright while astride of it, and pushed down on the
pedals. The mare’s hoofs dug the earth; her great muscular legs
straightened out; she sprang forward with a snort of apparent pleasure,
taking the lead at the very start. Reilly heard the shout of excitement
run along the two ranks of soldiers. He saw them waving their arms and
hats as he went by. And on ahead through the cloud of dust there was
visible the shadow-like outlines of the snorting, galloping horse, whose
hoof beats sounded clear and sharp above the din which came from the
sides of the highway. The mare crept farther and farther ahead. Very
soon a hundred feet or more of the road lay between her and the
bicyclist. Harry turned in his saddle and called out another sarcasm. “I shall pass you very soon. Keep to your own side of the road!” Reilly
shouted, not a bit daunted by the way the race had commenced. His head
was well down over the handle-bars, his back had the shape of the upper
portion of an immense egg. Up and down his legs moved; faster and
faster and faster yet. He went by the soldiers so rapidly that they only
appeared to be two streaks of blurry color. Their sharp rasping shouts
sounded like the cracking of musketry. The cloud of dust blew against
the bicyclist’s head and into his mouth and throat. When he glanced
ahead again he saw with satisfaction that the mare was no longer
increasing her lead. It soon became evident even that he was slowly
cutting down the advantages she had secured. Harry again turned his head shortly afterward, doubtless expecting to
find his opponent hopelessly distanced by this time. Instead of this
Reilly was alarmingly close upon him. The man ejaculated a sudden oath
and lashed his animal furiously. Straining every nerve and sinew the
mare for the moment pushed further ahead. Then her pace slackened a bit
and Reilly again crept up to her. Closer and closer to her than before,
until his head was abreast of her outstretched tail. Harry was lashing
the mare and swearing at her unceasingly now. But she had spurted once
and appeared to be incapable of again increasing her speed. In this way
they went on for some little distance, Harry using his whip brutally,
the mare desperately struggling to attain a greater pace, Reilly hanging
on with tenacity to her hind flanks and giving up not an inch of ground. A mile is indeed a very short distance when traversed at such a pace. The finishing flag was already but a few hundred feet further on. Reilly realized that it was time now to go to the front. He gritted his
teeth together with determination and bent his head down even further
toward his front wheel. Then his feet began to move so quickly that
there was only visible an indistinct blur at the sides of his crank
shaft. At this very second, with a face marked with rage and hatred,
Harry brought his horse suddenly across the road to thet part of it
which he had been warned to avoid. It is hard to tell what kept Reilly from being run into and trampled
under foot. An attempt at back pedaling, a sudden twist of the
handle-bar, a lurch to one side that almost threw him from his seat. Then, in the fraction of a second he was over on the other side of the
road, pushing ahead of the mare almost as though she were standing
still. The outburst of alarm from the throats of the soldiers changed
when they saw that Reilly had not been injured; first into a shout of
indignation at the dastardly attempt which had been made to run him
down, and then into a roar of delight when the bicyclist breasted the
flag a winner of the race by twenty feet. As he crossed the line Reilly caught a glimpse of Washington. He stood
close to the flag and was waving his hat in the air with the enthusiasm
of a schoolboy. Reilly went on down the road slackening his speed as
effectively as he could. But before it was possible to entirely stop
his wheel’s momentum the noisy acclamations in his rear ceased with
startling suddenness. He turned in his saddle and looked back. As sure
as St. Peter he had the road entirely to himself. There wasn’t a soldier
or the ghost of a soldier in sight. As soon as he could he turned his bicycle about and rode slowly back
along the highway, now so singularly deserted, looking hither and
thither in vain for some trace of the vanished army. Even the flag which
had been stuck into the ground at the end of the one-mile race course
was gone. The breeze had died out again and the air was tranquil and
warm. In the branches of a nearby tree two sparrows chirped and
twittered peacefully. Reilly went back to the place where the camp had
been. He found there only open fields on one side of the road and a
clump of woodland on the other. He continued on down the little hill up
which Harry and his companions had brought him a few hours previously
and followed the road on further, coming finally to the fork in it near
which was located the old farmhouse wherein he had been taken captive. The house was, as it had been when he had previously entered it, falling
apart from age and neglect. When he went inside he found lying on the
brick hearth in front of the fireplace a number of pieces of broken
glass. THE END.