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In the same year M. Michelin offered L1000 for a long-distance flight in all-British aviation; this prize was also won by Mr. Brabazon, who made a flight of 17 miles. Some of Colonel Cody's achievements in aviation were made with the Green engine. In 1910 he succeeded in winning both the duration and cross-country Michelin competitions, and in 1911 he again accomplished similar feats.
As I galloped past, one of them yelled: "There's Cody's kid now on his way to warn his father. Stop, you, and tell us where your old man is." A pistol shot, to terrify me into obedience, accompanied the command. I may have been terrified, but it was not into obedience. I got out of there like a shot, and though they rode hard on my trail my pony was too fast for them. My warning was in time.
When I saw the girl come away from her room, which she did rather trippingly, I went to her, and found her by no means the wreck I had expected the ordeal to leave her. "Did you meet Miss Gage?" she asked. "Yes," I returned, with tremulous expectation. "Well, don't you think she looks perfectly divine in that gown? It's one of Mme. Cody's, and we got it for thirty dollars.
As for myself, I say strike old Cody's ranch, for he's got dust." The boys were greatly alarmed at this, but, putting his mouth close to Davie Dunn's ear, Billy Cody whispered: "Davie, you see that shutter in the end of the roof?" "Yes, Billy," was the trembling reply. "Well, you slip out of there, drop to the ground and make for your home and tell your father who is here." "And you, Billy?"
A friend who was once a station agent tells two more adventures of Cody's: It had become known in some mysterious manner, past finding out, that there was to be a large sum of money sent through by Pony Express, and that was what the road agents were after.
Texas Jack, who was on this duty, returned and reported that he had found it, and that we were going back to the fort by another route. The major said: "That's another of those tricks of Cody's. He will guide Thomas back and he will get all the glory before I can overtake him." We rode into Fort McPherson about six o'clock that evening. I told Thomas to make his report immediately, which he did.
His machines were built with the most primitive tools, and some of our modern constructors, working in well-equipped "shops", where the machinery is run by electric plant, would marvel at the work accomplished with such tools as those used by Cody. Most of Cody's flights were made on Laffan's Plain, and he took part in the great "Round Britain" race in 1911.
The whole bottom of the cañon was often submerged, and in attempting to follow its course along the channel of the stream, both horse and rider were liable to plunge at any time into some abysmal whirlpool. Besides the excitement which the Three Crossings and an Indian country furnished, Cody's trail ran through a region that was often frequented by desperadoes.
It was characteristic of the man that in this race he kept on far in the wake of MM. Beaumont and Vedrines, though he knew that he had not the slightest chance of winning the prize; and, days after the successful pilot had arrived back at Brooklands, Cody's "bus" came to earth in the aerodrome. "It's dogged as does it," he remarked, "and I meant to do the course, even if I took a year over it."
Of Cody's sad death at Farnborough, when practising in the ill-fated water-plane which he intended to pilot in the sea flight round Great Britain in 1913, we speak in a later chapter.
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