The Spirit of Steamboat Read online

  “Sure, consider it done.” Rick turned and motioned toward the front. “If you guys’re getting on this thing, you better hustle it up; Lucian’s already gone through the walk around and preflight planning.” He turned back and looked at me, suddenly grim. “I double-checked the weather—they said you are crazy to do this, that there are a couple of aircraft reported down in the mountains northwest of here already . . . nobody can get to them . . . temperatures are dropping, just killer winds and blowing snow.”

  “Thank them for the vote of confidence.” I saluted. “Killer winds and blowing snow. Roger that.”

  “Don’t try and fool me—Marines don’t fly.”

  “No. We crawl, generally; we’re smart that way.”

  Looking toward the front of the hangar, I could see the Ferg and the medical tech getting ready to open the two large sliding doors so we could get the big plane out. The helicopter crew had already moved the small airplanes outside and had securely tied them down, so the hangar was pretty much empty except for Steamboat. As we moved past her bomb-bay doors, I smiled. “Were you just doing some modification to these?”

  Rick shook his head. “The hydraulics on this piece of shit continue to leak, and one of the draws to the system are these big doors. Over time they drop, then get hung up, and you can’t get them back in place without hitting ’em a few times to get ’em loose.”

  I unzipped the legs of the insulated coveralls he had given me and began slipping them on. “What if that happens while we’re in flight?”

  “Oh, if the main engine pumps go out there’s a manual lever up in the cockpit on the floor between the seats that’ll pressurize the system, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that that’s what you’re going to be doing all the way down to Colorado—pumping that handle.” He reached up and patted my shoulder as I straightened the coveralls and shrugged into my sheepskin coat. “But you’re a big boy, you can handle it.”

  I glanced at the doors, noting the space and how they didn’t seem to match properly. “But really, what if they do drop?”

  “Well, there’s the nose-gear tow bar in there; it’s about six feet long and you could use it to bang on ’em till they engage, but you’re gonna be a couple thousand feet in the air, and even you’re not tall enough for that. Hell, the engines or the electrical systems’ll give out in this crate long before that anyway.” He mimed pumping a handle. “Just keep paddling and don’t let ’em drop, Walt, and you’ll eventually get there.”

  “Thanks—your confidence is contagious.” I turned, and the Ferg met me as I got to the ladder leading up into the cockpit. He swallowed and nodded his head up and down like a nervous horse. “Are you sure you don’t want me to go?”

  I acted like I was actually thinking about it. “Yep, why don’t you go and I’ll stay here?” He looked as if the muscles in his heart had frozen. “I’m just kidding; this is my harebrained idea and if the previous sheriff of Absaroka County and the present sheriff of Absaroka County get killed, the citizens are going to need a new one.”

  He laughed. “Maybe, but I don’t want the job under those conditions, so you two be careful, okay?”

  The man didn’t seem to hold it against me that I’d passed over him to the position I now held. “You’d be a good one, Ferg.”

  A cantankerous voice bellowed from the echoing insides of the big Mitchell. “Anytime you and Betty Grable are through kissing and saying good-bye, I’ve got a plane to fly to Denver, damnit.”

  “Open cowl flaps, Toots.”

  Julie’s hand moved steadily as it pulled a lever on her left, but I was not reassured to see that the flight manual for the Mitchell VB-25J was open in her lap. “Mixture control in full rich position.”

  The old Doolittle Raider pushed another set of levers forward in turn. “Throttle position one thousand rpm—battery disconnect switches on.”

  Standing up, I peered through the windshield at the men waiting to open the doors and then close them after we taxied out. Rick was positioned in front with a fire extinguisher, which was not a comforting sight.

  Lucian’s fingers snapped across the instrument panel. “Switching on ignition and fuel booster pumps.” He glanced back at me. “Nervous, Troop?”

  I looked around, looking for seatbelts—I was on the jump seat behind Lucian and finally found a harness, draped it over my shoulders, and buckled in. “Not if you’re not.”

  “Oh, hell, we got a one-legged pilot who hasn’t flown one of these things in about a hundred years.” He grinned at Julie, her bright yellow ball cap embroidered with a small bear bearing the words PIPER CUB, her green headphones pushed up and parked at a jaunty angle over one ear. “A copilot that in flight-time reality has barely even sat in one.” He glanced around the cockpit. “A hangar queen that’s ready for the salvage yard, and a snowstorm that’s going to try and blow us into the ground near Wichita . . . What could go wrong?” He glanced at his lovely copilot. “Energizing right starter and priming.”

  She took a swig from the plastic jug and then lodged it between her seat and the fuselage. “Roger that.”

  “Mesh the starter, Toots.”

  Her smile faded, for a number of reasons. “Me?”

  He half grinned a roguish grin. “You gotta start sometime, Angel.” He turned back to the controls. “Just don’t hold ’em on too long or you’ll burn out our booster coils.” He turned to the right, and we watched as one of the 1,700-horsepower engines sputtered, kicked, seemed to rhythmically explode, and then began chopping the air in the hangar with its three-blade propeller. Lucian hollered to be heard above the racket, “Left engine starter energized and primed!”

  Julie yelled back, “Left engine starter meshed!”

  I’d thought I was going to be deafened by the sound of one of the supercharged Wright Cyclone engines, but when the other coughed to life I was sure of it. The roar of the things was tremendous, and the heaving of the plane’s airframe as Lucian tapped the oil pressure gauges and they settled at forty pounds of pressure was thunderous. “Lady and gentleman, the Mitchell B-25 medium bomber—the fastest way in the world to turn a hundred-and-thirty-octane aviation fuel into pure noise!”

  I watched the rotation of the propellers as they caught up with themselves, almost as if they’d slowed, and then as they accelerated, disappeared into a whirl of pitched power, the yellow tips of the blades creating a wreath of deadly, cautionary color in line with the red stripes on the fuselage.

  Lucian yelled again. “Weapons!”

  Julie stared at the instruments for a moment and then quizzically at him.

  He laughed, and I could still smell the bourbon in his breath. “Just seeing if you were paying attention!”

  White exhaust smoke filtered through the cockpit from the numerous holes and cracks in the fuselage, stinging my eyes and making it hard to see—effectively, I was now blind, along with being deaf. “What’s all that smoke—are we on fire?”

  “It’s caused by the oil left over in the cylinders—same stuff that waterproofed your boots. It’ll clear once I throttle up.” I felt a clawlike grip grab my hand and place it on a handle at the center between the two seats, and the brim of Lucian’s hat poked the side of my face. “Stop worrying, Marine. You just keep a hand on that lever!” He pounded a forefinger against a small black dial on the control panel. “Julie says the main engine pumps are weak on this ship. Don’t you let that hydraulic pressure drop below where I’ve made that mark, you understand?”

  I leaned forward, searching for the mark and the designated instrument with my eyes burning. “What happens if I do?”

  “We lose brakes and can’t operate the landing gear or flaps and crash, you damn fool!” He swiveled in the aluminum seat with its minimal padding, slid back the glass to the outside, yanked off his hat, and waved the silver belly back and forth to indicate to Rick we were ready to taxi and to let us pass before we all died of asphyxiation. “Stand away and let this Baker-Two-Bits bitch fly!”

 
Rick stepped back, the doors opened, and the snowstorm charged inside to get us, blankets of white flapping like covers on the hangar floor, blistering out of the night like hordes of tiny albino hornets.

  Lucian pushed the throttle forward, and the big plane lurched ahead with its nose dipping before rising steadily as we really began moving. I know it was only my imagination, but it was as if I could hear the snow complain as the big tires rolled over it, the B-25 angling to the right as we moved out of that hangar like a rocket ship, like a steam train, like a horse galloping home.

  There would be people who would argue with me, but I swear that old bird pranced out of that building and into the snow like a beer-commercial Clydesdale, a mobile fortress shooting into the black and white of the night before Christmas with the two spinning propellers pulling us inexorably forward like corkscrewed fate.

  When I looked up at Lucian, he grinned with an absolute conviction and fanned the side of the plane with his cowboy hat like a saddle-bronc rider yelling as loud as he could to be heard above the din. “Powder River, let ’er buck!”

  Slim Pickens as pilot.

  We were doomed.

  The hydraulic pressure had already started to drop slightly as we taxied but rose as I pumped the lever.

  While jacking the red handle, I noticed that some wiseacre had hung an old keychain of the state emblem off of the yellow escape hatch canopy frame above our heads. The unnamed wag had attached a small, gold-colored bucking horse, complete with hatless rider fanning the brass chain from which the lucky trinket swung, along with a few beads and a tin-cone bell from a Cheyenne Fancy Dress dance costume.

  Maybe it had been some pilot over Normandy, maybe some firefighter, but it was likely that he, like me, was looking for a charm or a totem—some sort of medicine that would keep him alive. You’d be amazed at the things you’ll do when you think the next few moments might be your last—even the smallest of signs can loom large like irrevocable messages from the ether.

  In Vietnam and even now, I kept a beaded medicine bag that Henry had given me years earlier, trusting the Bear’s intuition and spirituality. Unconsciously, my hand crept up and delved into the inside pocket of my sheepskin coat, and I ran my thumb over the hard glass beads strung along the elk hide for luck, a habit I’d picked up during the Tet Offensive. I could feel the different items I’d placed inside, things that I treasured and that only I knew about.

  There were ghosts out there in that whistling snow and blow, ancient voices that could rise in harmony for or against you—and I was bound that they would be for the girl named after the sun goddess Amaterasu, who shone over heaven. It was strange, but the rhythm of the engines began sounding like drums, and it was almost as if they were establishing a driving force to combat the wind.

  Glancing around the cockpit, I wondered at the turn of the fates that would put a hurt Japanese child in such a beast like Steamboat—the same kind of plane that Lucian had flown thirty seconds over Tokyo to drop bombs on her ancestors, but this time on a suicide mission to carry a wounded Japanese child to Denver on a hellacious, storm-filled night.

  As Lucian closed the window, put on his snow-patched Stetson, and continued giving the bomber more throttle, I amused myself by thinking about the real Steamboat, the horse that had become the longest-running license plate motif in the world.

  Steamboat didn’t start there or on the patches of the Wyoming National Guardsmen who served in the 148th Field Artillery Regiment in World War I, but rather as a colt foaled on the Frank Foss Ranch near Chugwater, Wyoming, the progeny of a massive Percheron stallion and a hot-blooded Mexican mare. A product of his breeding, he grew strong, so strong in fact that when castrated, he slammed his head against the ground so hard that he broke cartilage loose in his long nose, resulting in a distinctive whistling sound when he breathed—hence the name, Steamboat.

  For many a rodeo cowboy, it was the last thing they heard before hitting the ground.

  Solid black with three white stockings, the horse enjoyed parades and Wild West shows, where he was known to keep time to the music the bands played; but, docile while being handled, there was something he could not abide—riders. The bucker would not allow a man to stay on top of him, and, rapidly becoming the toast of stock providers, he performed in every major rodeo in the United States for years.

  There is a great deal of controversy as to who the rider is on the license plate, from Jake Maring and Guy Holt to Stub Farlow, but there is no controversy as to the fact that none of them ever rode the horse known as the Lord of the Plains or the King of the Hurricane Deck to a standstill. Allen True captured the spirit of the animal for the princely sum of seventy-five dollars when Secretary of State Lester C. Hunt commissioned him to depict the horse and rider as the design for the 1936 Wyoming license plate.

  Steamboat’s story didn’t end well, though—the legendary horse fell victim to blood poisoning due to an altercation with a barbed-wire fence while penned during a lightning storm in Salt Lake City. He was returned to Wyoming where veterinarians made the critical judgment that there was no way to save the swollen, dying horse, and a rifle was fetched to dispatch the animal and end its suffering—the gun, coincidently, having been owned by another famous Wyoming legend, Tom Horn.

  On a cold, gray October 14 in 1914, the blast of that rifle ended the career of one of the greatest bucking horses of all time. Legend promotes the story that Steamboat was buried under the hard-packed earth of Frontier Park in Cheyenne, a place where uncounted cowboys and mighty buckers have gone seat to saddle, but the legend belies the truth. I’d spoken with one of the men who was there. Standing under the old wooden bleachers with Paul R. Hanson, he told me, “People say that he was buried at Frontier Park, but that’s not true.” The old cowpuncher looked off to the distance, looking for something, maybe some way to bring things back and change them. “He was buried at the old city dump where he was destroyed. A desecration, Walter, and that’s for sure.”

  The bucking horse charm shot forward and swung back and forth as the big aircraft lurched to a stop, the wheels sliding on the snow as Dickens’s words hung in my mind, in my mouth, and on the end of that chain: “Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope. . . .”

  “The wind is blowing so hard the snow isn’t even sticking to the airplane.” Julie’s voice broke in on my thoughts as she and Lucian strained forward, trying to see what it was that had materialized between the bright-white runway lights. “What the heck is that?”

  Lucian shook his head as he fumbled with his headset in order to pull the ear cups over his ears, no mean feat while wearing a cowboy hat. He adjusted the microphone. “Hey . . .” He paused, leaned toward his copilot with a fist around the mic, and whispered to Julie, “What the hell is our call sign again?”

  She grimaced and looked down at the flight plan and the assortment of papers in her lap. “Raider N4030 and the personal designation LC that you added to the end when we filed our flight plan.”

  I glanced around and spotted another pair of headphones on a coiled cord—I’m smart that way—so I snatched them off and put them over my ears in the same fashion as my old boss, which not only enabled me to hear the conversation but muffled some of the engine noise.

  Before Lucian could transmit the question, Rick, whose voice sounded tinny and far away even though he was just a little ways behind us, started speaking. Static. “Raider November 4030 Lima Charlie this is Durant UNICOM. I have your clearance from Salt Lake as follows—ATC—clears LIFEGUARD NOVEMBER 4030 LIMA CHARLIE to Denver Stapleton Airport VIA THE CRAZYWOMAN THREE ONE NINE RADIAL, CRAZYWOMAN VOR, AS FILED, MAINTAIN ONE THREE THOUSAND, CONTACT SALT LAKE CITY CENTER FREQUENCY ONE TWO SEVEN POINT SEVEN FIVE, SQUAWK FOUR ONE TWO SEVEN, CLEARANCE VOID IF NOT OFF BY ZERO FOUR THREE ZERO.”

  As
Julie copied the clearance, I watched Lucian’s lips move and then opt for words I’d heard them say numerous times before. “Jesus H. Christ, Durant UNICOM, who the hell parked an iceberg out here on our runway?”

  I rose up and looked over both their heads at the front of the plane where a pile of snow the size of an eighteen-wheeler created a hill stretching the entire width of the runway. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Rick’s voice was weary. Static. “Is it out near the wind sock to the north?”

  Julie sat up and looked through her side window and turned back. “Roger that.”

  Static. “Must be where those idiots sometimes dump the snow. I guess with the wind coming in from the northwest, the damn thing acted like a snow fence and filled up the runway.” He sighed, his voice indicating utter defeat. “You guys might as well come on back . . .”

  There was silence on the airwaves as Lucian, looking out the side window into the darkness, broken only by the horizontal lines of snow, casually held a hand out to his copilot. “Hey, you got another stick of that Beemans?”

  She glanced back at me and then fumbled the pack from her pocket and handed him a piece.

  Slowly, the old Raider unwrapped the gum and popped it in his mouth, and, tossing the wrapper over his right shoulder like a pinch of salt, he pulled the mic in close. “Hey, Rick, what’s the distance between this wind sock and the terminal?”

  Static. “Only about three hundred yards, so don’t you even think about it.”

  I watched as he chewed his gum and then punched one of the levers forward, causing the big bird to pivot on one tire so that she turned around and faced the vague and furry lights of the Durant terminal building like a picador in a bullring. His head rose slowly as he looked from under the cowboy hat and down the blue-lit taxiway, his jaw set. “Hell, we woulda had a crosswind on the main runway anyway; this puts us directly into a forty-five-knot headwind. With the limited fuel quantity we’re carrying, Steamboat’s light enough to make it.” He inclined his head toward his copilot. “Full brakes, Angel.”