The Glory Game Part 45

When the final bell sounded, Luz stood beneath the shade of the awning and fingered the belt buckled around the waist of her slim four-pocket safari dress. She didn't realize how nervous she was until she saw Raul riding off the field toward the pavilion. Dismounting at the picket line, he turned his horse over to the groom and shed his helmet, mallet, and knee guards, then picked up a towel to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. It was still in his hand when he walked toward her.

She was conscious of her heart-lift. He had changed so little, still a stirring sight in his white breeches and snug-fitting polo jersey, more tanned maybe, a few more lines, but his hair was just as dark and his eyes as blue as she remembered. She felt a little awkward being here like this, remembering the way she'd asked him to leave.

"h.e.l.lo, Raul."

"You are looking well, Luz."

"Thank you." She searched for words, trying to think of something else to say.

The other players rode by to their individual picket lines and called to Raul, some congratulating him for a well-played game and others chiding him for missing an easy shot. He acknowledged most of them with a curt nod, then reached to take Luz by the arm.

"Shall we walk?" he suggested.

"Yes."

The pressure of his fingers on her arm was a pleasant sensation as he guided her away from the milling crowd of grooms, riders, horses, and bystanders. They walked toward the shade of the trees, where the initial preparations were underway for the traditional barbecue and dance to be held that evening under the club's famous oak tree. Their steps slowed automatically when they reached the coolness of the shade. Luz was conscious of the silence that lay between them.

Raul broke it. "When did you leave Palm Beach? I heard this last winter that you had moved."

"A little over a year ago. I live in Virginia now, at Hope-worth Farm. I've begun training polo ponies. That's why I'm here." One of the reasons, anyway. "I have consigned four ponies to tomorrow's auction. So far I have two interested buyers who want to take some trial rides. I'm supposed to meet them at the barns in an hour."

"You were always good at handling young horses."

"It's a pity I was never as good at handling other things," Luz murmured ruefully, then glanced upward into the spreading branches of the big oak. "I almost wish they still held the auction here under this ancient oak instead of at the new sales pavilion. I always thought it was unique."

"Hector said I should tell you the house is wearing its shawl of ivy. He hopes someday you will come and see how good it looks."

"How is he?" She smiled, and inwardly wondered how much of that invitation Raul seconded.

"He is fine."

"When I learned you were going to be here in Houston, I hoped I'd have the chance to see you. I wanted to congratulate you on obtaining your ten-goal rating. I know how much it meant to you." She offered to shake hands with him, but he held her hand and studied it.

"It was not a fair trade, Luz. Losing you and receiving the ten," he stated.

A tightness gripped her chest. "I wasn't sure you'd want to see me again, Raul."

"You were the one who asked me to go."

"I needed time alone to think. I went from my ex-husband to you with hardly any time in between to solve the riddle of who or what I was, or what I wanted." She studied his proud, rugged face, finding it so achingly familiar. "You see, I was raised to believe I was worth something only if I had a man. I've been totally on my own for a year now, and I've learned to like it. Now I know I'm a person in my own right. I have a value."

"I could have told you that."

"But I had to find out for myself," she said, just as she ultimately had to accept that she couldn't shoulder the blame for Rob's death. It was unlikely she could have prevented it even if she had known.

"Now that you have, what will you do?" He continued to hold her hand.

"I'm not sure. Sometimes it's difficult to pick up where you left off." Unconsciously she held her breath.

"Not for me," Raul told her. "I have not seen you for almost a year and a half, but my feelings for you are stronger than before. I love you, Luz."

Slowly she smiled as tears misted her eyes. "We never did get around to saying that to each other, did we?" There was a faint shake of her head, almost disbelieving it could turn out this way. "Raul, you deserve someone who can give you a home and a family. You're young enough. You still have time to raise children. I'm forty-four years old. I can't give you sons and daughters."

"Children are not what I want. You are."

She didn't bother to wait to hear any more as she went into his arms, at last needing him because she loved him.

POCKET STAR BOOKS.

PROUDLY PRESENTS PROUDLY PRESENTS.

SILVER WINGS, SANTIAGO BLUE.

JANET DAILEY.

Now available in paperback

from Pocket Star Books

Turn the page for a preview of

Silver Wings, Santiago Blue....

Prologue.

SHE SAT AMIDST a framework of canvas and piano wire, her long skirts tied around her knees and her legs extended full length in front of her. No doubt her thudding heart competed with the reverberations of the 30-horsepower motor spinning the two propellers. When the wire anchoring the Wright Brothers flying machine to a rock was unfastened, the Flyer was launched five stories into the air, and in that wildly exhilarating moment Edith Berg nearly forgot to hold on to her seat.

Beside her Wilbur Wright was at the controls, dressed in his customary high starched collar, gray suit and an automobile touring cap. The flight over the Hunaudieres race track in Le Mans, France, lasted two minutes, three seconds, and Edith Berg entered the pages of aviation history as the first woman to ride in a flying machine. It was all a publicity stunt to promote the reliability of the new Wright Flyer, an idea concocted by her husband, Hart O. Berg, a sales representative for the Wright Brothers.

The year was 1908 and Edith Berg was an instant sensation, her courage and daring applauded. The press loved the stunt. The French shook their heads and whispered among themselves, "That crazy American woman! And imagine her husband's letting her do it!"

She wore a stunning flying suit of plum-colored satin, from the hood covering her raven hair to her knickers and the cloth leggings, called puttees, which wrapped her legs from knee to ankle. It was understandable that the all-male members at the Aero Club of America's headquarters on Long Island would look at twenty-seven-year-old Harriet Quimby with open mouths, especially when she asked to be licensed as an aeronaut-a woman! (The government had not gotten around to accepting responsibility for licensing pilots and wouldn't until 1925.) The green-eyed writer for Leslie's Magazine suggested the members let her demonstrate her flying skills. With considerable skepticism they watched Harriet Quimby climb into her gossamer biplane and take off. She flew over a nearby potato field, then banked the plane back to the field and set her aircraft down within eight feet of her takeoff point-setting a new record for the club in landing accuracy.

The date was August 1, 1911, and Harriet Quimby became the first woman to be licensed as an aeronaut. In a wry comment to reporters she said, "Flying seems easier than voting." Not until 1920 would the Nineteenth Amendment be ratified, giving women the right to vote.

She sat cross-legged in the doorway of the fuselage while the flame-red, tri-motored Fokker airplane with gold wings, the Friends.h.i.+p, floated on its pontoons in the harbor off Burry Port, Wales. Her short-cropped hair was the color of the dune gra.s.s on Kill Devil Hill, site of the Wright Brothers' first powered flight.

Captain Hilton Railey rowed alongside the Friends.h.i.+p and shouted to her, "How does it feel to be the first woman to fly the Atlantic? Aren't you excited?"

"It was a grand experience," Amelia Earhart replied, but she knew she hadn't flown the Atlantic. Bill Stultz had been the pilot and navigator on the flight. "I was just baggage. Someday I'll try it alone."

That was June 18, 1928.

Four years later, on May 21, 1932, Amelia Earhart landed her red 500-horsepower Lockheed Vega in a farm meadow outside of Londonderry, Ireland. Exhausted, she crawled out of the c.o.c.kpit and said to the staring farmhand, "I've come from America." It was five years after Lindbergh had made his Atlantic crossing.

On January 12, 1935, Amelia Earhart accomplished another first in aviation history by becoming the first pilot, male or female, to successfully fly from Hawaii to the continental United States, landing her Vega at Oakland Airport in California. That feat was immediately followed by the first non-stop flight to Mexico City, then from Mexico City to New York.

As a women's career counselor at Purdue University in Indiana, Amelia Earhart advised a group of female students, "A girl must nowadays believe completely in herself as an individual. She must realize at the outset that a woman must do the same job better than a man to get as much credit for it. She must be aware of the various discriminations, both legal and traditional, against women in the business world."

Amelia had already encountered them in 1929 when Transcontinental Air Transport, later to become Trans World Airlines, asked her to become a consultant for them along with Lindbergh. While he flew around the country checking out new air routes, she traveled as a pa.s.senger, talking with women and lecturing various women's clubs on the safety and enjoyment of flying.

At the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race in May of 1935, Amelia Earhart had the chance to meet newcomer Jacqueline Cochran, whose story would rival any tale by d.i.c.kens. As an orphan, her birth date and parents unknown, she was raised by foster parents in the lumber towns of northern Florida. It was a hardscrabble existence, and little Jacqueline often went shoeless. When she was eight years old, her foster family moved to Columbus, Georgia, to work in the local cotton mills, and Jackie worked, too, on the twelve-hour night s.h.i.+ft. A year later, she had charge of fifteen children in the fabric inspection room.

She left the cotton mill to go to work for the owner of a beauty shop, doing odd jobs. A beauty operator at the age of thirteen, Jackie was one of the first to learn the technique of giving a permanent wave. She began traveling to demonstrate the technique in salons through Alabama and Florida, until a customer persuaded her to go to a nursing school even though she only had two years of formal education.

As a nurse, she worked for a country doctor in Bonifay, Florida, a lumber town, so much like the places where she'd been raised. A short time later, after delivering a baby under wretched conditions, she abandoned her nursing career and went back to the beauty business. She became a stylist for Antoine's at Saks Fifth Avenue, both in his New York and Miami salons. In 1932, at a Miami club, Jacqueline Cochran met Floyd Bostwick Odium, a millionaire and a Wall Street financier. She told him of her dream to start her own cosmetics company. Odium advised her that to get ahead of her compet.i.tion and to cover the kind of necessary territory she would need wings. Jackie used her vacation that year to obtain a pilot's license, and subsequently the equivalent of a U.S. Navy flight training course.

At the same time that Jacqueline Cochran Cosmetics, Incorporated, was born with Odium's help, Jacqueline Cochran aviatrix came into existence. In 1934, this striking brown-eyed blonde made her debut in air-racing circles with the England-Australia compet.i.tion. Engine troubles forced her to land in Bucharest, Rumania.

In the Bendix Transcontinental Air Race of 1935 which saw both Earhart and Cochran competing, Earhart took off in the middle of the night with the rest of the starters. Cochran's Northrop Gamma was next on the ramp for takeoff, when a heavy fog rolled over the Los Angeles airport. The plane ahead of her roared down the runway and disappeared into the thick mist. The sound of a distant explosion was immediately followed by an eerie light that backlit the fog. Her reaction was instinctive, her nurse's training taking over. Jackie jumped in her car and followed the fire truck down the runway. Both arrived too late to do the pilot any good. By the time the fire was put out, the pilot was dead.

Jackie stood beside her aircraft while the tow truck dragged the burned and twisted wreckage off the runway. The fatal crash left everyone a little stunned, including her. A government aviation official was standing not far away from her and she heard him say he thought it was suicide to take off in that fog. The realization that she was next in line sent her running behind the hangar so no one would see her when she vomited.

When her legs quit shaking, she placed a long-distance call to New York and talked to her ardent backer and now her fiance as well, Floyd Odium. "What should I do?"

But Odium couldn't tell her, ultimately advising her that it came down to "a philosophy of life." At three o'clock that morning, Jacqueline Cochran made a blind takeoff, her fuel heavy aircraft barely clearing the outer fence which ripped off the radio antenna hanging below the plane's belly. She spiraled up through the fog, flying by compa.s.s only, to gain alt.i.tude to clear the seven-thousand-foot mountains inland from the coast.

Amelia Earhart came in fifth in the race, but an overheated engine and dangerous vibrations in the tail of the Northrop Gamma forced Jackie back to the starting line at Los Angeles.

May 10, 1936, was the wedding day for the slim-built, sandy-haired Floyd Odium and the glamorous and gutsy blonde Jacqueline Cochran. The homes she'd never had as a child became a reality as they purchased an estate in Connecticut, a ranch near Palm Springs, and an apartment in Manhattan overlooking the East River. Aviation had long been a love of Odlum's, so his interest went beyond being merely a supporter of his wife's career. Among his many holdings were the Curtiss-Wright Corporation and the Convair Aircraft Company. So it wasn't surprising that the Odlums helped finance Amelia Earhart's around-the-world flight.

On June 1, 1937, they were in Miami to see her off on that last, fateful trip. Before she left, Amelia gave Jacqueline a small American flag made of silk-which became a symbolic "transfer of the flag," in military jargon, when Amelia Earhart vanished without a trace. Speaking at a tribute to the famous woman aviator, Jacqueline said, "If her last flight was into eternity, one can mourn her loss but not regret her effort. Amelia did not lose, for her last flight was endless. In a relay race of progress, she had merely placed the torch in the hands of others to carry on to the next goal and from there on and on forever."

That year, Jacqueline Cochran won the women's purse in the Bendix Air Race and finished third overall. On December 4, 1937, she set a national speed record, traveling from New York to Miami in four hours and twelve minutes, bettering the previous time set by the millionaire race pilot Howard Hughes. The following year, Jacqueline Cochran won the Bendix Race, covering the distance of 2,042 miles in eight hours, ten minutes and thirty-one seconds-nonstop! Her plane was the P-35, a sleek, low-winged military pursuit-type aircraft. She set a new cross-country record for women, and in 1939 broke the women's alt.i.tude record. She received her second Harmon Trophy, the highest award given to any aviator in America, presented to her in June by the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. She kept flying, setting records, and testing new designs and new equipment.

But events in Europe were dominating the world scene. The Axis held control over Czechoslovakia, Albania, and Spain. In September, Hitler sent his German Panzers into Poland. On the 28th of September, the day after Warsaw fell, Jacqueline Cochran sent a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, expressing her view that it was time to consider the idea of women pilots in non-combat roles and implying a willingness to do the advance planning for such an organization. Beyond expressing grat.i.tude for the suggestion and stating her belief that women could make many contributions to the war effort should they be called upon to do so, there was little Eleanor Roosevelt could do.

Throughout 1940 and the first half of 1941, Jacqueline Cochran continued to expound on the idea of establis.h.i.+ng a women's air corps to free male pilots for war duty. After she had lunch with General H. H. "Hap" Arnold, Chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps, and Clayton Knight, who directed the recruiting of pilots in America for the British Air Transport Auxiliary, General Arnold suggested she should ferry bombers for the British and publicize their need for pilots. Knight thought it was a splendid idea.

But the Air Transport Auxiliary headquarters in Montreal wasn't as enthusiastic. Their response was, "We'll call you," and they didn't. Undeterred, she got in touch with one of her British friends, Lord Beaverbrook, who just happened to have recently been appointed minister of procurement, formerly called aircraft production. During the second week of June, Montreal did indeed call and ask her to take a flight test-Jacqueline Cochran, the holder of seventeen aviation records, twice recipient of the Harmon Trophy, and the winner of the 1938 Bendix Race.

After three days of grueling tests that seemed more intent on determining her endurance than her flying skill, Jackie made the mistake of joking that her arm was sore from using the handbrake when she was accustomed to toe brakes. The chief pilot stated in his report that while she was qualified to fly the Hudson bomber, he could not recommend her since he felt she might have a physical incapacity to operate the brakes in an emergency situation.

His objections were deemed petty and overruled by ATA headquarters, and Jacqueline Cochran received orders to ferry a Lockheed Hudson bomber from Montreal to Prestwick, Scotland, with a copilot/navigator and radio operator as her crew. But her troubles weren't over. Vigorous protests were made by the ATA male pilots, who threatened to strike. Their objections ranged from concern that ATA would be blamed if the Germans shot down America's most famous woman pilot to complaint that an unpaid volunteer-and female to boot-flying a bomber across the Atlantic belittled their own jobs. A compromise was ultimately reached whereby Jacqueline Cochran would be pilot-in-command for the Atlantic crossing, but her copilot would make all the takeoffs and landings. On June 18, 1941 Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to fly a bomber across the Atlantic Ocean.

On July first, she returned from England. In her Manhattan apartment, with its foyer murals showing man's early attempt at flight and a small chandelier designed to resemble an observation balloon hanging from the ceiling, she held a news conference and talked about her trip to Britain. After the reporters had gone, Jackie received a phone call inviting her to lunch with President and Mrs. Roosevelt.

The next day, a police escort drove her to the estate at Crum Elbow, the famous Hyde Park mansion with its majestic columned entrances. She spent two hours with the President. The meeting resulted in a note of introduction to Robert Lovett, a.s.sistant Secretary of War for Air, in which the President stated his desire that Jacqueline Cochran research a plan creating an organization of women pilots for the Army Air Corps.

Her subsequent interview with the a.s.sistant Secretary early in July resulted in Jackie's becoming an unpaid "tactical consultant," with office s.p.a.ce for herself and her staff in the Ferry Command section. Using the Civil Aeronautics Administration's files, she and her researchers found the records of over 2,700 licensed women pilots, 150 of them possessing more than 200 hours of flying experience. When contacted, nearly all were enthusiastic about the possibility of flying for the Army.

Jacqueline Cochran put forward a proposal to her former luncheon partner, Army Air Corps General "Hap" Arnold, to utilize not just the 150 highly qualified women pilots but to give advanced training to the more than two thousand others. Hers was not the only proposal regarding women pilots the Army received. Nancy Harkness Love, a Va.s.sar graduate and commercial pilot for the aviation company she and her husband owned in Boston called Inter-city Airlines, had also contacted the Ferry Command of the Army Air Corps with a plan to use women pilots to ferry aircraft from the manufacturers to their debarkation points.

But in July 1941 such drastic measures seemed premature to General Arnold. The United States was not at war, and there was an abundance of male pilots. He wasn't sure that it ever would be so dire that they would need women.

Then Pearl Harbor happened. By the spring of 1942, the Army was "combing the woods for pilots," and the plans of the two women were resurrected. Jacqueline Cochran was in England recruiting women to fly for the British ATA when she learned that Nancy Love was putting together an elite corps of professional women pilots, ranging from barnstormers to flight instructors for the Ferry Command. Jacqueline Cochran raced home to argue with the Army Air Corps commander, General H. H. Arnold, for her training program, offering him more than a few pilots-promising him thousands, and a.s.suring him she'd prove they were every bit as good if not better than men.

The situation was dire. The Allies were losing the war on all fronts in September 1942. General Arnold agreed to Jacqueline Cochran's proposal. The following month, she was busy locating a base where she could train her "girls." Facilities were finally provided for the first two cla.s.ses of trainees at Howard Hughes Field in Houston, Texas, but it soon became apparent that the Houston base wasn't big enough to hold her plans.

Her girls were learning to fly, and they were doing it "the Army way."

JANET DAILEY is the author of scores of popular and uniquely American novels, including such bestsellers as Scrooge Wore Spurs, A Capital Holiday, The Glory Game, The Pride of Hannah Wade, and the phenomenal Calder saga, including the newest t.i.tle in the series, s.h.i.+fting Calder Wind. Her romantic fiction has also been featured in a story anthology, The Only Thing Better Than Chocolate. Since her first novel was published in 1975, Janet Dailey has become the bestselling female author in America, with more than 300,000,000 copies of her books in print. Her books have been published in seventeen languages and are sold in ninety countries. Janet Dailey's careful research and her intimate knowledge of America have made her one of the best-loved authors in the country and around the world.

Books by Janet Daily.

Calder Born, Calder Bred.

Stands a Calder Man This Calder Range This Calder Sky.

The Best Way to Lose Touch The Wind The Glory Game.

The Pride of Hannah Wade Silver Wings, Santiago Blue.

For the Love of G.o.d Foxfire Light.

The Hostage Bride The Lancaster Men Leftover Love.