Thirteen and a half days had elapsed since President William Howard Taft pressed a golden telegraph key at the White House, simultaneously opening the World's Fair in Seattle and signaling for New York Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. to fire a gleaming revolver from the steps of city hall, starting the ocean-to-ocean automobile race for the Guggenheim Cup. Now it was June 14, 1909, and the members of the Shawmut team were alone in front, clinging to an unlikely lead in southern Wyoming, determined to reach the finish at that World's Fair ahead of one or both of the Ford Model Ts nipping at their heels. Four of them were rumbling along in the big, high-riding Shawmut automobile'the three crewmembers from Boston, sunbaked and dusty, plus the latest in a series of guides helping them find their way across the unpaved, unmarked West'with little in sight but big-sky vistas and broad swaths of beige earth. They hadn't seen either Ford all day, not since they cut out of Cheyenne in the...
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