He didn't. His ax blade bit into the outside of the target ring, and a groan of disappointment went up from the Oakland firemen and their supporters. The cheers from the crowd were louder, drowning out the groan. Several San Francisco men clapped Annabel on the back, congratulating her. She kept her head down and didn't say anything, merely nodding in acknowledgment of the accolades.
The hook-and-ladder relay climb was the next contest on the schedule. Annabel drifted in that direction with the rest of the firemen.
This contest would be more difficult for her to enter, since each engine company already had its own team. She might have to be content to observe this one, she decided.
At the beginning of each contest, the ladders on the fire wagons would be down. When the contest began, they would be lifted and extended to their full height, and then each of four men would climb to the top in turn, retrieve one of the brightly colored ribbons tied there, and climb back down. The first team to have all four of its ribbons down would be the winner.
Annabel looked for the Engine Company Twenty-one team and found it after several minutes of searching. Cole was one of the four men standing ready to raise the ladder when the signal came. One of the firemen with him was a small, bandy-legged man with a heavily freckled, pleasantly ugly face. Annabel wondered if the man was Patsy O'Flaherty. She had a feeling he was.
One of the hook-and-ladder wagons from the Oakland department was parked next to the one from Engine Company Twenty-one, and its team was ready, too. The two fire chiefs came over from the area where the ax throw had been staged and explained the rules. Chief Sullivan displayed a starter's pistol loaded with blanks. A shot from the pistol would be the signal for the competition to begin.
When everyone was ready and a large crowd had gathered to watch; Chief Sullivan raised the pistol over his head and squeezed the trigger. The pistol cracked loudly, and the contest was under way.
The firemen sprang to their task. Two of them turned the cranks that lifted the ladder into an upright position, while the other two began sliding out and locking into place the telescoping extensions. When the ladder was at its full extension, Cole began scrambling up, his long coat flapping around his legs as he climbed.
Annabel realized that her pulse was racing with excitement as she watched Cole climbing the ladder. Part of it was from the thrill of watching any sort of close competition, she supposed, but she knew there was more to it than that. She wouldn't have been observing the contest nearly as raptly if Cole had not been involved.
The ladder swayed some under his weight, and Annabel found herself holding her breath at times. Cole was high in the air now, close to fifty feet. A fall from that height could be dangerous, even fatal. And there was no net below to catch him if he slipped.
Annabel glanced at the Oakland hook-and-ladder truck. The first member of the Oakland team had reached nearly the same height as Cole. But Cole got to the top first, snatched free one of the bright red ribbons that was tied there, and started down. He took the descent even faster than he had the climb up, skipping some of the rungs and sliding down with his gloved hands clamped on the sides of the ladder. As soon as his feet touched the platform at the base of the ladder; the second man in the relay started up.
The volume of the cheers from the crowd grew louder and louder as the contest continued. Cole had given his team the lead again, and the second and third men held on to it. Engine Company Twenty-one was ahead by half a ladder-length when the man Annabel had pegged as Patsy O'Flaherty began the anchor leg of the relay.
Patsy scrambled up the ladder even faster than his teammates had, and there was a huge grin on his face as he plucked the last of the red ribbons from the top of the ladder. He came back down quickly and was swamped by his teammates and the other men of Engine Company Twenty-one as he reached the bottom. They crowded 'around him and slapped him heartily on the back in congratulations. The cheering and applause went on for several minutes, and when it died down somewhat, Chief Sullivan raised his voice and announced the winning time posted by his team, adding proudly, "And that's a new record, folks!"
That brought on more cheering. Annabel drifted toward the back of the crowd while Cole and his companions accepted the accolades. She wasn't sure what was next, but she knew she didn't want to be too close to Cole when the contest got under way.