When he pulled up to the pit, Rocky was almost dancing with excitement. "You drove like a wizard," he said. "I went up to the hairpin to watch you. It was terrific. You knocked off three cars on that corner and must have finished about eighth. If you'd had any kind of a position at the start, you'd have won." Tom and Steve were full of congratulations, too. But their words were empty for Woody. If they knew how he felt, he told himself, they wouldn't be saying what they were. They wouldn't want to have anything to do with him. For Woody knew that he could have passed at least one or two more cars except for one thing: he was afraid. It wasn't just nerves or anxiety. It was plain cold fear. He'd driven his first race and come out of it a coward. 12 Woody made up his mind that the only way he could get over the fear and dread that he now had of racing was to race some more. In fact, he determined to do as much road racing as he could. In this decision he had a willing helper in Rocky, and in the two months after the Hansen Dam race he drove in five events. He was no longer considered a junior driver and had got over some of the thrill of seeing his name in the list of contestants at road-race events. He had even drawn mention in one of the Los Angeles sports columns as an up-and-coming driver with a lot of dash and courage. When Woody read that paragraph, eagerly pointed out to him by Steve, he wondered how much the man who wrote it knew of his real reason for racing. Far from having a lot of dash and courage, he was always filled with caution and plain fear on the track. He only placed at all in the events in which he entered because he had a natural driving gift--an instinctive combination of judgment and timing that took him through tight spots. But he knew he could do better, a great deal better, if he could get rid of the black fear that settled on him whenever he came to a bend with half a dozen other cars roaring around him. He wished there was someone with whom he could talk over this problem. He wished he could discuss the way his palms sweated, his limbs trembled, and his mouth went dry even as he sat down behind the driving wheel at the start of a race. He wished he could explain how those symptoms never left him all through the event; how he was filled with dread from start to finish and heartily wished he had never taken up racing. Once he thought of mentioning it to Steve and went so far as to say he always got the shakes just before the start of a race. "Shucks, pal, everybody has the same thing," Steve said. "But you get over it, don't you?"