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“someone bearing his name should get the first giant panda.”Ruth had already been thinking just that. Bill's remains were to be burned to ash, but not his hopes and dreams. She had the will to do it, having always longed to make the trek herself, and with no one else to stand in for him, she felt a moral imperative. Practically speaking, with Bill's gear and bank accounts left behind, the foundation for a new expedition was already in place.
    With Russell's encouragement, Ruth Harkness's desires didn't seem so preposterous. And additionally, he provided concrete information about how she should proceed.
    Right off, he urged her to join forces with Floyd Smith. Harkness had already been in touch with Smith, who was waiting for her decision about the distribution of Bill's effects, though she didn't know much about him outside of the references to him in Bill's letters.
    The bare details were that he was in his fifties, “an old China hand,” as they used to say, a man who had spent the bulk of his time in the East. Russell, who thought Smith “the cream of the earth; a great gentleman, esteemed and loved by all,” endorsed him now.
    At the same moment that Russell was singing his praises, however, Smith was in a fix in Chengdu, where he had been stationed waiting for Bill's arrival. Bill's death had knocked the legs out from under him. It might not have affected him emotionally, but it did, as Smith put it, “upset all calculations.” Forever racing to stay one step ahead of financial ruin, Smith now found himself stranded in western China, flat broke, and reduced to eating cheap “coolie food.” He needed to extricate himself from this predicament as quickly as possible, as he set about his new dealings with Bill's widow. He had made an agreement with Bill from the start that Ruth Harkness would receive Bill's half of any proceeds the endeavor produced. Whether he liked it or not, she now represented Bill's interests.
    From her perspective in New York, no matter what Smith's character or worth, Harkness would need to make some momentous decisions. Bill had bank accounts and a tremendous amount of accumulated gear in Shanghai. It was up to her to determine what should be done about them.
    Russell could be of enormous help. He vowed his allegiance to the cause, offering to sign on to the expedition himself, and take up with Mrs. Harkness where he had left off with her husband. It seemed like a windfall to Harkness, and it must have to Russell too. For when he next revealed that he was financially embarrassed, she agreed to underwrite him.
    The two set a plan. They would meet in Europe to solidify arrangements, then get an expedition together in Shanghai. Once Ruth picked up Bill's ashes, she could head toward the frontier. It all seemed so perfect.
    But, of course, it was madness. Without one factor in her favor, Ruth Harkness had decided she was the one to capture the giant panda. And she was totally out of her league.
    ON FRIDAY, APRIL 17, 1936, Harkness boarded the Dollar liner
American Trader,
along with a raucous mob of her dearest friends, who had all come to see her off. In the close confines of her little cabin, the air was blue, she said, with the haze of cigarette smoke. Cocktail glasses clinked, bodies spilled out into the passageway, and waves of laughter erupted.
    To many of those present, this was one jolly good joke. Harkness didn't mind the ribbing—in fact, she laughed right along with them, only too happy to list her inadequacies as an explorer. She knew nothing of expeditions, hunting, or working with native trappers. She had no idea what to expect of the rough terrain or reports of murderous bandits deep in the interior of China. She wouldn't even walk a city block if there was a taxi nearby to be hailed.
    “She's as mad as a hatter,” her brother, Jim, had announced from his uncomfortable position wedged on the lower berth. His sister's sinking her tiny inheritance into an effort to capture a