Clive Cussler (11 page)

"That was my dream," said Casey, surprised.

"That was my dream too."

Casey shook his head in befuddlement. "How could we both have had the same dream?"

"It all seemed so real," Lacey said wistfully.

"But if it really happened, how did we get home so quickly? I don't remember flying back."

At that moment, Mr. Nicefolk leaned through the doorway and said, "All right, kids, rise and shine. Breakfast is ready. School is out for the summer and you've spent enough time camping in the woods. You've got chores to do."

The twins looked at each other with an expression of puzzlement on their faces.

"He didn't act as if we'd been gone for days," said Lacey.

"How strange," Casey said as he dropped his feet onto the floor.

Ima and Ever Nicefolk ate their breakfast with the children as if today was like any other day. Nothing was said about their disappearing for such a long time. Even Floopy ate out of his dog bowl as if he'd never left home in an airplane.

Just as they were finishing breakfast, Mr. Nobblebob, the town delivery man, knocked on the screen door. "Come in, come in, Mr. Nobblebob," invited Ever Nicefolk. "What brings you out to our farm?"

"You have a very important letter that you have to sign for," said Mr. Nobblebob, a short man with a shiny bald head, who delivered letters and packages on a motorcycle.

"Can I get you a cup of coffee?" offered Ima Nicefolk.

"No, thank you. I must be on my way. Lots of packages to deliver."

As soon as Mr. Nobblebob left, Ever Nicefolk opened the envelope and a bank check dropped out along with a letter. He put on his reading spectacles, and his face went blank as he read the words written in the letter.

"Mercy, mercy," said Ima Nicefolk. "Don't tease us. Tell us what it says."

Slowly, as if in a dream, Mr. Nicefolk held up the check. "This is a check made out to the Nicefolk family for ten thousand dollars."

"Mercy me," said the astonished Ima Nicefolk. "Who on earth would send us a check for ten thousand dollars?"

"The letter is from Sheriff Mugwump from Oglebee County, Ohio."

Lacey and Casey stared at each other across the table in wide-eyed astonishment, too stunned to speak.

"Well, stop standing there like a dummy and tell us what it says," said Ima impatiently.

"It says the check is from the Ohio and Chillicothe Railroad as a reward. It doesn't say for what."

Ever Nicefolk slowly shook his head. "There must be some mistake."

"Who is the check made out to?"

Ever held it up to the light. "It's made out to the Nicefolk family of Castroville, California."

"Mercy me!"

"The railroad must have sent the check to the wrong Nicefolk family."

"No mistake," Ima said seriously as she held up the check. "We're the only Nicefolks in and around Castroville."

Lacey and Casey sat silent without saying anything, afraid to tell of their adventures and still not sure if it all hadn't been a dream.

"What we'll do," said Ever finally, "is deposit the check in our account but not spend the money. I'll write the Ohio and Chillicothe Railroad. If they say it's a mistake, we can send it back."

"And if they say there is no mistake and tell us to keep the money?" asked Ima Nicefolk hesitantly.

A wise smile turned up the corners of his mouth. "Then we'll use it to buy that new machine we've always wanted that can automatically package our herbs for market. Then we'll no longer have to do it by hand."

"Oh, that would be wonderful," said Ima Nicefolk happily. "At last we could make the farm profitable."

Lacey and Casey excused themselves and hurried from the kitchen with Floopy running along beside them. "If we didn't dream of saving the train," said Lacey, "and we really did it, Mother and Father will get their machine."

"I still can't believe it happened," said Casey.

"We'll know as soon as we find Vin Fiz."

Casey threw open the door to the porch, and the twins rushed outside.

To their dismay, there was no Vin Fiz.

"Oh dear," moaned Lacey. "Our big adventure did not happen."

"It must have," said Casey, looking around the farmyard. Then his face lit up. "Wait, maybe she's in the barn."

They ran inside the barn, and Lacey pointed to the magic pad. "Look," she cried. There, sitting small and quiet, was the model of Vin Fiz that her brother had built. "She never got big."

Casey was disheartened. "No," he said softly as he picked up the little model, "it looks just the same." Then he held the model to the light and stared at it. Suddenly his eyes flew wide. "Yes, yes! It wasn't a dream," he exclaimed. "It all happened. It truly happened just the way we thought it did."

Lacey wanted to believe her brother, but she was confused. "What are you saying?"

"Look! Look!" Casey thrust out a finger and pointed to a spot on the model airplane between the wings.

She gazed, not seeing anything for a second, and then she saw it.

There, before her eyes, tied to a wing stmt, was a tiny bottle of grape soda.

But that was not all.

Pinned on Floopy's leather helmet, lying on the workbench, was a teeny sheriff's badge.

A few weeks later, an answer came back from Ohio. It simply read ...

Dear Mr. Nicefolk,

The check for $10,000 is yours to keep.

And it was signed Sheriff Mugwump of Oglebee County.

There was a P.S.: You have a couple of great kids.

Included was a bag of doggy bones.

Mr. and Mrs. Nicefolk were only too happy to use the money to buy an herb-packaging machine and never questioned how or why they received such a good fortune. The next harvest went so smoothly and the machine worked so handily that the Nicefolks showed a nice profit for the first time.

The extra money was used to buy the farm down the road when it went up for sale. And soon the Nicefolk herb farm was the biggest in the state.

When the next summer came, Lacey and Casey sneaked into the barn again early one morning and placed a model of a boat on the magic pad, pressed the lever on the magic box and made it big.

But that's another adventure. ...

The Adventures of Vin Fiz
is dedicated to the memory of Calbraith (Cal) Perry Rodgers, who made the first transcontinental flight in 1911.

Yes, there really was a
Vin Fiz.
It was built by the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, in their small factory in Akron, Ohio.
Vin Fiz
had a wingspan of thirty-one feet, six inches; a length of twenty-one feet, five inches; and stood seven feet, four inches high. She weighed 903 pounds and was powered by a thirty-five-horsepower Wright vertical four-cylinder engine that could propel her up to fifty miles an hour.

Cal Rodgers learned to fly at the Wright school, soloing after only ninety minutes of instruction. At home in the air, he flew public exhibitions and received pilot's license number 49 from the Aero Club of America. In 1911, Cal entered the race to be the first to fly the United States from coast to coast, spurred on by a fifty-thousand-dollar prize put up by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst that would be paid only if the flight took no more than thirty days.

Financially backed by the Armour Company, which was introducing a new grape-flavored soft drink called Vin Fiz, Rodgers began his epic flight after taking off from Sheepshead Bay, New York, on September 17, 1911. His flimsy airplane was painted bright yellow with green lettering advertising the soda pop.

Forty-nine days later, after numerous rough landings that wrecked the airplane, untold mechanical failures and bad weather, a patched-together
Vin Fiz
finally landed in Pasadena, California, the official destination for the flight. A few days later, on the way to Long Beach, where Cal wanted to land alongside the Pacific Ocean, he crashed. This time he was seriously hurt, and
Vin Fiz
was nearly destroyed.

Not one to give up, Rodgers, still walking on crutches from a broken ankle, took off again in his beloved airplane almost a month later—the
Vin Fiz
had been almost totally rebuilt. He landed to the cheers of thousands of people on a sandy beach as
Vin Fiz
rolled her wheels into the waters of the Pacific.

Tragically, during a flight in April 1912, Rodgers crashed into the surf and was killed. The exact cause was never determined. He was not flying
Vin Fiz
at the time of his death, and she survived through the years in the possession of Rodgers's mother. Little remained of the original plane that made the epic flight, and many years later, she was reconstructed and restored with parts used during the journey.

You can see
Vin Fiz
where she hangs today in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

CLIVE CUSSLER
is the internationally best-selling author of the Dirk Pitt® novels for adults. He is also a true-life adventurer, having discovered more than sixty sunken ships with his crew of volunteers.

Mr. Cussler lives in Arizona.