Clive Cussler (7 page)

At that moment, Captain Shagnasty saw the barge. Pushed by the river current, it surged directly toward the Muddy Queen. The barge was huge, loaded with coal and as menacing as any horrible monster. And it was coming as if steered by an evil hand.

Lacey and Casey could only look on helplessly as the gap between the two vessels narrowed. The Muddy Queen was picking up speed in reverse, but could she move fast enough to evade the immense black barge? The towboat came pounding around the bend, but it would arrive too late. To Lacey and Casey it did not seem like the steamboat could escape disaster. Closer and closer and closer came the barge. All looked lost. They saw that the steamboat could not get away in time and all her passengers and crew seemed doomed.

But suddenly, Vin Fiz took matters into her own hands, or should we say wingtips, and dove toward the water. The airplane slowed and hovered over the big black barge. Then she gently descended until her wheels and runners met the pile of coal and she settled in. With her wheels firmly embedded in the coal, Vin Fiz raced her engine until each of her propellers spun and blurred, turning faster than the eye could follow. A great gust of wind blasted past her tail, and Lacey and Casey knew what their airplane was trying to do. She was using all her power to brake the barge's speed down the river.

For more than two agonizing minutes, nothing happened. Then slowly, very slowly, the barge began to slow down. The change was barely noticeable at first, but the speed finally slackened and the gap between the barge and the steamboat started to widen. Now the towboat could reach the barge in time to prevent a collision. A crewman threw over a rope, and together Lacey and Casey jumped from Vin Fiz and huffed and puffed as they lifted the heavy rope over a bollard, which is a metal post used to fasten towing and mooring lines. (A line, by the way, is nautical talk for rope.) The towboat captain then eased his throttles into reverse and stopped the barge dead in the water.

Safely back in their seats with safety belts fastened, the twins sat back as Vin Fiz lifted majestically into the air again and made a circuit around the Muddy Queen. A rousing cheer went up from the passengers of the steamboat that echoed up and down the river. Captain Shagnasty loudly rang the boat's bell while yanking furiously on the steam whistle cord. The barge captain also tooted his air horn, adding to the din. One final circle, and at Casey's command Vin Fiz flew over the east bank of the Mississippi and resumed her course, heading toward darkening skies.

"I'm getting hungry," said Lacey. "Why don't we find a place to eat and sleep for the night?"

"You're always hungry," Casey muttered, having resigned himself to the whims of girls. He motioned into the fading light at a harvested field beside a group of farm buildings. "Maybe the people who live there can put us up for the night. Mother and Father never turn away people who seek food and shelter."

Hearing this, Vin Fiz dipped toward the farm and set her wheels down in the yard beside the house just as the sun faded and disappeared over a grove of trees. Casey lifted Floopy from his box to the ground. Happy to be free again, the basset hound ran in circles and barked with delight. The farmer's dog, hearing the commotion, came running from the house and howled at the intruders. It was a big brown and white dog of no particular breed, friendly, with a shaggy tail that wagged like a flag in a strong breeze. The dogs touched noses and danced around each other, happy to see one of their own kind. As the twins neared the front of the house, the farmer came out and approached.

"Well, well," he boomed good-naturedly. "What have we here?"

"We were passing over," explained Casey, "and wondered if we might trouble you for a meal and bed for the night. I can pay you two dollars." Being a thrifty lad, Casey did not mention that he still had two dollars in his pocket, one having been left at the cafe in Gold City.

"Nonsense," boomed the farmer, who had short, curly red hair and a matching beard. "You two tykes can stay as long as you like as my guests. My name is Craven Cranberry. Me and old Abercrombe here," he said, scratching his dog behind the ears, "we live alone. We'd enjoy having company. I made meat loaf. I hope you like meat loaf."

"We love meat loaf," said Lacey. "Our mother makes a wonderful meat loaf."

He gazed at Vin Fiz. "Did you fly here in that . . . that thing?"

"All the way from California," answered Casey, staying clear of saying Castroville, since no one seemed to know where it was.

"By golly, that's a long way. Now come along, wash up and we'll sit right down at the table."

The twins enjoyed a delicious dinner with Mr. Cranberry, who amused them with stories of his life of adventuring around the world before he settled down on his farm in southern Illinois. Not wanting to keep his young guests up late, Mr. Cranberry showed them up to their bedrooms at nine o'clock. "Sleep tight," he said with a big smile, "and I'll see you in the morning."

The twins were soon fast asleep and quickly went into dreamland, wondering in their dreams if their mother and father had missed them. They were still sound asleep when the farm rooster began crowing cock-a-doodle-doo and woke them up.

After a hearty breakfast, Lacey and Casey showed Mr. Cranberry their airplane. The kindly old gentleman had fixed them a box lunch of cold meat loaf sandwiches, which they put in Floopy's box. He pointed at Lacey's map, which she had laid out on the ground, tracking a line across Illinois into Indiana.

"All you have to do from now on is follow the railroad tracks to the east. They should take you straight into New York."

After saying their good-byes, Vin Fiz started the engine herself and the children were quickly airborne, waving to Mr. Cranberry and Abercrombe as they became smaller and smaller until they finally disappeared.

Without being told, Vin Fiz soon found the railroad tracks and turned east toward the rising sun.

The state of Indiana came and went. They flew around the famous Indianapolis racetrack where racing cars hurtled over the great oval on Memorial Day. But on this day, the track and the spectator stands were empty. Then it was into Ohio, and they flew merrily over a tapestry of green, rolling hills of thick, leafy woodlands and meadows filled with rainbow-colored flowers.

"Where are we?" Casey asked for the umpteenth time.

"The city off to the right is Chillicothe," Lacey replied after consulting her map.

"That's a funny name."

Unerringly, Vin Fiz followed the shiny twin rails of the railroad track. They found it interesting how the rails came together as they vanished miles ahead over the horizon. Pretty soon, they spotted a train stopped on the tracks.

Casey immediately sensed something was not right. "That's odd," he said.

"What's odd?" asked Lacey.

"That train we're approaching. It's stopped."

"So, why is that odd?"

"That's a passenger train. It only stops at a station when it comes into town. There is no town, and there is no station. It's sitting in the middle of the countryside."

"Maybe it broke down."

"Let's fly over and take a look."

Vin Fiz immediately zoomed lower until she was flying only ten feet above the tracks as she sped toward the last car of the train. For an instant it looked as though she was going to crash into the rear car, but with just fifty feet to go, she lifted and flew over the rail-cars with her wheels almost touching the tops of the roofs. Rushing over the five passenger cars, a dining car, a baggage car, the coal tender and finally the big steam locomotive, painted blue with gold, the twins took a close look at what was happening.

What was happening, they quickly realized, was that the train had not broken down but had been stopped by a gang of bandits, who were looting the passengers of their valuables and removing whatever money and gold that was being shipped in the baggage car. After robbing the passengers alongside the track, the bandits had forced them back into the railroad cars. Alongside the locomotive, not far from the track, the engineer and fireman had been tied to a tree.

All this Lacey and Casey took in at the blink of an eye . . . well, maybe ten blinks. They had hardly passed through the smoke rising from the locomotive's tall smokestack when they heard loud bangs and strange whizzing noises. Floopy started barking and wiggling around in his box as if trying to tell the twins something. Vin Fiz instantly knew what was happening because holes suddenly appeared in her wings.

"Oh my gosh!" Lacey cried. "The bandits are shooting at us."

No sooner said than Vin Fiz turned sharply and flew behind a grove of tall oak trees, becoming lost to the bandits' sight. The airplane's engine roared and then sputtered before roaring again as if she was expressing her anger.

"We've got to do something!" Casey said urgently.

"We must fly to the nearest town and tell the police chief," Lacey replied.

"Little country towns have sheriffs, not police chiefs."

"What difference does it make as long as they are the law?"

There was no more talk. It was time for action. Casey saw a farmhouse by a lake and said, "There, Vin Fiz, land near the house."

Before you could say "dingle, fingle, gingle," the airplane's wheels touched down and rolled to a stop at the front door of the farmhouse. In a flash, Lacey was pounding on the door. It was thrown open by a big, round woman wearing a green apron and holding a bowl with an egg beater.

"My good gracious, children, what's all the commotion?" Then she saw the airplane with a basset hound wearing a leather helmet and goggles staring at her, his huge tongue folded down from between his teeth. "What in the world . . ." She stared at them, confused. "Where on earth did you come from?"

Before Casey could stop her, Lacey said, "Castroville, California."

"Land sakes, I know Castroville. That's where artichokes come from."

Casey was dumbfounded. He couldn't believe they had finally found someone who knew Castroville.

"Please," Lacey implored, "you must call the sheriff and tell him a train is being robbed no more than a mile from your farm."

The big pear-shaped farm lady was not sure she believed Lacey. She looked down at her with a surprised expression and asked, "The train is being robbed?"

Lacey nodded. "It has been stopped by bandits who are robbing the passengers. Call your local sheriff quickly. There might still be time to catch them before they get away."

The woman, disbelief in her eyes, studied Lacey and saw that the little girl was close to tears. "All right. I'll call Sheriff Mugwump and tell him the train has been held up by robbers." Like an elephant leading a stampede, the enormous farm lady turned and hurried inside to the telephone.

"Hurry," Casey yelled to Lacey. "We've got to return so we can follow the robbers and see where they go."

What they saw when Vin Fiz flew around the train again, while keeping out of range of the bandits' guns, sent cold shivers up their necks. The bandits were piling their loot in the back of a green bus in preparation for their getaway. Casey counted five of them, all with masks and stocking caps pulled low to conceal the color of their hair. Two of them shot their pistols at Vin Fiz as she came in closer to the scene. That was scary enough, but what was even scarier was that the bandits had engaged the throttle of the train, which had begun moving down the track. This might have been a good thing if the engineer and fireman had been in the locomotive's cab. But they were still tied to the tree. With no one operating the valves and levers in the cab, the entire train quickly increased speed and became a runaway with more than a hundred men, women and children trapped helplessly inside the passenger cars.

"We must do something to save all those poor people," Lacey said loudly over the rush of the wind.

"No way we can stop the train," said Casey, looking out the corner of one eye to see what direction the bandits were escaping.

"We can't just fly around and do nothing."

"At least we can fly ahead of the train and warn any other trains that might be on the same track. We can do that much." Then he gripped the control levers, not so much to steer the airplane as to feel the pluck and spirit of Vin Fiz through his fingertips. "Go!" he urged the enchanted airplane. "Fly as fast as you can over the track ahead of the train."

Vin Fiz needed no urging. As if she could understand Casey's every word, she made a wide turn and began skimming down the tracks at a speed that took the twins' breath away. Faster and faster the Wright biplane flew. The silver rails flashed below in a blur that dazzled their eyes. They looked so close, it seemed that Lacey could reach down and touch them—not that she actually thought of trying.

The telephone lines along the track hurtled by faster than Casey could count them. The twins had never realized Vin Fiz could plunge through the air so fast, so fast that they were pressed back against their seats, unable to lean forward. They could do nothing but clutch the armrests of their seats as fields of corn and wheat swept past with alarming speed.