“Huh?” Darla said. “But you just said—”
“I lied to him. I had no idea where The Four was. I made up a story and sent the nickel on a hopeless quest. And then fearing the day he’d come back to punish me for what I had done, I left the Lakota and began my own wild goose chase, which inevitably landed me in a shoebox in Deadwood along with a bunch of other reject coins.
“Stranded in that box I felt like the biggest shmendrik of all time. I thought that all my years of searching for The Four had ended in failure. Trapped with no fire and so no visions, I thought the Great Minter and the Coinim were through with me. I had proved unworthy.
“From that time on I sat in silence. I spoke to no one, not even Buffalo, who was as glum as I was. I sat as silent and unmovable as a stale macaroon. But then, lo and behold, The Four came to me!”
“I didn’t know I was coming anywhere,” Ned said.
“Of course not,” the chief said. “That’s the way these things work!” The chief shrugged. “It’s a pisser, but what can you do? The hand of the Great Minter won’t be forced.”
“And you never saw or heard from The Six again?” Darla asked.
“Not until Memphis, no.”
Ned said, “Why didn’t you ever mention him until now? Had you told us about him, maybe—” Ned cut himself off, but everyone knew what he was going to say.
“I should have,” the chief answered contritely.
“But why didn’t you?” Two Loons pressed. Having lost several of his tribesmen in Memphis, he was not as forgiving as Ned.
“Like I said, I should have, but after not seeing or hearing anything of the nickel for so many years, I was hoping against hope that he had vanished for good. None of the visions I had since that one time with the Lakota spoke of Nicolai Nickel. And because your great chief, Laughing Hawk, never mentioned The Six either, I reached a false sense of security.
“Other than that one vision,” the chief continued, “all have revolved around The Four and saving Coinworld from this plastic stuff, ones and zeroes, and these perplexing machines. What could The Four’s rescue of his precious Peace Dollar possibly have to do with Nicolai Nickel? The thought that The Six would set an ambush like that never crossed my mind. Maybe it should have, but it didn’t.”
“I don’t blame you for that,” Ned said. “But since it happened, now what do you think it could mean?”
“It means,” the chief said, “that Nicolai Nickel has been very, very busy. It means that his interest in you, Four, has not waned. It means that our troubles just increased six-fold.”
“But Franny?” Ned said. “Why didn’t he just aim for me when he had me in his sights?”
“I’m not sure. He never mentioned her to me in our talks together. He only talked about you.”
“It’s obvious to me,” Darla said. “He knows what Franny means to Ned. He’s using her to draw Ned in.”
The chief nodded slowly; the shrewdness in Darla’s words made sense to him. Buffalo stomped on the ground behind him. Apparently, the bison agreed with the dime. The chief spoke to Buffalo in the Lakota tongue, and nodded some more.
Iron Tail turned to Ned. “It means you must stay away from the Peace Dollar.”
Ned leapt onto his rim and declared, “I will not abandon Franny!”
“Four, listen to me,” the chief entreated, “I saw what The Six is capable of, and that was years ago. He is probably far stronger now. Look at that army of gold he has put together. And that was just a few squads. Imagine—”
“No, Chief, you listen. It was bad enough that she was shut up in that coin case for years. Who knows what this Nicolai is doing to her. You said he is bad, maybe worse than bad, evil to his nickel core. I will not forsake her out of fear. If our destinies are intertwined; if our fates mean we must clash—then so be it. That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”
Iron Tail looked to Two Loons and Darla for backup. The two coins returned blank stares. They agreed with the chief, but they also knew Ned’s stubborn streak when it came to Franny, and that he would not be dissuaded.
Two Loons groaned. “Here we go again.”
“No,” Ned said, his limpid eye on Iron Tail, “this time I will listen to the chief.”
Iron Tail hid a sigh of relief. He did not want a confrontation with The Four. The challenge to his authority he could handle, but Ned’s acrimony would have broken his heart, for he loved Ned like a son.
“We have no idea where Franny is and are back to square one,” Ned added. “I will wait until we know more.”
The chief straightened, not liking the subtle threat, but he let it go. This wasn’t over, but he decided it best to settle for a temporary truce. If Darla was right, and he feared she was, then the next move was Nicolai’s. He would cross that bridge when he came to it.
The thought provided little comfort, however. In the retelling of his story, the chief hadn’t been completely honest.
In his vision that day at the Lakota sweat lodge, in each possible future that had flashed before his eye, The Four had met a grisly end. Time and again, the dismayed chief saw the shadow of a coin looming over a mangled Ned Nickel. The situations in the vision may have been different, but the outcome was always the same: defeat and death for The Four.
All of them but one.
For Chief Iron Tail, that one snapshot was the only one that mattered, and he would do whatever it took to keep Ned from falling victim to any other outcome.
19
wheaties
Grand Canyon Bullion Base — Minutes after Pete Penny was shoved into Havasu Creek.
Wrong Way Sadie shouted to her equally cockeyed eagle, “Ernie, straighten out! Mr. Kipp went that way!”
Whether stubborn or hopelessly discombobulated, Ernie Eagle screeched in defiance. He thumped his wings with renewed vigor and sailed in the opposite direction from Kipp Quarter and his eagle, Erasmus.
“Ernie,” Sadie yelled into the stiffening wind, “what’s the matter with you? Mr. Kipp is not going to like your game one bit.”
Ernie bwakked back to her, but Sadie, whose eagle vocabulary was still limited, didn’t understand his explanation. She sensed the urgency in Ernie’s cry, however, and it unnerved her.
Ernie sped down the hill towards Havasu Creek.
“Oh,” Sadie moaned, “we’re going to miss the party.”
Ernie replied by picking up speed and beating his wings even harder.
“Goodness gracious, Ernie. I didn’t know you had it in you! Weeeee!”
Kipp Quarter glanced back to make sure Sadie Silver Dollar was still right behind him. She was there ten seconds ago, but she wasn’t there now.
“Oh, man,” he groaned. “Where did you go, you screwy silver dollar?”
Kipp noted the flickering lightning in the distance and felt the wind surge under Erasmus’s wings. He knew how unpredictable the weather was in the canyon, and the attraction a silver dollar in the sky might be for a bolt of lightning. One zap and Sadie would plummet to Earth like a smoking meteorite.
“Turn around, Erasmus,” Kipp ordered his eagle. “The ding-a-ling dollar has lost her way.”
Erasmus nodded in understanding and banked against the wind. Wings flapping, his eagle eye scanned the night sky. He soared through the darkness, which looked intimidatingly empty and large. Erasmus called to Ernie in the eagle tongue, but even with his superb hearing no screech returned.
The icy, frothing water swept Pete Penny down the swelling creek. In stiller waters he’d have sunk to its muddy bottom to be covered and lost for eternity, but the turbulence tossed him somersaulting along. He tried to swim dolphin-like towards the shore but the current was too strong.
Spinning and tumbling, and blinded by the cloudy waters carrying soil and silt from miles up the canyon, Pete lost all orientation. The tumultuous waters banged him against boulders and tossed him into the air like a raft on the even mightier Colorado River, where in time Havasu Creek would be dumping him.
At first Pete thought it was his own panic-stricken voice, but then amongst the foaming waters he caught a glimpse of another coin, a steel penny.
Even in Pete’s fear-stung mind he realized that the penny must have been the one who knocked him into the creek. Had he slipped and fallen in after him?
“Help! I can’t swim!”
The steel penny ducked under the water and then was thrown back up with the turbulence. He splashed down a foot ahead of Pete.
“Save me!”
“I’m coming!” Pete called to the penny. “Hold on!”
Pete willed himself vertical and let the current drive him slicing forward through the water towards the penny.
If he got to the penny, he didn’t know what he might do to save him. Steer the penny towards the bank of the river? Trapped within the raging waters, he couldn’t even do that for himself.
With a one cent in a hundred dollars’ chance at saving himself, trying to save the other drowning penny would almost certainly doom them both. And didn’t the stupid penny just try to kill him?
“Help me, Pete Penny!”
Aw, man…
Neither of the two Lincolns had any arms, legs, or an animal on its reverse side that did. They had no fasces, no torch, no bell, no shield, not even a Monticello doorknob for the penny to grab onto, even if it could.
All Pete could offer was two lousy wheat stalks that he had never used for anything but extra balance, and to fan his face on a hot day.
But they would have to do. He didn’t know how strong they were, and even if the penny managed to snatch one in his teeth, Pete couldn’t be sure the penny wouldn’t bite right through the stalk.
Pete bodysurfed towards the drowning penny. He called forth his wampum and focused it into his wheat stalks, which began to uncoil like fishing line. He reached one out and smacked the steely to get his attention, but before the penny could react, they both rammed into a rock hidden by the roiling waters. The crash flipped the two coins over and sent them forking away from one another.
Pete regained his balance and saw that the river was sweeping the steely towards a marshy outcrop. The penny was coughing and spitting, and Pete could see that it was too tired to struggle any longer. If it got entangled in those reeds it would surely sink, whereupon the creek’s muddy bottom would swallow him up.
Pete put down his head, streamlined his body, and using his rim as a rudder, he shot towards the penny in one last attempt to save him.
“Grab my wheat stalk!” Pete shouted over the river’s thunder.
He didn’t know if the penny saw or heard him, but Pete flicked his wheat stalk like a whip as he zipped past the Lincoln.
The penny chomped down on the stem and Pete jerked him away from a net-like tangle of weeds at the last second.
Angling his body to veer clear from the marsh, another rush of current sent Pete back into the rapids, and towards another boulder.
“Hold on tight!” Pete hollered.
The two pennies slammed into the rock, the current dragging the coins banging and scraping across the stone’s coarse surface.
The penny held, and so did Pete’s straining wheat stalk.
The roar of the river deepened, and Pete noticed its change of pitch and timbre.
Another surge dunked the two pennies, and then spat them tumbling into the air. The steely clung to the wheat stalk, but Pete wondered how much more thrashing his wheat could take before it was finally ripped loose.
As the two coins somersaulted, Pete caught a glimpse of the creek ahead—all twenty feet of it.
Uh-oh…
The pennies splashed back into the river. They swirled, spun, and rushed heads over tails towards a waterfall. Fifty feet below lay the Colorado River, but only after first passing through a churning vortex of freezing froth and near certain death.
Out of ideas, and nearly out of strength, Pete sent up a prayer and braced himself for the plunge.
The river shot the two pennies sailing over the falls. Wide-eyed and their screams trailing behind them, a black sky above and a howling abyss below, the two pennies plummeted towards the swirling maelstrom.
Pete felt a sharp stab front and back, and then a sudden updraft. And then he heard a familiar voice, not quite the sound of an angel, more like that of an old bitty, but blessed all the same.
“Paul Penny, you naughty boy, out for a swim on a night like this? Really…”
Pete looked up and saw Wrong Way Sadie smiling down at him. The knives in his sides were the talons of her trusty cross-eyed eagle, Ernie.
“Sadie, you gorgeous silver dollar you, what are you doing out here?!”
“Ernie dragged me here. His little bird brain told him something was the matter.”
“Ernie,” Pete said, “I’ll never doubt you again.”
Ernie screeched, dipped a wing, and turned towards shore.
The wrong shore, of course.
“Um, Ernie, I think the camp is that-a-way.”
A web of lightning and a roll of thunder ripped apart the heavens. Spindly bolts reached grasping for anything they could snatch.
The three coins stalled midair with the static. The lightning had missed them, but the supercharged atmosphere held the coins in a state of frozen animation, the ionized air having numbed them to their metallic cores.
Paralyzed, Ernie’s wings stopped beating. The three coins plunged towards the roiling Colorado River below.
The river’s rapids licked at the air above, as if in greedy expectation of devouring the nose-diving coins.
Sadie screamed.
Pete and the steel penny, which continued to hold on to his wheat stalk for dear life, exchanged looks of terror. Pete felt the river’s spitting droplets on his face.
A moment later he was swinging towards shore.
The three coins cast their eyes skyward and saw Kipp Quarter and Erasmus Eagle smiling down at them.
“My hero!” Sadie swooned.
Kipp shouted down to the dangling Lincoln holding onto Pete’s wheat stalk, “Lenny the penny, now what could you be doing hanging around here?”
The ’43 steely grimaced guiltily, but he didn’t dare answer less he drop into the river.
“A friend of yours, Pete?” Kipp said.
“Until he tried to drown me, I suppose.”
Kipp nodded in understanding, and told Erasmus to head east.
Pete said, “Damian Dime?”
Kipp glared down at Lenny. “There’s only one coin here that can answer that.”
Wrong Way Sadie said, “Mr. Kipp, isn’t the party in the other direction?”
“This time you’re right, but there’s been a change of plans.”
“The party’s been cancelled?” Sadie said, disappointed.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to take a rain check,” Kipp answered.
Like a dangling key chain, the four coins swung over a plateau and away from the bullion base.
The End of Book 2
(The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned continues in Coinworld: Book Three. You don’t want to miss it!)
Message from the Author
Thank you very much for reading Book Two of The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned. I hope that you enjoyed it. For the next book in the series, please visit Amazon.com.
If you liked the book, I hope you’ll consider rating it at Amazon.com. Your opinion could really make a big difference. Thank you very much!
With gratitude and warmest regards,
Benjamin Laskin
Other Novels by Benjamin Laskin
If you are enjoying The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned, then you may want to check out some of Benjamin Laskin’s other fun and inspiring novels.
Novels by Benjamin Laskin
Stormer’s Pass
Say Uncle
The Will
Shooting Eros
Murphy’s Luck
The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned (Coinworld Series)
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br /> STORMER’S PASS
If you can’t wait for a hero, you must become one.
The sleepy town of Pinecrest is jolted from its slumbers by two unlikely citizens—star high school quarterback, Max Stormer, and Aidos, an extraordinary girl who has been living unobserved in the surrounding hills.
Aidos opens Max’s eyes to potential he didn’t know he possessed, putting them both on a collision course with the town’s own ambitious plans. The resulting clash draws the astonishment of the entire country, and soon Max finds himself captain of something much bigger than a football team. To save Aidos and his town, Max must lead his team into the contest of their lives. Whether maverick or hero, outlaw or savior, being a champion was never harder.
Stormer’s Pass is an enthralling adventure of two people’s uncommon faith in each other, their friends, and in the miracle-making powers of courage.
SAY UNCLE
Believing in himself was difficult.
Someone else believing in him was deadly.
Five years have passed since the headline-exploding events in Stormer’s Pass. For help in protecting their secrets and very lives, Max and Aidos turn to a lonely laggard named, Guy.
Guy Andrews has spent his 20 years on his back crying uncle. His hope for change arrives in the form of a beguiling young woman who lures him into a world of gorgeous spies and ruthless assassins. Now Guy has to find the elusive “Anonymous Man” before the man’s many enemies find Guy. To do so, Guy must slay the slacker within, draw on wits and courage he didn’t know he possessed, and solve the mystery of his own past before Max and Aidos become its next victims.
Say Uncle is the story of a young man’s enlightening and humorous struggle to find in anonymity his own unique place, and so—say uncle no more.
THE WILL
The Amazing Adventures of 4¢ Ned (Coinworld: Book Two) Page 19
