Bill Bolton and the Winged Cartwheels

“You and I, Bill,” said Osceola, “are on top of the world and throwing rocks at rainbows!” The young Seminole chief, stooping quickly, picked something out of the short grass at the side of the Bolton driveway. “A couple of months ago I was a slave in a cypress swamp without a dollar to my name. Now I stumble over them!”

“That’s queer,” said Bill, staring at the silver disk in his friend’s hand. “It’s one of those cartwheels they hurl at you out west instead of dollar bills.”

“Nobody,” declared Osceola, “ever hurled dollar bills at me!”

“I mean,” said Bill, “it’s queer finding one here. Wake up—don’t let this new-found wealth cramp your usual technic. You’re in New Canaan, Connecticut, now—not far away on the western pl—”

“There’s something queerer than that about this cartwheel—look!”

Bill took the extended silver piece and examined it. The coin seemed genuine enough. Minted in 1897, the head of Liberty was portrayed on one side and backed by the well-known National Bird, who flaunted a streamer of E Pluribus Unum in his beak. But this particular silver dollar was no longer good as “coin of the realm.” Across Liberty’s face a pair of spread wings was cut deep into the metal, while the American eagle was defaced by two numerals, 1 and 3.

“Somebody’s pocket-piece, don’t you think?” suggested Osceola.

Bill nodded. “That design and the numerals are diecut. Those wings over poor old Liberty’s pan look like an aviator’s device.”

“Some cloud-dodger’s mascot, I expect. Thirteen’s probably his lucky number.”

Bill handed back the coin. “Stick it in your pocket. If we see it advertised, you can easily return it. In the meantime, the mascot may help you to keep the luck you were crowing about just now.”

“And why shouldn’t I crow? Instead of having to work my way through my last year at Carlisle, your father puts me in charge of the foundation he has inaugurated to help the Seminole Nation. Now, Deborah and I can get married in the fall. Why shouldn’t I take the count on my worries? And you’ve got no kick coming. You’re sitting pretty yourself.”

“I sure am,” admitted Bill. “Our Navy’s a swell outfit but I never expected to stay in after my two years’ sea duty when I’d finished up at the Academy. Now that the President himself has let me resign and put me on Secret Service work—well, there’s only one thing I don’t like about it.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, people—my friends, I mean, think I’m loafing. They don’t understand why I should suddenly leave the Navy. And of course I can’t tell them. This other job must be kept a secret. The President said so.”

“I don’t believe anybody thinks you’re a quitter or a loafer,” argued the chief, “—not after the three big stunts you’ve pulled off this summer, and all the newspaper publicity you’ve had out of them. You’re talking through your sombrero, old son. Bill Bolton is front page news from Maine to California. If you keep hitting any more bullseyes, they’ll slap your phiz on a postage stamp!”

“Oh, yeah? Speak for yourself, John—or words to that effect. Looks like a dead heat to me. How about it?”

Osceola abruptly changed the subject. “If this silver dollar was lost by an aviator,” he observed, fingering the coin, “he never dropped it out of an airplane, I know.”

“And so what?” Bill was mildly interested.

“Well, the fool thing was lying on a leaf—and the leaf was only slightly bruised—”

“Maybe it bounced or rolled onto the leaf after it fell onto the driveway?”

“Not this cartwheel. There’s not a scratch on it, except for the wings and the number thirteen. Six bits to a counterfeit two-cent piece with a hole in it, the yap who owns this has a hole in his trousers pocket!” Osceola dropped to his knees and studied the short grass at the edge of the drive. “Yep, just as I thought—” He stood up and flecked a dab of mold from his immaculate flannels, “here’s the fella’s spoor. He wore rubber-soled shoes.”

“I thought,” said Bill, “that Dorothy Dixon was the one and only Sherlock Holmes in this village. You certainly run her a close second, though. What did the aviator who didn’t aviate do next? Keep on out to the garage and scratch his initials on that new de luxe roadster you bought last week?”

“Not on this hop, he didn’t. He—wait a sec till I get a squint at this. Yes! by Jove! it wasn’t me he was interested in, but your own sweet self.”

“How do you get that way so soon after breakfast?”

“Listen, you blind paleface, even from here I can see that his tracks go straight over to the house. He climbed up to the farther window of your room by way of that leader, and the ivy. Several pieces of the vine are lying on the grass where he broke them off getting up or down! Even you ought to be able to see that the wire on that window-screen has been tampered with. If you don’t believe me, shin up there and take a look!”

“Oh, I’ll take your word for it.” Several times before, in his career, Bill had encountered evidence of the young Seminole’s truly marvelous eyesight. “Do those scintillating orbs of yours tell you when all this occurred?”

“They most certainly do, you mole.”

“When, then?”

“Between nine and nine-thirty last night!”

“Sure it wasn’t quarter to ten?”

“Quite sure,” smiled Osceola.

“I know,” said Bill, “that you can spot anything in daylight, or in the dark, for that matter, but when you claim to turn yourself into a human time clock, I ha’e me doots—”

“Oh, yeah? Well, listen, kid, and I’ll prove to you that Red Men aren’t as bad as they’re painted. Last night I left you with the girls over at the Dixon’s, and walked in the front door just as your hall clock was striking nine-thirty.”

“That’s right. You came over here to work on some figures for your new Seminole schools.”

“O and likewise K. I went straight up to my room and took my work out on the sleeping porch, where it was cooler. You found me there when you got back at eleven, didn’t you?”

“That’s all right, too. But what’s that got to do with the climbing aviator?”

“Why, just this. From nine-thirty until eleven-thirty I was out on that porch with the light going. Then I went to bed there and slept till this morning. And let me tell you, Bill, old son, that the man has yet to be born who can shin up a rainpipe thirty feet away from me and I not know it, awake or asleep!”

“Maybe he came before nine.” Bill was already convinced that his friend knew what he was talking about, but he wasn’t hauling down his flag without a last struggle.

“It wasn’t dark last night until nine o’clock, daylight saving time,” Osceola explained patiently. “Also, last night there was a heavy dew, even you can see it on the grass still, and—”

“And the silver dollar was wet while the leaf remained bone dry, showing that said cartwheel was dropped early in the evening!”