A Mystery Story for Boys

RED DYNAMITE

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

COPYRIGHT, 1936
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE [I Gold from the Sky] 11 [II The Bridge Falls] 27 [III With the Aid of Nicodemus] 40 [IV The Haunted Pool] 52 [V The Crimson Flood] 62 [VI Old Kentucky] 76 [VII Panther Eye’s Return] 85 [VIII Ha! Ha! Big Joke!] 94 [IX The “Ghost” Walks Again] 106 [X Kentucky’s Downfall] 119 [XI A Ride in the Night] 133 [XII Strange Wealth] 141 [XIII A Strange Bear Hunt] 152 [XIV Wild Men, Baboons, and Something Strange] 162 [XV Victory] 175 [XVI One Minute to Play] 181 [XVII Gliding Toward Fresh Adventure] 193 [XVIII Ten Gallons of Air] 199 [XIX With the Speed of a Whirlwind] 210 [XX In the Grip of a Giant] 219 [XXI Dynamite Takes It on the Chin] 234

RED DYNAMITE

CHAPTER I
GOLD FROM THE SKY

“You mean to say he takes those big, jug-like things down there empty and brings them up full?” Johnny Thompson, the boy from Illinois who had travelled far and seen many strange things, stared at Ballard Ball, the red-headed boy of the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, with surprise. If the truth were told, he found himself doubting the other boy’s story.

Here he was standing in the grinding room of an old fashioned mill watching massive stone wheels grind the corn he had carted from his cousin’s store and at the same time discovering what promised to be a first class mystery right down here in the slow old Cumberland mountains where, he had supposed, nothing unusual ever happened.

“But what’s down there?” He was looking at the floor of the mill. At the same time he was hearing a curious sound, a sucking and hissing that might, he thought, have been the working of a small steam engine. But of course there was no steam engine, for there was no smoke stack and no smoke.

“Nothing down there but water. Some machines he brought months ago. They’re down there. The water wheel runs them,” the other boy drawled. “Of course he wouldn’t bring water up in the jugs and cart them away. Why should he? There’s water everywhere. This river runs for miles. Besides,” his voice dropped, “that stuff he brings up is queer. It’s cold and it smokes. Yes sir, a sort of white smoke comes off it all the time.”

“White smoke,” Johnny said slowly. “And it’s cold. That’s odd!”

“You’d have thought it was odd!” Ballard gave vent to a low chuckle. “I stood with my leg against one of those jugs—if that’s what they are—once and all of a sudden my leg tingled and went sort of dead. I jumped away quick, but not quick enough. Three or four days after that, the skin all peeled off the side of my leg.”

“Cooked your leg!” Johnny exclaimed.

“It must have!” Ballard amended.

“How—how long’s he been doing it?” Johnny asked.

“Almost a year!”

“A year!” Johnny whistled. “And you never asked him what it was he was bringing up nor how he got it?”

“No-o.” The other boy smiled a queer smile. “He pays me for my work here, keeping the grinding mill going, pays me well and besides—” He hesitated. “Well, you know, we mountain folks don’t like for other people to ask us too many questions so, naturally, we don’t ask too many ourselves.

“Not,” he added hastily, “that there are not people round about here who are burning up to know all about it. There are. But up to now nary a one of ’em’s learned anything worth telling.”

“You’re a good watchman,” Johnny laughed.

“I sleep here at the mill,” the mountain boy said simply. “And the lower part of the mill, down where he makes that—that stuff, whatever it is, is boarded up pretty tight, all two inch planks, spiked good and plenty. You see—” Ballard broke off. “Wait a little. There’s Aunt Sally Ann Setser out there. She’s got rheumatism, sort of stiff in her joints. I’ll take down her bag of corn to her.”

Left to himself, Johnny allowed his eyes to roam about the place. This was no ordinary grinding mill. It was much larger. Before the stranger came with his unusual hissing machinery or pumps, and his more unusual something that was produced apparently from water, or air, or just nothing at all, it had been used in other ways. He remembered hearing Cousin Bill say it had been a sawmill, that logs had been floated down to it in the spring when the water was high. But now there were no more logs and no sawmill.

Johnny’s eyes strayed through the open door and up to the crest of the rocky ridge known as Stone Mountain. “Worth exploring,” he told himself. “Caves up there I’ve heard,—and bears. Sometimes the natives hunt them. Boy! Fellow’d have to watch out!” Johnny heaved a sigh of contentment. He loved these slow-going mountain people, loved the mountains as well. In the spring when all the little streams, and the big ones too, went rushing and roaring by, when the birds sang to the tune of those rushing waters and white dogwood blossoms lay like snow banks against the hills, that was wonderful!

In the autumn when leaves turned to red and gold, when chestnut burs were opening and the coon hunter’s dogs bayed from the hills, that was grand too.

Yes, Johnny liked it all. But this mystery of the old mill promised to make his stay doubly interesting. “Just think of an old man coming down into these hills and setting up a mill for creating something of real value out of water and air,” he murmured. “Gold from the sky, almost. But I’m going to find out about it.”

Once again his thoughts swung back to mountain scenes. His cousin Bill, who was a young man with a family, had moved down here and set up a small store. Bill was doing very well. Johnny was always welcome. He clerked in the store, made trips like this to the mill and helped in every way he could.

“Somebody told me there was a cave up there along the ridge,” he said to Ballard, as the boy came shuffling back into the mill room.

“Yep. There is. Regular good one!” he answered. “Lot of these white icicles in it. Look like icicles but not really icicles you know.”

“Stalactites and stalagmites,” Johnny suggested.

“That what you call ’em?” Ballard stared. “Looks like there might be an easier name to say. But they’re there anyway. Want to go up there? Don’t have to go back right away do you? I’ll be through in less than an hour. Then we’ll go up.”

“We—ll,” Johnny reflected for a moment. “Just so I get back by early candle light. I guess it will be all right.” Just at that moment had there been any mountain imps about, and if there were such creatures as imps, we might imagine one whispering to Johnny: “As if you’d ever get back by early candle light!” But there are no imps, so there was no whisper.

As Johnny stood there a feeling of uneasiness, not to say of guilt, crept over him. At first he was at a loss to know what it was all about. Then, like a sudden bang from a squirrel hunter’s gun, it came to him.

“Ran away!” he exclaimed in an undertone. “Ran away. That’s what I did.”

Yes, that was just what he had done. The call of the Cumberlands had been too much for him. The whisper of breezes among the hilltops, the chatter of squirrels in the chestnut trees, the gleam of water in deep pools where sly old black bass lurk, had been too strong for him. He had run away.

Run away from what? The strangest thing! Not from his home. Johnny had no home except the home of his grandfather at old Hillcrest. There he was free to come and go as he chose. He had not run away from his job either, at present he had no job. He had run away from a promise.

In Hillcrest, the little home city of his grandfather, there was a college, not a large college, but a very fine one. The students were a sturdy hard-working lot, the professors wise and friendly.

No, Johnny had not promised to attend college. “College is fine for some people,” Johnny had said. “Fine for a lot of fellows, but not for me. Imagine me sitting still for a whole hour listening to a lecture on Plato or the fifth nerve of a frog. Some people are born for action. That’s me. I can’t sit still.”

Action. Yes, that was the word, and it was action Johnny had promised. He had told Coach Dizney that he would get out and scout around among the nearby small cities for good football material. The coach had a good team—almost. He was short two or three good players. More than all else he needed a left half-back. Johnny had promised to find him that particular player.

“And I failed!” Johnny groaned.

So he had. Johnny did not play football. He was handicapped by a bad knee that doubled up under him as soon as he ran fifty yards. But Johnny knew a good player when he saw one. Johnny was a lightweight boxer of no mean reputation. He could put a man through a series of action that told him very quickly what he would be worth behind the line of scrimmage. Even Coach Dizney admitted that it was uncanny the way Johnny picked them. He had sent Johnny out to scout, then had hurried away for a vacation in the north woods. Johnny had scouted faithfully for two weeks with no results worthy of mention. Then the call of the mountains had got him.

“I failed him,” he groaned. “Failed the good old coach.”

He was full of self reproach but the lure of the hills held him. Oh well, there were still two full weeks before college opened. He’d have a breathing spell here in the Cumberlands. Then he’d go back and pick ’em. Oh! Wouldn’t he though?

A half hour later all guilty thoughts were banished by Ballard’s cheerful drawl: “All right now, we can go. Buck Howard’s here. He’ll tend the mill. Your corn will all be ground by the time we get back.” These mountain mills, like the mills of the gods, grind slow but they grind exceeding fine. Cousin Bill made a nice profit by trading “brought on” groceries, sugar, baking-powder, and spices for corn. He had the corn ground at this mill then shipped it out to special customers who liked this fine ground corn meal.

“Here’s little Bex Brice,” Ballard said. “He wants to go along. Real name’s Bexter, but we call him Bex. Old as I am, Bex is, but you forgot to grow, didn’t you Bex?”

The short, sturdy-looking, freckled faced boy grinned and said, “I reckon.” Then they were away.

“I suppose you know every rock up here,” said Johnny, as they went scrambling up and up, over an all but perpendicular trail.

“Mebby I do,” Ballard admitted. “But Bex knows ’em better. He’s a regular mountain goat, Bex is.”

“Saw a bear up here day before yesterday,” Bex put in eagerly. “Regular big one. Scared me half to death.”

“Sure nuf?” Ballard paused to stare. “Must have come over the mountains.”

Without quite forgetting the bear, they struggled on up the rocky slope. Johnny was thinking, “Suppose we get back into the cave and the bear comes after us?” He did not quite know the answer to this. To ask, however, might be showing what these folks called “the white feather,” so he did not ask.

Instead he began wondering again what that old man could produce down there beneath the mill, out of water and air. “He takes nothing down but brings something up.” Here indeed was a puzzler. “If he took some of the corn down there you might think he was making moonshine whisky,” he told himself. “And—and perhaps he does when Ballard is asleep. And yet—”

Someone had told him that this old man, Malcomb MacQueen, had a noble character, that he had helped bring well educated teachers down to the school at the fork of the river. “Wouldn’t do that and then go peddling poisonous moonshine,” Johnny thought. There had been men who did good deeds to cover up the evil that was hidden in their hearts. But somehow, he had a feeling that moonshine was not the answer. “What can it be?” he asked himself. Johnny’s reflections were broken in upon by a word from Ballard.

“Listen,” he whispered, as seizing Johnny’s arm he brought him to a sudden halt.

To Johnny’s keen ears came a faint, high keyed sound.

“It’s a pig, a young pig! He’s squealing. Something’s got him!” It was Bex who whispered this excitedly.

For one full minute the three boys stood there, breathing softly, silently listening. Then Ballard murmured low, “He’s coming this way. We—we’d better hide.” His eyes, searching the ridge above, spied a cluster of beech trees clinging to the rocks. “Up! Up there.”

Next instant, without a sound they were scrambling from rock to rock on their way up. Just as they reached the cluster of trees, Ballard’s foot loosened a rock that went bumping and bounding downward to make at last one wide leap and land in a narrow meadow far below.

“Oh!” On Ballard’s face was a look of consternation.

Johnny’s lips formed one word: “Why?”

“There’s been hog stealin’,” Ballard whispered. “Uncle Mose Short has lost three. Lige Field lost two. If we catch the thief it will just naturally be something.”

For some little time after that there was silence. From time to time, ever a little louder, there came the frantic appeal of the pig.

Then, quite suddenly, a fresh sound burst upon their ears. A blue and white airplane came swooping across the ridge.

“Going to Frankfort,” Johnny suggested, “or Louisville.” To him the soaring plane was not a novel sight. To the mountain boys, it was an object of wonder. Even Johnny was surprised and a little startled when the plane, instead of streaking across the sky, circled twice then, like some lone, wild duck, came to rest on the narrow meadow far below.

“Motor trouble forced him to land, perhaps,” Johnny whispered.

“Reckon we can’t hardly be sure of that,” was Ballard’s surprising reply. “Judge Middleton rented that meadow to a stranger. When he asked him what he meant to do with it he said he wasn’t prepared to say. Mebby he’s just got it for his airplane.”

“Boy! Oh, boy!” Bex whispered excitedly. “I sure do hope so! I’ve always wanted to see one of them things right close up. I—”

“Sh!” Ballard put a hand over the small boy’s mouth. There was scarcely need for this. At that moment from very close at hand, there came the heart-rending cry of a baby pig in mortal terror. And, before one of the boys could move or breathe, along the trail, below them and all too close, there came the hugest bear they had ever seen. And closely gripped between his gleaming teeth was the hopeless porker.

“There—there’s your hog thief,” Johnny whispered low, as the bear vanished round a boulder. “What you going to do about it?”

“N—not a thing,” Ballard stammered. Whereupon the three boys, seized with a nervous desire to laugh, all but burst their sides holding in.

In the midst of this, Ballard sobered with a suddenness that was startling. With a shaky finger he pointed as he hissed: “Look! Just look down there!”

The other boys looked, then stared. Almost directly beneath them was a narrow, swinging bridge across a rocky chasm. It was a foot bridge made of boards and light cables. Ballard had crossed this bridge hundreds of times, but always on foot. Never had he seen horse or mule attempt to cross it. But at this moment, as they stared, expecting instant catastrophe, they saw, standing at the very center of the old and fragile bridge, a huge, black mule.

“It’s Sambo,” Ballard said hoarsely. “Uncle Mose Short’s Sambo! Poor old Uncle Mose! His mule will never make it. The cables are sure to break. The mule will be killed. It’s the only mule Mose ever had, or ever will have. Wonder what made him try to cross?”

“Got untied somehow,” Bex suggested. “Went out hunting for Mose. We got to do something. We really must.”

Just at that moment, the small pig gave an unearthly squeal.

“The bear!” Ballard whispered in an awed tone. “He’s up there ahead of us on the trail somewhere. There’s no way to get down to the bridge but to go right up ahead there where the bear went.”

Johnny rose. He wanted to go but something seemed to hold him back. He knew Uncle Mose, the oldest mountaineer of that region, knew and loved him. Uncle Mose was a famous cook. He could make the most marvelous stewed chickens and dumplings. Uncle Mose’s mule should be saved somehow. But how?

Just then Ballard spoke. “Look! There’s someone coming from the other way! Why! It’s Mr. MacQueen! The man that owns our mill!”

Johnny stared. So that was the man! The man who went down into that mysterious lower portion of the ancient mill. “He takes down empty jugs and brings them back up full,” he whispered to himself.

“Malcomb MacQueen, that’s his name,” Ballard said as if he had read Johnny’s thoughts.

This small, gray haired man with a quick nervous stride had appeared around a bend. At sight of the mule on the bridge, he stopped and stared. He stood there for ten seconds only. Then he sprang forward.

“Look!” Ballard was on his feet, ready to slide down the slope to the trail and to follow that trail, to face the bear and fight him if he must. “Look! Mr. MacQueen is going on the bridge! And he must not! Must not! The cables won’t hold another pound. One side is half rusted away. Come on! Come on! Come quick!” Slipping and sliding, he led the way down the steep slope to the trail below.

Johnny’s mind was in a whirl. “The bear, the bridge, the mule, Malcomb MacQueen,” he thought over and over. For all that, he followed Ballard as closely as he dared.

Strangely enough, at that moment, like a sudden burst of light, his duty to Hillcrest College and the coach stood out before him. If he went down there when would he come back? Somehow he felt himself being drawn from the path of duty. And yet, when approaching tragedy calls, one must obey that call.

CHAPTER II
THE BRIDGE FALLS

The moments that followed were the wildest ever experienced by the young trio, Johnny, Ballard, and Bex. Casting aside all caution, they went gliding down the rocky mountainside at a perilous speed.

“Come on!” Ballard cried. “We gotta’ stop him, save him. He’s the best man that ever lived. He’s fed folks when they were nearly starving. He put our school back where it’s fine. He—he’s helped hundreds of people. Now if the bridge breaks—if he goes down—”

He did not finish. His feet came down hard on the narrow trail. This brought back to his mind with the force of a blow, the realization that but a moment before, a huge bear had gone up that trail. The bear carried a half-grown pig in his mouth.

“You don’t dare molest a dog when he’s eating,” he whispered to his companions. “No more do you dare interfere with a bear. But we gotta’ go that way. Have to be sly and cautious, that’s all. Not a word now.”

Next instant, on tiptoe but with utmost speed, he was away.

Johnny caught his breath, then followed. Little Bex brought up the rear. Now they rounded a huge boulder. Was the bear there? No. A clump of pines lay straight ahead. Behind those, waiting, ready to roar and spring perhaps?

Strangely enough, though he moved forward silently, Ballard was not thinking of the bear. He was thinking instead, of the little drama, that like a moving picture, was being played out beneath them. The swaying bridge, the mule, the gray haired benefactor of a whole community, all played a part in the drama, that for the time, was hidden from their view. What was happening? Would the man go on the bridge in an attempt to save the mule? Mr. MacQueen loved Uncle Mose, indeed he loved every one. That mule was Uncle Mose’s chief treasure. Without him, he could not earn a living. If the gray haired man went on the bridge, would it break? And if it did? Ballard could not bear to think. And all the time he was speeding forward.

Soon he would be at a point where once more he could look down and see that bridge. From this point, by following a trail that was little more than a chance to slide over the rocks, he could hope to reach the bridge.

“But first the bear,” he thought. “I must be careful. I must—”

He broke short off. Just at that moment, a mountain of dark, brown fur, went rolling away from him to disappear through a dark hole that led into the side of the mountain.

“The cave!” Ballard panted. “I forgot all about it! He’s gone in there. We’re safe. But come on. Come on quick!”

One moment more and they were looking down on the bridge. The mule was still there. It seemed more than probable that his fat sides had stuck between the wires along each side of the bridge, that he could neither go ahead nor turn back. This, the boys will never know for certain.

Their eyes did not linger long on the mule for there, stepping boldly out on the slightly swaying bridge, that even seen from above appeared to shudder, was the mysterious, little gray haired man, Malcomb MacQueen.

“Go back! Go back!” Ballard shouted these words. But the wind was against him. The aged man was slightly deaf. Apparently he did not hear for he walked straight on.

The three boys stood aghast, watching. Now he was ten feet from the solid rock he had left, now twenty, now thirty.

“I—I’m going down there,” Bex muttered hoarsely. Next instant like a miniature landslide, he went plunging down the perilous slope.

Cupping his hands, Ballard shouted once again:

“Go back! Mr. MacQueen! Go back!”

This time, his voice, sharpened with an edge of despair, carried far. The man on the bridge paused. He looked up. Ballard heaved a sigh of relief. “Surely now he will turn back,” he told himself.

But apparently he had not been understood for the old man merely waved a hand, then went on, a step, two, three steps,—while the ancient, rusty bridge shuddered and swayed more and more.

Then, when all hope seemed gone, a miracle appeared to have happened. Bex who, mere seconds before, had stood beside the boys, appeared at the end of the bridge beneath them.

“Mr. MacQueen!” he screamed, “go back! The bridge is not safe. Too much weight. It will break. Go back! Go back!”

“It’s Sambo,” was the astonishing reply. “What could Uncle Mose do without Sambo?” He took one more step.

“Mr. MacQueen go—” Bex did not finish for at that instant the thing happened. Something like a pistol shot rang out, the breaking of one cable. For ten terrible seconds, while the man clung to wires and the mule hung trapped in midair, the other cable held. And then, with a sickening swirl, the bridge went crashing down and over until it struck the rocky wall below.

“Come—come on,” Ballard breathed hoarsely. “We got—gotta’ go down.”

Just how they went down that rocky wall, Johnny will never know. Now he found himself hanging by his hands to a ledge feeling with his toes for a foothold, now racing along a shelving bit of rock where a slip meant disaster and now, gripping the root of a gnarled and twisted tree, he fairly threw himself into the waiting arms of an evergreen below.

A short, brief, breath-taking struggle, it was. Bruised and scratched but with no serious injuries, they reached the bottom at last.

To their vast surprise, as they neared the wreck of the bridge, some huge creature reared himself on high, uttered a startling “he-haw-he-haw,” and went clattering away over the dry bed of the ravine.

“It’s Sambo!” Johnny said in an awed whisper.

“You can’t kill a mule,” Ballard muttered. “He should have known that.” He pointed at a crumpled heap of gray on the ground. That heap was Malcomb MacQueen.

With aching heart, the mountain boy bent over him.

“He’s unconscious, but he’s breathing,” he said slowly. “We’ve got to get him out of here. It’s less than a half mile to the end of the run. Then there’s a meadow.”

“And an airplane,” Johnny replied hopefully. “Remember? That plane landed there.”

“That’s right!” A look of hope came to Ballard’s face. “Do you suppose he—but we’ll have to have some way to carry him.”

“Here!” Johnny’s strong arms were tearing away at a short section of the broken suspension bridge. “Here I’ll tear this off. Break those wires. There, there you are! Now. Just lift him up. Gently! Gently!”

The groans of the aged man, as he was moved, brought tears to Ballard’s eyes.

Strangely enough, Johnny was thinking. “He made something out of nothing, sold it and used the money to help others, took gold from the sky, you might say. This man did that.” Little did he dream that his words “took gold from the sky” were almost literally true.

But there was no time for wandering thoughts. There was need now for strength, speed and wisdom. The bed of the dry stream over which they must travel was boulder-strewn and rough.

Strong arms and willing hearts enabled them to accomplish the difficult task. Just as the stranger in his airplane was warming up his motor for a take-off, he saw two boys come out on the end of the meadow. They were carrying something. He guessed it might be an injured person. They put down their burden and waved frantically. Shutting off his motor, he hurried toward them.

“What’s happened?” he demanded when he came racing up to them.

“The bridge! The—mule,” little Bexter stammered. “He—he fell.”

“You see,” Johnny explained more coherently. “The suspension bridge fell when he was on it. We—we’re afraid he’s badly hurt.”

“Let’s look him over.” The aviator was young, brisk and business-like. His slim fingers moved rapidly over the silent form. “Leg broken, that’s sure,” he muttered. “Bump on the head, not too bad.

“We’ve got to get him to a doctor at once.” His voice took on a note of command. “Where’s the nearest doctor?”

“At the Gap, fifteen miles away!” Ballard’s tone told his despair. “Wagon road, all rocks. Take hours!”

“That’s out!” the aviator decided instantly. “Come on,” he said to Johnny. “Lift him up. I’ll take this end, now! March!” He led the way toward the airplane on the double-quick.

“I’ve got blankets. Make him a litter on the floor of my airplane cabin. We’ll have him at a city hospital in short notice,” the aviator said.

“You’ll take him by air?” Ballard stared.

“Sure! Why not?”

“Tha—that,” Ballard replied huskily, “will be noble.”

“Now then,” the pilot said ten minutes later. “Who’s going along to look after him? Two of you if possible.”

“I—I. How I’d like to!” Ballard was near to tears. “But he’d want me to stay with the mill. It—it might be terribly important.”

“All right you other two!”

Little Bexter gulped. He turned first red then white. It was evident that he had never ridden in a plane.

“I’ll go,” Johnny said quietly. “Be glad to.” An airplane was nothing new to him.

“I—I’ll go,” little Bexter breathed. “Bal—Ballard,” he caught his breath sharply, “you—you tell my folks I might not come back nev—never.”

“Oh come now, sonny!” the aviator exclaimed. “It’s not half as bad as that. Tell his mother he’ll be home for breakfast. Hot cakes and molasses. Hey, son?” He gave Bexter an assuring slap on the back.

Two minutes later they were in the air, all of them but Ballard. Skimming along over the narrow meadow, they rose higher and higher until the whole beautiful panorama of the Blue Ridge—Big Black Mountain, Little Black, Pine Ridge, and all the rest, lay spread out beneath them.

Little Bexter drew in a long, deep, breath, then shouted in Johnny’s ear: “I never dreamed it could be like this. I—”

He broke off. A pair of keen, gray eyes, were studying his face. Malcomb MacQueen had apparently regained consciousness.

Johnny too saw those eyes and liked them. “Keen eyes,” he thought. “He knows a great deal. Hope I can get to be his friend.” Then again came that haunting question: “How could this man go down into a mysterious space beneath a grist mill and by setting some sort of machinery in motion, produce something very valuable out of nothing but air and water?

“Perhaps he will tell me,” he thought. “But at least, not now.” He saw those gray eyes close, whether in unconsciousness or sleep, he could not tell. Sleep under such unusual circumstances appeared impossible, but this, he realized was a remarkable man.

It seemed to Johnny that the time consumed in that journey was remarkably short. To his utter surprise, he found himself circling over the roofs and chimneys of a sizeable city. Next moment, with a speed that was startling, they were shooting downward for a landing.

“Qui—quick trip,” he said to the pilot a moment later.

“Been quicker if my new motor were complete!” was the mysterious pilot’s strange reply.

But here were officers, doctors, an ambulance, all ordered in advance by two-way airplane radio. The little gray haired man was lifted out tenderly, then whisked away.

“You making a new kind of motor?” Johnny asked the pilot when everyone had departed.

“Motor’s not as new as the fuel I’ll use,” was the reply.

“What kind of fuel?” Johnny ventured.

“You’d be surprised!” The pilot looked away. “More foot pounds of energy for its weight than any yet discovered. Go around the world in non-stop flight—perhaps.”

“Whew!” Johnny breathed.

“Say! I’m starved!” the pilot exclaimed. “Guess we’ve done all we can for your friend, at least for the present. Want something to eat, you boys?”

Did they? Little Bexter grinned from ear to ear.

Early next morning they found themselves once more standing beside the airplane. A boy about Johnny’s age had just arrived.

“I’m Donald Day, Malcomb MacQueen’s grandson,” he introduced himself. “I want to thank you for looking after my grandfather,” he said to Johnny and Bexter.

“How—how is he?” Little Bexter’s words stuck in his throat.

“He’s pretty badly busted up!” Donald Day wrinkled his brow. “But he’s tough. He’s always lived right. The doctors say he will pull through but it will take a long time. And during that time,” he squared his shoulders, “during that time I’m to carry on his work.” He jingled a bunch of keys.

“In—down there in that space beneath the mill?” Johnny breathed.

The other boy shot him a quick look. “Yes. Down there,” he replied quietly.

A hundred questions were pressing in Johnny’s mind demanding an answer. He asked none of them.

“All right boys,” said the pilot. “I promised to have this little fellow home for breakfast.” He touched Bexter’s shoulder. “So guess we better step on the gas.”

“Yes,” Johnny thought. “Same old gas. But what fuel could he have been speaking of yesterday? A fresh mystery. I’m sure going to solve that one too.”

Then, as the big man-made bird took to the air, he thought once more of his promise to the coach. “Told him I’d find him a real half-back,” he thought for the hundredth time. “Be strange if I found him right down here in the mountains. But then, of course I won’t. Oh well, I’ll have a day or two of fishing. After that I’ll go back on the hunt for a half-back. Pray for luck, that’s what I’ll do.”

CHAPTER III
WITH THE AID OF NICODEMUS

Anyone witnessing the return of little Bexter to his home that morning might well have supposed that he had made at least two non-stop flights round the world, instead of one short trip to Louisville.

“Oh! Bex! Y’er back!” his small brother exclaimed. “You bin way up in the air! You bin all the way to Louisville!”

“Yes, I reckon,” Bex’s eyes were on his mother. She said never a word. Her face was a mask. “All the same,” Ballard whispered, “she’s dabbing at her eyes when we don’t look.”

“It’s a great moment for Bex’s folks,” Johnny smiled a happy smile. “I’m glad we got him back safe. They’ll never forget.”

“Now you all just draw up chairs and take yourself some pancakes,” Bex’s mother invited.

“Sorgum!” Ballard whispered to Johnny. “Sorgum molasses on real buckwheat pancakes. Yum! Yum! You can’t beat ’em.”

Nor can you. Johnny Thompson and Donald Day found this out soon enough. This mountain cabin was small. The kitchen was the smallest of its three rooms, but shone upon by the good mountain woman’s gleaming face, and warmed by her glowing hospitality, it became for those four hungry boys the largest, most gorgeous room in all the world.

“Sorgum,” Ballard murmured blissfully a half hour later. “Sorgum molasses and buckwheat pancakes.”

“Take yourself another helping,” said Bex’s mother.

“I couldn’t,” Ballard’s eyes rolled as he patted his stomach. “And I got to be going. I came away from the mill just to bring Bex home. Now I must go back.”

The mill, Johnny thought with a start. Oh yes, that mysterious mill. Perhaps Donald Day will show me its secrets.

A glorious golden moon hung like a Japanese lantern over the jagged ridge that is Stone Mountain when Johnny on the evening of that same day wended his way toward Cousin Bill’s home.

Although Johnny travelled over a trail that, winding along the mountainside, went up and down like a roller coaster, he did not look down upon rocks and ridges but upon a broad and fertile field, level as a floor. There are many such farms to be found in the narrow valleys of the Cumberland. This particular farm belonged to Colonel Crider. The Colonel, Johnny had been told, was rich. Smart racing horses, sometimes taken to the Kentucky Derby, contentedly grazed in his rich pastures. He had a daughter. Just about sixteen years old, Johnny guessed she was. Johnny had seen her only once and that at a distance, yet even at that distance, there was something about the dancing rhythm of her movement, the tilt of her head that had suggested a spirit of light gayety no one could despise.

Johnny was not at this moment thinking of Jensie Crider. His thoughts were gloomy ones. Truth was, he was engaged in one of those mental battles that come to every boy, a fight between his own desires and what he believes to be duty.

“I promised the coach I’d find him a real half-back and I haven’t done it,” he groaned. “But up there on Pounding Mill Creek there’s a pool where the biggest old black bass is lurking. I’ve seen him twice. I almost had him once. Now I’ve got just the right bait—”

At that moment his eye was caught and held by something moving down there in the Colonel’s back pasture.

“It’s Nicodemus,” he thought. “But what’s got into him? He’s scooting across his pen like mad. Just as if he was after something. And—and he is! Or—or something’s after him!”

He came to this decision with a sudden mental jolt. Nicodemus was the Colonel’s favorite ram. Very highly pedigreed and quite old. Nicodemus, until a short time before when a stout pen with a high board fence had been built for him, was the terror of the community. Three times he had broken loose. Each time he had left fear and destruction behind him.

The first time old Deacon Gibson, a local preacher, had been hiving a swarm of bees when Nicodemus arrived on the scene. Nicodemus had failed to assist in hiving that swarm. Worse than that, he had butted the unfortunate parson into three beehives and released three other swarms upon him.

On his second escape, Nicodemus had boldly entered the log school house while school was in session. The teacher had climbed on top of the table. Since there were only holes where windows should have been, the children swarmed through the window holes leaving Nicodemus with the situation well in hand. Since it was a warm day and Nicodemus was tired, he had fallen asleep beneath the table. Needless to say there had been no more school that day.

Johnny laughed aloud as he recalled these stories of the Colonel’s prize ram. But now his eyes were glued upon the high walled pen in which Nicodemus was confined. Some living creature beside Nicodemus had entered that pen. He and Nicodemus were having it out. Was Nicodemus chasing the intruder about or was the wary old ram at last on the run?

“Might be that bear we saw yesterday,” Johnny told himself. “I—I’ve just got to see.”

Johnny knew the Colonel and liked him. A big, bluff, red-cheeked, jovial southern gentleman, he was the idol of every boy who came to know him. Nicodemus, despite all his reputation for breaking up beehives and dismissing schools, was a valuable ram. If anything seriously threatened his safety, the Colonel should know of it. Besides, there was a chance, a bare chance, that Johnny, through this little adventure, might become better acquainted with the Colonel’s daughter, Jensie.

Soon enough Johnny discovered that Nicodemus was not in the slightest bit of danger, unless, like many an aged and crusty human being, he was in danger of bursting a blood vessel because of unsatisfied rage.

As Johnny climbed the high board fence, to peer with some misgiving into Nicodemus’ pen, he barely held back a gasp.

“Of all things!” he muttered. Then, having lifted himself to a secure position atop a post, he sat there, mouth open, eyes staring, witnessing a strange performance.

There were indeed two living creatures in that pen. One was the invincible Nicodemus. The other, instead of being a bear, was a boy, the fleetest footed boy Johnny had ever seen.

Johnny wanted to laugh. He longed to shout. He did neither, for this would have broken up the show. “And that,” he told himself, “would be a burning shame.”

And so it would. The boy and the ram were playing a game of artful dodging. And the boy, apparently, was a match for the ram. Hugging some roundish, brown object under one arm, he dashed squarely at the ram. Leaning always toward the ram, he came within three paces of him when, like a flash, he bent to the right and, with the speed of a snapping jack-knife, swerved slightly to one side and passed the charging beast like a breath of air.

Voicing his disappointment in a low “Ma—maa,” Nicodemus shook his head until it seemed his massive horns would drop off, then prepared to charge once again.

This time, as the ram came bursting down the field, the boy stood stock still. With arms outstretched, he appeared to offer his brown, oblong burden to the ram.

“Now! Now he’ll get him!” Johnny breathed.

But no. As the ram appeared about to strike the boy amidship, with lightning-like speed, he withdrew his offering, pivoted sharply to the right to go dashing away, just in time to avoid the terrific impact.

“That,” Johnny mumbled, “that sure is something!”

Then, like the whizbang of a fire cracker, a thought struck him. Yes, this WAS something! Something real indeed. Like a flash it had come to him that the thing this strange boy carried was a football, that this boy was a marvel, that here was the answer to his prayer, the fulfillment of his promises and his dreams. Here was the much needed half-back. He wanted to climb on top of the board fence and let out one wild shout of joy.

But wait. Who was this boy? A mountain boy to be sure. Was he through high school? Probably not. Few mountain boys are. His hopes dropped.

“But who is he?” he asked himself. “Who can he be?”

To this question, for the time, he found no answer. The boy wore a long vizored cap, pulled low. The shadows hid his face. Yet there was, Johnny assured himself, something familiar about that slender form, those drooping shoulders.

For a full quarter of an hour, awed, inspired, entranced, Johnny witnessed this moonlight duel between a boy and the champion of all butting rams. Then, with a suddenness that was startling, the affair came to an end. The boy tried a new feature of the game. A dozen swift steps backward spelled disaster. He tripped over something behind him, recovered, then straightened up just in time to receive the full impact of the irate ram’s headlong plunge.

The boy shot backward like an empty sack. At the same time there was an explosion like the bang of a shotgun.

“Good grief!” Johnny exclaimed, starting to the rescue.

But there was no need. The boy, still able to travel under his own steam, made his way across the field, to climb atop the fence and to cling there panting.

He was now not twenty feet from Johnny. But as yet he appeared unconscious of Johnny’s presence. In the final scrimmage, his cap had been knocked from his head. Johnny recognized him on the instant. It was Ballard Ball, the boy from the mystery mill.

“Well,” Johnny spoke before he thought, “he got you. But—”

He broke off as he caught the gleam of the other boy’s deep-set, dark eyes.

“I—I’m sorry,” Johnny apologized instantly. “I didn’t mean to spy on you. I saw you and Nicodemus, thought you might be that bear.”

“That bear,” Ballard laughed—his good humor having suddenly returned. “No bear’d ever have a chance with old Nicodemus. He’d be knocked out cold in the first round.”

“I believe it,” Johnny began sliding along the fence. “But say!” he exclaimed. “Where did you play football?”

“I never did, not very much, you see,” Ballard laughed. “We tried it over at the Gap. It went fine until Squirrel-Head Blevins called Blackie Madden a name he didn’t like. Blackie went home and got a gun. If the teacher hadn’t caught Blackie with it, Squirrel-Head wouldn’t be living now. So that’s all the football there was.”

“At the Gap?” Johnny breathed a prayer. “Did you go to high school there?”

“Yes, I—I sort of graduated there last June,” Ballard admitted modestly.

“Thank God,” Johnny breathed. Then—

“Ballard, you’re going to college. You’re going to play real, big-time football.”

“Oh no! I—I can’t,” Ballard was all but speechless. “I—I’ve got less than fifty dollars. You—you can’t go to college on that.”

“Sure you can!” Johnny’s tone was one of finality. “My granddad’s one of the trustees of Hillcrest College. He endowed a scholarship. It’s open. That will pay your tuition. You can work for your room and board. More than half the boys do that. Yes, you’re going to college. And will the coach be pleased! Ballard, old boy, you’re the answer to my prayer.”

“But Johnny,” the mountain boy’s voice hit a flat note, “I read somewhere that college freshmen are not eligible to play football.”

“That’s only in the big colleges and universities,” Johnny explained. “You’ll be eligible in Hillcrest all right.”

“And now,” Johnny said more quietly after a moment. “Now I can go fishing with a good conscience.”

“What’s college got to do with fishing?” Ballard asked in surprise.

Johnny told him.

“I must go to college so you can go fishing,” Ballard laughed. “Well, one excuse is better than none. Wait till I get my ball and I’ll go up the creek with you. He busted my ball, the old rascal! But then maybe that sort of saved my ribs. I’ll not try the back-step after this. Wait!” He sprang into the pen, and before Nicodemus could arrive, was back on the fence with the deflated ball. And that was how Johnny made his first move toward fulfilling his promise to Coach Dizney of old Hillcrest. He had done it with the aid of Nicodemus. There was more to come, very much more.

CHAPTER IV
THE HAUNTED POOL

Next day Johnny disappeared among the rhododendrons and mountain ivy that grow along the right bank of Pounding Mill Creek. His step was light, his heart was gay. And why not? Had he not fulfilled his mission? Had he not discovered the much needed half-back for the Hillcrest coach? And did he not carry in his hands, beside a short split bamboo rod, a can of “soft craws”? And were not soft craws the bait of baits for this season of the year? He looked with pride and joy upon the half dozen crawfish, that, having recently shed their shells, held up soft and harmless claws for his inspection.

“I’ll get that old sport, the king of all black bass, today,” he assured himself. “I’ll have him in less than an hour.”

He might have fulfilled this promise had it not been for a lurking shadow that, passing silently on before him, came to rest at last on a rocky ledge, above the second deep pool in Pounding Mill Creek.

Johnny had little interest in that second pool for the present. In fact that particular pool had a peculiar sort of horror for Johnny. A man had been drowned in that pool. He recalled the story with a chill. A group of foreign laborers, so the story went, had driven up the creek from the Gap. They had meant to dynamite this pool and get a mess of fish. Since this was against the law and since they found Zeb Page, a deputy sheriff, sitting on a near-by boulder, they had decided to take a swim. The pool was deep, all of twenty feet. Four of the foreigners could swim. The water was fine. They enjoyed it immensely.

They had all crawled out on the bank to sun themselves when one of their number, who had never known the delights of swimming, said, “That’s nothing. I can do that.” He dove in, clothes and all. He disappeared beneath the placid surface of the pool. Ten seconds elapsed, twenty, forty, a full moment, and he did not reappear.

Alarmed, his comrades dove for him. Ten minutes later they brought him to the top, dead. In each of his two coat pockets, they found a heavy revolver.

“I always said,” old Uncle Joe Creech always exclaimed after telling this story, “that totin’ pistol guns would keep a good man down. And that to my notion mighty nigh proves hit plumb fer sarton.”

“And folks do say,” he would add with a lowered voice and shifting eyes, “that this here foreigner can be heard on a still night in the dark of the moon, a shootin’ off of them there pistol guns. But then shucks!” he would squirt tobacco juice at a crack in the floor. “Shucks! How could he an’ him drowned and dead?”

Sure enough, how could he? All the same, Johnny never dropped his bait in that deep pool. He always had a shivery feeling that it might catch on something soft and that if he hauled in hard enough, he’d bring a dead body to the top. Pure fancy, he knew this to be, but anyway there were enough other pools to be fished in. Why not pass this one up? He meant to pass it up on this day, as on all others, but fate had decreed otherwise.

Quite forgetting the deep pool that lay just beyond the last clump of mountain laurel, Johnny happily dropped his first wriggling soft craw into the shadowy waters of the pool next to that one where, more than once, a grand and glorious old black bass had eluded him.

“I’ll get him,” he whispered. “Get him for sure.”

But would he? He waited. Lurking in the shadows, he watched the dry line sink down, inch by inch. Then, with a soundless parting of the lips, he saw the line begin shooting away.

“Bass,” he whispered. “Big old black bass.”

The bass he knew, would run a yard, two, three yards, then pause. Should he give the line a quick jerk then, setting the hook? Or, as many wise anglers advised, should he wait for the second run?

The line ceased playing out. Old bass had paused. “Now,” Johnny whispered. “Now? Or—” He gave a quick jerk. He had him. His heart leaped. He began reeling in.

Then his hopes fell, only a little fellow. It must be. No real pull at all. Nor was he mistaken. Close to the surface there appeared a beautiful young bass, perhaps nine inches long, the kind those mountain natives call “green pearch.” With a deft snap of his line, Johnny switched him off, then watched him as, for a moment, stunned by the suddenness of it all, he stood quite still in the water. Johnny’s thoughts were all admiration. How beautiful he was, like the things a Chinaman does in green lacquer.

But the big old black fellow, still lurking down there somewhere in the shadows? What of him? At once Johnny was alert. Drawing in his line, he offered up one more precious soft craw on the altar of a fisherman’s hope.

Down, down went the craw-dad. Down, down sunk the line. But what was this? Of a sudden the line shot away. Startled, eyes bulging, Johnny watched his line play out, a yard, two, three, four, five, all but the length of the pool.

Then, “Now!” he breathed once again. And—what? Was he snagged on a rock? It seemed so. But who could be sure? He strained at his line cautiously. It did not budge.

“Fellow’d think it was an alligator,” he whispered. He put a little more strain upon his line. It gave to his touch. Then, of a sudden it went slack.

“Dumb! Got off! He—”

At that instant the pole was all but jerked from his hand and at precisely the same instant, the most magnificent fish he had ever seen leaped clear of the water. He leaped again and yet again. Johnny’s heart stood still. Then as he saw the fish vanish, felt the tug and knew he still had him, his heart went racing.

It was at this precise second in the long history of the world that Johnny’s ears were smitten by an unearthly scream. It came from the direction of that other pool, the foreigner’s death pool, the haunted pool. The scream was repeated not once but twice. It was followed by a loud splash.

There could be but one conclusion. Someone had been about to fall into the pool. That someone could not swim. Someone HAD fallen into the deep pool.

Johnny dropped his pole, heaved a sudden sigh of regret and at the same time dashed through the bushes. Arriving breathless at the edge of that other pool, he saw a head rise partially above the water. A mass of crinkly brown hair floated on the surface. Without further thought, Johnny plunged, clothes and all, into the pool, to begin an Australian crawl toward the spot where the head had been. But where was it? For a space of ten seconds, he could not locate it. When at last his racing gaze came to rest, it was upon a spot close to the opposite bank. The head was there, also a pair of fair, round shoulders.

Johnny paused in his swimming to see a girl, of some sixteen summers, emerge, fully clothed and dripping, from the pool.

Just then she turned about to look at him and say, as a rare smile played about her lips, “Oh! You in swimming too?”

To measure Johnny’s emotions at that moment would be impossible. The girl was beautiful. But the witch? Why had she screamed? Had she meant to deceive him? And his fish? Gone of course. Even a Tennessee shad could loose himself from a drifting pole like that.

“No,” he said, speaking slowly. “I’m not in swimming. I fell in, same as you did.”

“But I didn’t fall in,” the girl shook the water from her hair. “I jumped in.”

“And do you always scream like that when you dive?” Johnny was puzzled and angry.

“Nearly always.” The girl sat down upon a rock in the bright sunshine. “There’s some sort of bird that screams before he dives. I like it.”

“And I suppose,” Johnny said mockingly, “that you always go in clothes and all?”

“Always,” she said soberly. “It wouldn’t be quite decent not to unless you have a bathing suit. And I haven’t one. I’ve asked Dad to buy me one many times but he always forgets.”

“Who’s Dad?” Johnny asked quickly.

“Dad is Colonel Crider. I’m Jensie Crider. Now please,” there was a friendly note in her voice, “stop being ugly. Come on out in the sun. We’ll be all dry in a half hour. I want you to tell me about a lot of things.”

Jensie Crider, Johnny was thinking to himself. The very girl I’ve wanted to know. And such a meeting as this!

“You made me lose a black bass, a—a whopper,” he grinned in spite of himself.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” she was all sympathy. “But I’ll find you another, a bigger one. You wait and see!” She stood up to shake herself until her damp garments spun about her. “Now please do come up and get all dried out.”

Who could but obey this order from so beautiful a siren?

“Now tell me,” she said when Johnny had settled himself upon the rock, “what do you do besides catch fish?”

“Sometimes I go scouting for football players.”

“Do you find them?”

“Found one last night.”

“Down here in the mountains?” she voiced her surprise.

“It’s Ballard Ball. You’d be astonished. He’s an artful dodger. I—” he was about to tell her how he had found him but changed his mind. “I—I’m going to take him with me to college.”

“Oh, college.” The girl’s voice dropped. “Father wants me to go to college. I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“Why should I?”

Johnny told her why. He spoke in such glowing terms of big football games, wild rallies, of bonfires, and sings around great open fireplaces, the joyous friendships of youth and the satisfaction to be had from learning something new every day that at last quoting from last Sabbath’s Sunday School lesson, she murmured:

“‘Almost thou persuadest me.’”

“But see!” she sprang to her feet. “Now we are all dry. And I shall keep my promise. Now for that big, black bass!”

CHAPTER V
THE CRIMSON FLOOD

Several days later, Johnny Thompson found himself crouching on the western sidelines of the football field at old Hillcrest. He had been there a half hour. During that time a variety of interests had vied for the attention of his active brain.

For a time he had thought of the mill down there at the foot of Stone Mountain in the Cumberlands. All that seemed quite far away now. Yet the strangeness and mystery of it lingered. He had not forgotten his resolve to solve that mystery. In his mind’s vision now he saw it all. Now the ancient mill, its secret trap door and the serious minded Donald Day presiding over it all. Johnny had hoped that Donald would tell him the secret of those strange recesses at the bottom of the old mill. He had pictured himself saying, “Donald, old son, how can you take an empty, double walled jug down there and bring it back full of something quite valuable when there is nothing down there but air and water?” He had never asked the question, had never quite dared. So the mystery of the mill remained a mystery still.

The old master of the mill, Malcomb MacQueen, was still in the hospital. Apparently his fall, when the bridge came down, had resulted in very serious injuries. No one seemed to know when he might be about again. One thing was sure, everyone would be glad when that day came. “How those mountain people do love him!” Johnny whispered as he crouched on the sidelines waiting for action.

And Ballard? Ah, that was the question uppermost in Johnny’s mind at this moment. As he crouched there waiting for the kick off of that first of the season’s games, he asked himself over and over, “What about Ballard?”

When he told the coach that he had found a star half-back for him, a sure winner who in all his life had played but three games of football and had been given no opportunity to shine in these, the coach had indulged in that quaint but classic expression: “Oh yeah?”

But Johnny had remained undismayed. “You wait and see!” had been his only reply. He had not told of the late night tryst with the champion butter of all rams, old Nicodemus. It seemed a little strange to him as he thought of it now. “Wait and see,” he had repeated. That was all. Now they were waiting. They were to see. The zero hour was approaching. Cedarville, the visiting team, would kick off to Hillcrest. An important game? All games of a series are important. Seven games were to be played for the championship of the Little Seven League.

No one wanted Hillcrest to win as Johnny did. He wanted his find, Ballard Ball, to turn out to be a star of the first magnitude. He wanted the Hillcrest boys to win because he knew and loved them. More than that, Hillcrest had been his father’s school. Johnny’s father had died while he was still young, not, however, until he had fired Johnny’s boyish mind with tales of football battles of good, old, half forgotten days.

“They used to win,” Johnny had said to Ballard that very morning. “Win and win and win! Last year Hillcrest lost and lost and lost. Hillcrest has not carried off the pennant for six years.”

To this Ballard had made no reply. Johnny thought he saw the lines tighten about his thin, serious face. He was sure he caught a gleam from those dark, deep-set eyes. That was all. It was enough. “He’ll do,” had been his mental comment. Now the eternal question came back to him, “Will he do?”

“Here they come!” a high-pitched voice cried. The speaker was close beside Johnny. “Here they come! The Crimson Tide!”

It was Jensie Crider who, wakening Johnny from his reverie, brought him to his feet with a snap. Yes, Jensie, the same Jensie, who had screamed three times then leaped, full dressed, into that mountain pool was here. And, miracle of miracles, wild and free as she had been down in the hills, today she was garbed in a sober costume and going to college, Johnny’s college, old Hillcrest. Something to marvel at here.

No time for that now though, for indeed, here they came, the Hillcrest team, the Crimson Flood as Jensie had named them.

The ball had been kicked off. A long, high, rocketing kick, it had been gathered in by Punch Dickman, the Hillcrest full-back, and now here they came.