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.
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!”
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.
To Johnny at that moment, they seemed a crimson tide indeed. Their red jersies flaming in the sun, they were like the onrush of a flaming prairie fire. Johnny’s own heart flamed at sight of them.
Among them all, one figure stood out boldly. A large, heavy boned boy, he moved with the determined gallop of a stubborn two year old colt. He ran just ahead of the ball carrier. When a boy in orange and blue leaped toward the carrier, he was met not by the big full-back but by this other boy. Hillcrest’s left end whose name was Dave Powers. Dave spilled him as easily as he might have a tea-wagon laden with dishes. Two others of the orange and blue went down before him.
“Look at ’em!” Johnny thrilled to the core of his being. “Thirty yard line, forty, forty-five, fifty. Over the center, forty-five! Forty! There! There he’s down on the Cedarville thirty-seven yard line. Yow-ee! What a run-back. It’s a good sign, Jensie! A very good sign!” He slapped his companion on the back as if she were a boy. And she came back with a feigned punch to the jaw.
“But Ballard?” Johnny’s thoughts sobered. Ballard, the slim dark-eyed mountain boy was in there at right half. The coach was giving him his chance.
“Good old Dizney!” Johnny muttered. “Here’s hoping!”
“He’ll make good,” Jensie exclaimed. “Ballard will make good. I’m sure of it.”
“That’s a pal,” Johnny’s heart warmed toward the girl. Once down there in the Cumberlands he had fairly hated her for making him lose a fine black bass. He was all for her now.
Hillcrest had the ball. The run-back had been wonderful, but, after that for a time, things were not so good. Johnny saw at a glance that the Hillcrest team was outweighed fifteen pounds to the man. And, in the beginning games at least, weight does count.
Hillcrest tried a smash through right tackle. No good. They attempted an end run with Ballard carrying the ball. Johnny caught his breath as he saw the mountain boy tuck the ball under his arm. “First blood,” he muttered. Two enemies broke through the line. Ballard dodged one, appeared to offer the ball to the second, then pivoted and faded out to the right.
“Great stuff!” Johnny murmured.
In the end, however, the mountain boy was thrown for a loss of two yards. One more down, then came the punt.
A Cedarville man carried the ball to his own forty yard line. Then followed a terrific pounding of the Hillcrest line that resulted in four first downs, a thirty yard run through the line and at last a touchdown by the invaders.
“Oh!” Jensie sighed, it was the first real game she had ever witnessed. “How can we win when they ram the line like a flock of goats?”
“Or rams?” Johnny chuckled in spite of himself. “But wait,” he consoled her, “our team will take to the air. Then you’ll see.”
“Take to the air?” Jensie was puzzled.
“We’ll have to beat them with passes,” Johnny explained.
He looked at the girl beside him and marvelled. From his strange introduction—or lack of introduction—back there in the mountain pool, he had suspected her of being a trifle crude. To his vast surprise, he had found her very much of a lady.
As he thought of it now, while Cedarville took time out before a try at the goal, as he recalled the few happy days spent with her there in the mountains, he found himself thinking of her as he might have thought of the fine type of English girl, who rides after the hounds, plays golf, cricket, and tennis, and is a fine-spoken, properly dressed young person for all that.
Ride after the hounds? Well, they had not quite done that. They had followed the Colonel’s favorite hounds over the ridges, hunting squirrels. They had risen two hours before dawn to walk through the dewy moonlight to a cornfield. There they had treed two fat, marauding old coons and had, as Jensie put it, “Shot them at sunrise.” They had—
But there was the kick for the extra point. No good, off to the right. Johnny cheered with the rest but his gaze was wandering from the coach to Ballard, then from Ballard to the coach again. What was the coach thinking of Ballard? Probably nothing. He hadn’t been given a chance. He—
“There! There they go!” Jensie cried.
At once Johnny’s eyes were on the ball. Cedarville had kicked off to Hillcrest. By some strange chance, it was Ballard who caught the ball. It was no mere chance that Dave Powers, the left end, was at Ballard’s side—he had a way of being near the runner. Together they sprinted down the line, but not for long. Ballard’s course was too much of a snake-dance for Dave. He dodged there, pivoted here, leaped straight at a would-be tackler, then shot to the right. Eluding all would-be tacklers, leaving his team mates far behind, the slim Kentucky boy set the bleachers howling with delight. Had it not been for the lone safety man who rushed him and downed him at the fifteen yard line, it must surely have been a touchdown from a run-back—a marvelous feat. As it was Hillcrest went wild with the yell:
“Yea Ballard! Yea Ballard! Ballard! Ballard! Touchdown! Touchdown!”
A touchdown it was, and that on the very next play. Little Artie Stark, Hillcrest’s midget quarter-back, took the ball, lateralled a slow pass to Dave Powers at end, and Dave, plunging like a bucking bronco, shot through the line.
“Yea! Yea! Yea!” even Jensie, who until now had watched the game in passive silence, joined in the cheering.
The kick was good. The score stood 7-6 in favor of Hillcrest.
There followed moments of tense struggle. Hillcrest won the ball and lost it. Cedarville battled their way to the ten yard line only to lose the ball on a fumble. Hillcrest took to the air but with little success. Pass after pass dropped to earth incomplete.
At last there was but seven minutes left to play. The day was warm for autumn. Both teams showed the strain. Hillcrest tried one more forward pass only to meet with disaster. It was intercepted by the opponent’s right end. He went romping down the field for a second touchdown. The kick was good. Score 13 to 7 against Hillcrest.
“Cheer up, boys,” Johnny shouted as, having taken time out, the Hillcrest boys lay sprawled out before him. “You’ll win. There’s six minutes yet to play.”
“Than-thanks Johnny. Thanks for them few kind words,” came from a member of the team. Ballard did not so much as look up.
“He’s dead on his feet,” Johnny whispered to Jensie. “The coach should take him out, but he’s afraid he’ll break him if he does.”
“Poor Ballard,” Jensie whispered back. “I wish he’d have some luck.”
Jensie was deeply interested in Ballard. They had gone to school together, she and Ballard, for years. It had mattered little that her home was large, her father rich; his home small, his family poor. They were friends.
When grade school was over Jensie had been sent away to a high class private boarding school for girls. This had lasted exactly three weeks. Jensie had pined away for her beloved mountains, her childhood comrades, and the glorious freedom of public schools. She ran away from Madame Farar’s select finishing school. She came home to the mountains. Her father had chuckled over her rebellion and had sent her, with Ballard and all her other childhood pals to the high school at the Gap.
She had not wanted to go away to college. The appearance of Johnny Thompson on the scene had changed all that. Johnny had painted glowing pictures of college, of basket ball, football, pep-meetings, evenings about the open fire in the big “dorm” and all else that goes to make college glorious. Johnny himself was a rather glamorous figure. And Ballard was going. That was enough. So, here she was. And here was Ballard of her own Pounding Mill Creek, on a football team that apparently could not win.
“They MUST win!” She set her teeth hard.
“They shall win!” Johnny exclaimed.
Would they? It did not seem so, for once again, as play was resumed, the opponents began battering their shattered line, marching down the field toward one more touchdown.
But not so fast! The Hillcrest line stiffened. Three downs and no gain. Cedarville was forced to kick. The ball shot skyward like a rocket to drop right into Artie Stark’s waiting arms. Artie raced forward for a gain of twenty yards. With a tackler at his heels he hurled a forward pass to Dave Powers. Dave sprang into the Cedarville mob. He dodged here, pivoted there, was about to be tackled, then lateralled back to Artie Stark half way across the field and all alone.
By this time the Hillcrest bleachers had gone mad. Even the Cedarville rooters were screaming at the tops of their voices.
“Touchdown! Touchdown!” yelled the excited mob. Johnny looked at his watch. “One minute to play, one minute for a touchdown. Regular Jack Armstrong football,” he murmured.
Almost, but not quite. Finding himself in the open and in full possession of the treasured pigskin, Artie Stark once again shot forward toward the goal line. An enemy appeared on the right. He dodged him. One on the left, another on the right, a third directly before him. No chance. His eyes roved the field. “Than—thanks, good fortune,” he murmured as he sent the ball on a long, looping curve toward Ballard Ball, the slim Kentucky boy, who stood waiting all alone on the enemy’s five yard line. It was a perfect pass. Ballard was not obliged to move a foot. The ball dropped squarely in his arms. Yet—Johnny could not believe his eyes—the ball went bouncing in air to at last strike the earth and roll away.
“Incomplete pass,” Johnny groaned. “One, two, three passes, all incomplete. The ball goes back miles and miles. And with only a half minute left to play.” He groaned again and all Hillcrest groaned with him. And well they might for, scarcely had the teams lined up for play when the whistle blew. The game was over. Hillcrest had lost 13 to 7.
When Johnny and Jensie went in search of Ballard they did not find him on the field. He had vanished.
“Johnny, we must find him,” Jensie exclaimed. “We really must! I know Ballard. I’ve known him a long, long time. He’s too good to be true. He’ll blame himself for the loss of that game. He—why he may start for home tonight. You never can tell.”
After a futile search for Ballard, Johnny wandered back to the Blue Moon. The Blue Moon was Johnny’s latest financial venture in a strange and troubled world. It promised to be a grand flop and Johnny was duly unhappy about it.
The establishing of the Blue Moon had been a suggestion of Johnny’s grandfather. The old man was seldom wrong. This time, however, it did seem that he had erred.
It had started with Johnny’s determination to find his young Kentucky friend a job, anything at all that would enable him to earn money for food and lodging. At first it had seemed simple enough. In the end it proved impossible. Everything was taken.
“Way to get a job these days,” Johnny’s grandfather had said, “is to make one for yourself.”
“Sure,” Johnny grinned, “but how?”
“Not so hard as it might seem,” the old man rumbled. “I’ve been thinking about it for quite a spell. You know college boys like a place to gather and talk things over, have a cup of coffee or hot malted, sort of a gathering place of the clan.”
“I know,” Johnny agreed.
“I’ve been watching them. They wander down town, go in here, go in there, gather in places, not so bad, not so good either, little gambling, slot machines and all that, little bad language from rough town folks, all that sort of thing. If I had a boy away from home, I’d like him in a better place. So why not, Johnny?” The old man leaned forward eagerly.
“Why not what?” Johnny asked.
“Why not turn that abandoned bowling alley building just off the campus into a sort of student’s retreat, place where they can buy little things they need, sit down for a hot drink, gather around for a bit of conversation, all that.
“I’ve got the fixtures for you, took them on a bad debt. They’re in storage. I’ll finance it for you. Make a job for both you and Ballard. What do you say?”
“Grand!” Johnny had all but hugged the old man.
They had worked hard to make the place attractive, Johnny and Ballard had. Jensie had added a feminine touch, with a picture or two and colored curtains. She had imported for them a southern negro cook who could make famous little meat pies and apple turn overs, the sort that melt in your mouth.
The place was, Johnny decided, to have very few rules, one was that this was a place for men only. Perhaps this rule was a mistake. One thing was sure, the student body had not, as yet, found their way in any great numbers to the Blue Moon, as Johnny and Jensie had named it. The place gave promise of being a prodigious failure.
“I suppose the boys like to wander down town and fill their eyes with the bright light of neon signs,” Johnny told himself gloomily, as having entered the big, front room of the place, he prodded the fire, thrust in three large logs, then seated himself for a short spell of gloomy meditation.
This meditation was broken in upon by Jensie who thrusting her head in at the open door said, “Johnny, do you think Ballard could have lit out for our native hills?”
“Don’t know,” was Johnny’s slow reply. “Guess not though. Probably just went for a long walk to wear off his grief at dropping that ball. Come on in and have a meat pie an’ a cup of coffee. It’s on the house.”
“Can’t, Johnny.”
“Why not?”
“Rules, Johnny.”
“Hang the rules!” Johnny exploded. “We made ’em. We can break ’em.”
“Besides,” his voice dropped to a disconsolate note, “I think the place is a flop.”
“No! It can’t be. It mustn’t be,” Jensie exclaimed.
“You can hang a hollow log up in a tree,” was Johnny’s strange reply, “but you can’t make a squirrel choose it for a nest. Anyway come on in. I’m sure the coffee is still hot.”
It was. They drank three cups apiece and felt better, much better. Two banjos lay on the shelf back of the counter. Taking up one of these Jensie put a hand on the counter, gave a little spring, and there she was, seated on the counter as she had been many a time in Cousin Bill’s store down in the Cumberland mountains.
She touched the strings and at once, strange, quaint mountain melodies began pouring forth on the still night air. They were alone, just Johnny and the girl. But not for long. The door was open. The thrum-thrum-thrum of the banjo carried far. Into the dim lit room, shadowy figures like dark ghosts began to glide. One by one, each in his corner, they came to rest. Johnny could not see their faces. He could guess who they were and was glad. It promised well for the future of the Blue Moon.
Then a tall, slim, slouching figure appeared. Both Johnny and Jensie recognized him at a glance. Johnny felt a wave of warmth creep over him. Jensie gulped, paused, then played on.
“Here, gimme that thar banjo,” drawled a low, melodious voice. “Blame me, if you ain’t the sorriest banjo picker I mighty nigh ever heard.” It was Ballard.
Jensie did not give up the banjo. Instead, she reached over, took down the second banjo, then slid over, making a place for Ballard beside her.
“Come on, boy,” she whispered, “let’s give ’em a little touch of old Kentucky.”
A moment more and two banjos were thrumming where one had been before, and two melodious voices were drawling the words of “Kentucky Babe.”
The sound carried farther now. New recruits to the voluntary audience were arriving. Some were boys and some girls. Two gray-haired professors sidled into a corner. Rules? Tonight there were no rules. They had lost the first big game of the season. One and all they were in need of consolation. They were getting it from these mountain singers.
From “Kentucky Babe” the melodious pair went to “Moonlight on the Wabash” and “Springtime in the Rockies.” Then, with a sudden low strumming of strings, they drifted away into some sweet, haunting melody of the mountains, a song without words, never written down but loved and remembered by every new mountain generation.
A hush fell over the audience as it ended. The hush deepened as the strings took up an old, old refrain and the untrained melodious voices began: “The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home.”
The hush continued all through the song. Surely no audience had ever accorded a more perfect reception. For a full moment there was silence. Then a voice exclaimed:
“Yea, Kentucky! Yea! Yea! Old Kentucky!”
Instantly the throng was on its feet as the rafters rang with the shout:
“Kentucky! Old Kentucky!”
Johnny choked something down his throat. Perhaps it was his heart. By Old Kentucky, he knew they meant Ballard. The name would stick. Ballard was made for life. So too he hoped, was the Blue Moon. He touched a switch. Instantly like a smile from Heaven the light at the center of the ceiling beamed down upon them. Johnny found himself looking into a half hundred smiling faces. The team was there, almost to a man. Some of the girls were there. Those professors and six strangers completed the list.