To his nicely tuned ears, every sound had a meaning. If the hiss of steam increased, if a pump bumped ever so softly, if the fire’s low roar sank to a whisper, he was on his feet. His hands grasped a shovel, a valve, or a wrench and in a trice all was right again.
More than this, the old heating plant stood for a very definite change in his life. The moment he stepped through those doors and good old John MacQueen said, “Your work will be this. You will do it this way and that way,” he had become important both to himself and to others. He was a worker.
He loved to sit there, with the green shaded light gleaming low, with the shadows leaping among the pumps and the pipes, and picture the rooms in those other buildings. In the gym, all aglow with light, a practice game of basketball was in progress. Soon the players would go bounding down the stairs to the showers. In the old brown stone building across the way, Prexy, in his office, dictated letters, in another room the treasurer thumbed his ledgers. Far up beneath the rafters were bat-roosts where a score or more of boys bent over tables reading intently, or figuring feverishly. In the red brick “dorm,” at the far corner of the campus, more than a hundred girls garbed in lounging pajamas, kimonos, or more formal garb, were studying.
“All these,” he would think with a smile, and a glad tug at his heart, “are warm and comfortable on a damp and chilly night, because I am here watching these old furnaces and listening to that hiss of steam. I am part of a big thing. I am a worker.”
Ah, yes, what more could any boy ask, a chance to study, to listen to the talk of men older and wiser than himself and then to do his part in making all this possible for many others.
Did Dave think of this often? Probably not. His head was full of forward passes, lateral passes, touchdowns, college algebra, chemical formulae, and all the rest that made up his life. For all that it was good at times just to sit there listening and thinking, just thinking and listening—nothing more.
A sturdy, cheerful, independent lot were these Hillcrest boys who worked their way. And there were scores of them. On the football team there was Stagger Weed, who tended a string of furnaces; Rabbit Jones, who swept a dozen floors every day; Punch Dickman, who was a hash slinger at the Golden Gate, and many others, happy warriors all.
“Howdy, Johnny! How’s things?” Dave greeted as Johnny came in blinking from the light.
“Fine, Dave.”
“And the Blue Moon?”
“Wonderful, Dave.” Johnny dropped into a chair beside Dave’s small desk. “Dave, how’s football?”
“You saw how it was Saturday,” Dave laughed.
“Yes, but—” Johnny’s brow wrinkled, “you didn’t use my good pal, Kentucky, very much.”
“No-o,” Dave spoke slowly, “we didn’t. He’s trying too hard. Have to let him slow down a bit. But he’s a fine kid, Johnny, a mighty fine kid. I like to see him run. Wait until next Friday. You know we play on Friday this week, Naperville’s request. You’ll see a thing or two. Just you wait!”
Johnny was willing enough to wait if Dave felt that way about it. He did wait. He did see things, wonderful things for a while—and then—well—yes, and then.
* * * * * * * *
“Look!” Dave’s tone was low, tense with emotion. “We gotta’ beat that Naperville gang. We just got to. And we can do it, Old Kentucky.” He placed a hand affectionately on the mountain boy’s shoulder.
The great day had come. The Naperville game was about to start. Never before had there been such crowds, so much color, enthusiasm, and cheering.
“We can do it,” Dave went on, “just you and I. No one can dodge the way you can. And I—I’m a battering ram. I’m good! I even admit it,” he chuckled. “I’ll go through ’em. You follow on and make the gains. We’re going to have a touchdown two minutes after the first whistle. I’ll tell you how,” his voice dropped to a mere whisper. “Artie will give you the ball. I’ll hit their tackle, hit him hard and ram their line into a heap. That makes a hole. You go through, far as ever you can.” He drew a long breath.
“And then?” Kentucky asked in a low, quiet drawl.
“Same thing. Four times running,” was Dave’s reply. “Every time we’ll gain a little less ground. Shouldn’t wonder if you’d be thrown for a loss on the fourth. There’s a bright sophomore on that Naperville team—too bright. Plays right guard. He’ll break through and smear you. Let him!” Dave chuckled. “And then,” another long breath, “then Artie will send you through the spot where that same right guard belongs. He’ll be feeling so happy about smearing you, he won’t be watching, or if he is, he’ll expect that same play. You should get through, all the way through, kid! Make it a touchdown, boy. Make it a touchdown.” He wrung the younger boy’s hand. “There’s the horn.”
Who can say what went on inside the Kentucky boy’s mind as he crouched behind the line waiting for the snapping of the ball? As yet all was quite new and strange to him. They expected so much of him. They wanted him to beat this Naperville team. Naperville meant nothing to him. But to his team mates and all the old grads, the letter men of other years, it meant a great deal.
But here was the ball. He felt its hard smoothness in his hand, saw Dave plunge forward to send a player crashing to one side, saw the opening and went through for a gain of a yard, two, three, four, eight yards. Then a bolt of lightning appeared to hit him and he went to earth.
The instant the whistle blew, he felt Dave’s hands on his shoulder, helping him to his feet.
“Grand, Old Kentucky! Better’n I expected. Now make it a first down.”
A first down it was. The crowd on the bleachers screamed its approval. The boy could hear them shouting: “Na—per—ville! Na—per—ville! Beat ’em! Beat ’em! Smear ’em! Smash ’em! Kill ’em!” The shout, coming in slow motion at first, picked up speed until it sounded like an on-rushing train.
“Steady, boy!” Dave warned. “Don’t expect too much. Remember!”
“I—I’ll remember,” Kentucky’s breath came short and quick.
There was need to remember, for on the second down he failed to gain and on the third he was thrown for a loss of two yards. It was at this moment that the mountain boy became conscious of that Naperville guard. He was not only a smart boy, he had a mean turn to his nature. He leered as if to say, “Ha! Ha! Big joke! Smeared you, didn’t I?”
Ballard’s face was a mask as he took his place for the next play. Then, as he received the ball, he faked that same line plunge, saw that leering guard leave his place, then, like a flash of fire, shot to the right, through that opening and away.
Then a strange thing happened to his mind. As a player flashed past him, he was to him no longer a player, but old Nicodemus, the Colonel’s ram. And now here was another off to his right. Oh, well! offer him a hip, then fade. He faded down the field. To the left a third Nicodemus appeared. He too was dodged. But here he was now straight ahead of him, not Nicodemus, of course, but the Naperville’s safety man, all that remained between him and a touchdown.
With a friendly grin, holding the ball straight out before him, the Kentucky boy sprang straight at the waiting giant.
Thrown off his guard, the giant reached for the ball. But, of a sudden, the ball was not there. Stopping dead in his tracks, Kentucky had pivoted sharply to the right and was away for that touchdown.
Then how the bleachers roared.
“See! I told you,” Dave grinned as he came up with the Kentucky boy. “Two minutes to a touchdown, exactly by the watch!”
Kentucky did not laugh. He did not even smile. Strangely enough, at that moment he was seeing a face, an unfriendly, leering face, the face of Naperville’s right guard. A chill shook his slender frame. He wanted to plead with the coach. Strange as it may seem, he wanted to be taken out of the game. “But how foolish!” he muttered. “What reason could I give?”
He did not quit the game. He played on, but ever and again, as there was time-out and he lay flat upon the ground relaxed, with eyes closed, he seemed to see that leering face and always it caused him to shudder.
After their brilliant start, the team slowed down a bit. The quarter ended without another touchdown.
In the second quarter, Naperville took the ball and, for the most part, kept it. With the dogged determination of a slow, heavy team, they at last pounded their way across the field to a touchdown. Since both teams had made good on kicks, the score was now tied.
But not for long. Hillcrest went into the air. The grilling practice of that week did not go for nothing. Three times their forward passes were complete. It was a short lateral caught by Kentucky and hurled high and wide to Dave that at last scored their second touchdown of the game. The kick was good.
Then again came tough going. The Hillcrest team was tiring. Like shock troops, a half dozen husky subs were pushed into the Naperville team and again they battered their way across the field and over the goal. The kick was good. Once again the score was tied.
Then came the five last tense moments of the game. Even faces in the grandstand were drawn into hard fixed lines. Men were there, stout, gray haired men, who, in their day, had gone romping over their ancient enemy to victory. Now they wanted that victory once again, wanted it terribly. True, there was one more game scheduled with this team, but every game counted, every game! There was no time like the golden now.
“Smash that line!” they chanted. “Smash that line! Smash that line!”
As they went into a huddle, Dave muttered to his team: “Remember what we did in the beginning? They’ve forgotten by now. Same play, all the way through, except just three plunges through left tackle, then one through right guard.”
Hillcrest’s ball on the enemy’s thirty-yard line. Four minutes to play. First down, ten to go.
Snap! The ball fairly cracked as it reached Kentucky’s hands. Dave broke a wide opening. Kentucky went through to a first down.
“Break that line! Break that line! Smash ’em! Smash ’em! Smash ’em!” the bleachers chanted.
Kentucky passed his hand before his eyes—that leering sophomore was there again.
Now he was off once again for a gain of six yards.
“Make it a first down!” Dave muttered grimly.
From the enemy’s bleachers there came a mighty roar: “Stop that man! Stop that man! Kill him! Kill him!” Dave knew they meant him. He grinned broadly. A moment more and he was laughing, for the bruised and battered tackle of the opposing team straightened up to shout back to the now silent bleachers:
“Stop him yourself! He ain’t no man! He’s a stick of flaming red dynamite!”
“Red dynamite!” The Hillcrest bleachers caught the words and hurled it back. “Red dynamite! Red dynamite! ’Ray for Red Dynamite!” And so, in a flash, Dave was named for life.
They did not make it a first down, not that time, for, as if he had rehearsed the act, that grinning, leering guard broke through once more and threw Ballard for a loss. As he did so, he hissed some words in the mountain boy’s ears. Kentucky heard it but indistinctly. Even so, his blood raced. His fingers itched for action. As he rose, he stood there like a marble statue, white and cold.
The next play came with the speed of thought and, like a radio flash, was executed. Kentucky went straight through the place left by the leering guard. It looked like a touchdown. But no, he was thrown hard, just one yard from the goal line.
“What a break!” Dave exulted. “First down and a yard to a touchdown!”
The crowd saw it all and went into hysterics. Hats soared high. Girls screamed. An old grad fell backward off the bleachers, barely escaping a broken neck. The bleachers were a riot.
But what was this? Players on both teams leaped into action. They began piling up, pulling and hauling. When it was all over, Ballard, white faced and panting, was dragged from the bottom of the heap.
There had been a fight going on beneath that pile. Kentucky and that leering Naperville guard had been at it tooth and nail.
“He was cho—choking me!” the Naperville guard gasped. “He—he nearly killed me.”
“What happened, Ballard?” the coach asked, crowding in.
The Kentucky boy made no reply. He was white as marble and shaking like a leaf. He turned, pushed his way through his own team and walked unsteadily to the bench to drop upon it like a sack of sand.
A hush fell over the throng. The referees conferred. There was nothing for it, whatever the cause, the Kentucky boy had started a fight. Fifteen yards penalty for Hillcrest.
Less than two minutes to play and sixteen yards to a touchdown. Hillcrest lost heart. Four downs and only four yards gained. Naperville took the ball. They booted it down the field. The whistle blew. The game was over.
“Only a tie,” came a murmur from the bleachers. “Only a tie and we might have won.”
“Only a tie and we might have won,” the words were taken up by more than one player. But Ballard, Old Kentucky as they had lovingly called him, such a short time before, did not hear. He was not there. He was far away, how far no one seemed to know.
An hour later Johnny Thompson found the Kentucky boy sitting in a chair beside the range in the cook room of the Blue Moon. He was all crumpled up like a rag doll and still shaking like a leaf in the wind. Once, when Johnny was in Central American jungles, he saw a monkey caught in a wire trap. He too had been all crumpled up and trembling. Ballard was like that. A great wave of remorse swept over him. “Shouldn’t have brought him up here,” he told himself savagely. “Belongs down there in the mountains, he does, down there where men are free as squirrels or woodchucks.”
And yet, as he paused for sober thought, he could not be sure. What should be done?
“Boy, why did you do it?” he asked in a voice that vibrated with kindness.
“Can’t nobody call me no name like that,” the Kentucky boy grumbled without looking up. “Just can’t nobody at all.”
“So that sneering guard called him a vile name!” Johnny thought to himself. “There’s a penalty for that too, but Kentucky didn’t know. Too bad! No good to tell him now.”
What should be done? He was seized with a sudden inspiration.
“Ballard,” he spoke in as steady a tone as he could command, “I’m driving back to the mouth of Pounding Mill Creek for the week end. Want to go along?”
Ballard did not look up. He replied in a word of one syllable: “Yes.” Yet it is probable that few spoken words have ever expressed so much.
“All right. We’ll start in an hour. With luck, we’ll be there in seven hours.”
For a boy, Johnny had a very long head. There were many things he might have done. He might have remonstrated with Ballard, told him that in the mountains you could kill a man for calling you the wrong kind of name, but not in Hillcrest. He might have sympathized with him, might have said, “We’ll get even with that Naperville mob.” The thing he did could not have been more right, had he been advised by a score of older heads.
When at last they started, there were three in the car instead of two. He had run across Jensie. She had insisted on going along. The car seat was wide. Johnny was not slow in accepting her challenge. So, with an hour of sunlight and many hours of glorious moonlight before them, they took the long, broad, winding trail that leads south.
Mile after mile sped by and not a word was said by anyone. They are strangely quiet people, these mountain folks—yet there are times when they appear to speak without saying any words. Their very silence speaks for them. Johnny had felt this many times. He was feeling it now. Jensie seemed to be saying, “Don’t be too hard on him, Johnny. Don’t let the boys be too hard on him. It’s our mountain ways.” And Ballard? He seemed to be saying, “I won’t go back. I’ll never go back. I won’t go back,” repeating it over and over. Strangely enough, because of this repetition, Johnny felt sure that in the end he would go back and he was glad.
They came at last to the crest of Big Black Mountain. There, without quite knowing why, Johnny cut off the gas and allowed his car to go rolling along to a gliding stop.
A second look told him why he had not gone on. He had been stopped by the sheer beauty of the scene that lay before them. Big Black Mountain is not a peak, it is a tree-grown ridge stretching away for miles and miles. To right and left of it are other ridges, Little Black Mountain, Stone Mountain, Pine Ridge, and all the rest. These ridges, covered as they were with the golden coat of autumn and shone down upon by a matchless moon, made a picture of breath-taking beauty. Jensie too felt the glory of it all, Johnny knew, for he felt her heart leap.
“It—it’s grand!” she murmured. “And to think! This is MY country.”
“Yes,” Johnny’s voice was low with emotion, “it’s your country.”
As he said this he was not thinking of Jensie, but of Ballard, who sat motionless in the car, saying nothing at all. This was HIS country. What was he thinking now? Johnny would have given a dollar to know.
“His country,” Johnny whispered to himself. Along those ridges chestnuts and beechnuts were falling. Squirrels were frisking about on the ground. With a gun and a good hound-dog—Ballard owned one of the best dogs in the mountains—you could have a perfect, gloriously golden day, hunting those squirrels and keeping an ear open for the distant gobble-gobble of some wild turkeys who might, just might, be hiding in those hills.
“What a life!” Johnny barely escaped saying the words aloud. “What a grand and glorious life!” Deep down in some hollow a fat old coon was at this moment stealing corn. Rabbits were frisking in the moonlight; Johnny saw one go dashing across the road. Down there, far below, was a two-room log cabin, Ballard’s home. In the narrow, coal-burning grate, a low fire would be gleaming. Above the mantel hung Ballard’s rifle. Beside the fire slept his favorite hound-dog.
“And I’m going to ask him to give it up,” Johnny told himself. “Going to tell him he should go back to college, to books, to serving coffee and hot dogs, and back to football. How can I?
“And yet—” Johnny touched the starter. The car went purring down the slope. And yet—yes, he would ask him. What if it was good sport to wander the hills in search of game? What if the mountains did call? What would it get you in the end? With an untrained temper, the rifle that sends a squirrel tumbling over and over from the top of a tree might at last be turned upon some human being. And after that, long years in jail.
“That,” Johnny told himself soberly, “is what football’s for, to teach a fellow to take it. Not to take vile names. The referee will take care of that, but to take a tumble, to be thrown, thrown hard again and again, to be bumped and bruised and still be able to smile. That’s football, a grand and glorious sport!” Yes, he’d ask Ballard to go back. He MUST go back!
“I—I’ll get off here,” Ballard broke in upon Johnny’s solemn meditations and high resolves. “There’s a short cut through the hills. I’ll be home in a quarter of an hour.” As Johnny stopped the car, Ballard hopped out.
“Thanks, Johnny! Thanks a powerful lot.”
“Good-bye, Ballard,” Johnny called.
“Good-bye, Ballard,” Jensie echoed. “We’ll be seeing you.”
“We’ll be seeing you,” the hills echoed back. Ballard was gone, swallowed up by darkness and his beloved mountains.
Jensie did not speak again until they were before her own gate. Then she said quietly: “I’m going hunting with Ballard in the morning, Johnny.”
“Does he know it?” Johnny asked in some surprise.
“No, but he will. It won’t be the first time we’ve gone hunting together, nor, I hope, the last.
“Thanks, Johnny.” She was out of the car now. Her hand was on the gate. “Thanks awfully for bringing us down.” Next moment she too had vanished into the darkness.
For a moment Johnny sat in his car thinking. Yes, these were strangely silent people. Jensie had not asked him to go with them on that hunting trip. She had given no reason for not doing so. There was a reason. She expected him to know the reason. He did—and was glad.
As he drove on to Cousin Bill’s place, he was able to dismiss Ballard from his mind. He thought of the old mill and its mystery, of Donald Day and his grandfather, who was still in the hospital. He thought of the young aviator down in the valley who said he had found a wonderful new fuel for his airplane motor. Ballard had told him that this aviator had become Donald Day’s best customer. “He’s bought an old horse and wagon,” Ballard had said. “Every day he comes up and carts away three or four of those queer jugs.”
“Wonder what’s in those jugs,” Johnny had replied. “Really, don’t you know?”
“Cross my heart,” Ballard had answered.
“Well, I’m going to find out,” Johnny had said with determination. But would he? Well, here he was at Cousin Bill’s. Now for a few winks of sleep.
“Want to come down with me?”
It happened as simply as that. Johnny Thompson caught his breath, breathed hard twice, then said, “Y—yes. Sure I would.”
The boy who had asked this surprising question was none other than Donald Day, grandson of the wizard of Stone Mountain who in a mysterious manner managed to make something of great value out of air and water alone. It was the next day. Jensie and Ballard were away in the hills with dog and guns but Johnny and Donald were standing at the door leading to the mystery room beneath the mill. The key was in Donald’s hand and he was saying quietly, “Want to come down—”
“Wonder if he does not know that his grandfather kept the whole thing a secret?” Johnny thought to himself. “Wonder if I should tell him. I—”
At that moment little Bexter Brice burst through the outer door. “The worst things do happen,” he exclaimed. “Poor old Uncle Mose Short!” He dropped down upon a rustic seat.
“What’s happened?” Johnny asked, for the moment allowing his interest to be drawn from the enthralling mystery below.
“Well, you know,” Bex was speaking slowly now, “Mr. MacQueen always took a great deal of interest in Mose. Mose is old, really old, no one knows just how old, but he’s been game. He’s worked. Times have been hard but all he’s asked is a chance to earn a poor sort of living and now—” he sighed. “Now it looks as if that chance would be cut off.
“You see,” he turned to the city boy, Donald, “your grandfather was trying to save Mose’s mule when he had that terrible fall.”
“So,” Donald flashed him a friendly smile, “it’s sort of up to me to take on the burden Grandfather has been forced to lay down?”
“Something like that,” Bex agreed.
“But you know,” he went on, “Uncle Mose has earned money mining coal beneath his little patch of land and selling it to people down in the settlement. It’s a terrible sort of mine. The coal doesn’t lay flat down. It stands half on edge. Mose has managed somehow. But now—” he sprang to his feet. “Now Blinkey Billy Blevens, the meanest old skunk out of jail claims that his father bought the coal rights on all the land up on Mose’s creek, and he says he can stop Mose from mining it.”
“Why he can’t do that can he?” Johnny stared.
“Of course he can if he wants to. What we’ll have to do is to make him not want to. But how? That’s the question.” Bex stared at the floor.
“Appeal to his better nature,” Johnny suggested.
“He hasn’t any that anyone has ever discovered. People have tried to find some good side to him many times,” Bex answered gloomily. “They’ve never found it.”
“Some people can be frightened into doing what is right. It’s not very nice but sometimes it’s the only way. What’s he likely to be afraid of?” Donald asked.
“Lightning,” Bex replied promptly. “Lightning out of a clear sky. He claims he was once knocked over and nearly killed by what he calls a ‘bolt from the blue.’”
“H’m,” Johnny mused. “That’s a large contract.”
Then the new boy, Donald Day, said something very strange. What he said was, “I shouldn’t be surprised if we should be able to arrange it.”
“You mean—” Johnny stared.
But just then someone called to Bex from outside the mill and Donald said once more to Johnny:
“You want to go down?”
At once Johnny’s mind was all awhirl with thoughts of mysterious whispers and wheezes from those lower regions of the mill, and with the strange wealth that came from those depths. “Sure,” he said once again. “Sure I would.” So the other boy turned the key in the lock and they went down.
“I’ve helped my grandfather at this sort of thing quite a lot,” Donald said as he switched on a light—the place below had no windows. “He used to have a shop just outside of the city. That was where I worked with him most. But the air there was too impure, too much dust. Lot of smoke from chimneys and factories.
“So he came down here.” The boy seemed to be talking to himself quite as much as to Johnny. “Air down here in the mountains is about as pure as you can hope to find anywhere. No cars shooting along kicking up dust and coughing out gas. If any smoke passes over, it crosses at the mountain tops, not down here.
“Another thing,” he pushed a lever. There came the sound of rushing water and slowly revolving wheels. “Another thing,” he repeated, “this power down here is cheap. Don’t cost you anything. All you have to do is to keep up the dam and see that the mill is in good repair. You’ve really got to have cheap power. Costs only about half as much down here.”
“What costs half as much?” Johnny thought this question but did not ask it. Johnny could wait.
From one corner came a sucking sound. This increased until the room seemed full of the sucking and hissing of a steam engine, yet there was no steam. It was strange.
Donald dragged a canvas-covered something from a corner. This proved to be a large jug. It was not made of clay however, nor of glass.
“Porcelain,” Donald explained as he saw Johnny eyeing it. “Better than metal because it is a slow conductor of heat. Shrinkage in this business is terrible. A gallon may last a week—then it’s gone. And you can’t confine it. Oh my, no! That is, I don’t think you can, at least not in any small way. There’s a great manufacturer somewhere up north, I’ve heard it said, who does confine it in large quantities. But it’s dangerous. Some secret process. No one allowed near it. Blows the end out of a building now and then. You can imagine what this place would look like after an explosion,” he laughed. After that he slid the big jug in a corner to connect it with a pipe. From the pipe there came a sort of white smoke.
“White smoke,” Johnny recalled Ballard’s words of some time back. “But what’s it all about?”
During the moments that followed, his curiosity grew and grew and grew. Then of a sudden, the other boy said:
“Look!”
Dragging the big jug free, he tipped it over to pour some white, steaming liquid over the palm of his hand, then quickly shook it into the air.
“You can do that—” he slid the jug back into its place. “You can even take some in your mouth. But you better spurt it out quick. Just imagine, 216 degrees below.”
“Wha—what is it?” Johnny managed to gasp.
“What?” The other boy stared. “You don’t know? Why I—” He stared afresh. Then he pronounced two magic words: “Liquid Air!” If Johnny did not think there was any magic in them at that moment, he was soon enough to know.
“Air isn’t a liquid,” he protested. “It’s a gas.”
“Water’s not a liquid either,” Donald smiled. “Not always. When you get it hot enough it becomes steam, a gas. When you get it cold enough it is ice, a solid. Air is just the same, only difference is you have to get it terribly cold before it becomes a liquid. That’s just what I’m doing now.
“Watch those pumps. They’re putting air under great pressure. That makes it cold. When it’s just so cold, I run it over pipes full of more air. That makes air number two pretty cold. I put air number two under great pressure. Then it is cold enough to turn into a liquid, part of it. It drips off just as condensed steam does.”
“And so-o,” Johnny drawled, “you get liquid air. How much is it worth?”
“From fifty cents to one dollar a quart.”
“Whew!” Johnny whistled. “High priced air I’d say.”
He dropped into a chair. “So that’s how your grandfather got something valuable out of nothing but the sky! Gold from the sky!” Johnny chuckled.
“But say!” he was on his feet again. “Who wants the stuff? What’s it good for?”
“Well,” replied Donald after turning a valve and setting one more pump hissing, “men go about the country lecturing on liquid air, freezing up tennis balls so hard they crack on the floor like an egg shell, making tuning forks out of lead by freezing it up, all that. They buy liquid air.
“Big mills that manufacture locomotives use liquid air. They freeze up whole engine wheels with liquid air, then put on the tires, which are not frozen. When the wheel thaws out it expands and there you have your tire on tight as a drum. Funny business isn’t it?
“But mostly,” he slid another jug into position, “liquid air is split up before it’s used.”
“Split up?” Johnny stared.
“Sure,” Donald grinned. “Air contains six gases. The principal ones are oxygen and nitrogen. Oxygen is used a great deal, nitrogen very little, except in time of war.
“But the other gases are used a great deal too. Ever walk down the streets of a big city at night and notice all the gleaming, flashing signs?” he asked.
“Sure have!”
“Remember the inches of glass tubing all full of something that glowed red, blue, green, yellow?”
“Sure.”
“Well, those tubes each contain gas, krypton, argon, or neon. That’s why they are called neon signs. A great deal of that gas comes from liquid air or is separated by the aid of it. So you see, if we can supply manufacturers with clean, cheap liquid air we have—”
“A fortune!” Johnny drew in a long breath. “How wonderful!”
“Well,” Donald said slowly, “perhaps not a fortune but a chance to live and to help others a little, and that is something these days.
“Liquid air,” he went on after a moment, “makes a wonderful explosive. You see the oxygen in liquid air is free to join with carbon. All you have to do is to soak charcoal in liquid air, attach a fuse to it, scratch a match then run. The result is a glorious explosion.”
“Swell for Fourth of July!” Johnny enthused.
“Wouldn’t it be though—”
“But say!” Johnny exclaimed. “Why not use it for mining coal?”
“It has been done in Europe.”
“Look!” Johnny stood up. His eyes gleamed. “Bex says that old Uncle Mose’s mine contains the toughest vein of coal he ever saw. He picks away at it for hours and only gets a small load. Suppose you could spare a little of that liquid air?”
“Yes. Sure.”
“I’ve got some charcoal,” Johnny was growing enthusiastic. “Whole lot of it. I got it from a charcoal burner. Got some fuse too.” He was fairly dancing about. “We’ll make up some of that carbon-liquid air explosive and loosen up ten tons of coal for old Uncle Mose. What a lift that will give him!”
“All right,” Donald agreed. “I’ve always wanted to try that thing out. We’ll do it this very afternoon. What do you say? Around four o’clock?”
“Suits me fine.” Johnny grabbed his hat. “Got a thing or two that must be done. I’ll be back later for my next lecture on liquid air. It sure is great!” He was away.
Four-thirty that afternoon found the two boys trudging along the mountain trail which Johnny, Bexter, and Ballard had followed on that sad but eventful day when the swinging bridge went down.
In Johnny’s pocket was a bundle of tough paper bags. Slung across his shoulder was a sack of pulverized charcoal. In a sling, Donald carried a jug of liquid air. “Looks like a water jug,” Donald laughed. “One drink from that jug would be your last. Two hundred and sixteen below zero!”
“We saw a bear on this trail a while back,” Johnny broke in. “He had a young pig in his mouth. Somebody’s got to get that bear. Old Uncle Mose lost another pig last night.”
“What if we met him now?” Donald stared ahead.
“Probably miles away,” Johnny replied quietly.
A moment later they rounded a curve and, off to the right, a dark opening appeared.
“That’s the cave,” Johnny explained. “Grand place I guess. Bear went in there.”
“Suppose he’s in there now?” Donald’s tone was eager.
“Probably not.”
“Let’s just go in a little way. Always did want to see the inside of a cave. I’ve got a flashlight.”
“All right. Can’t stay long though. We’ve got to blow up a coal mine. Don’t forget that.”
A moment more and they were winding in and out over a narrow passageway. This passage soon widened into a large room. Still another moment and they were standing speechless while Donald’s flashlight played over massive pillars of faultless white.
“It—it’s like a great, beautiful church,” Donald murmured low. In that still place even his murmur echoed and re-echoed from pillar to pillar.
“What a place for silence,” Johnny whispered. Yet, even as he spoke that silence was smashed into a million echoes by a tremendous outburst of sound, a roar that might, Johnny thought, have come from the throat of some prehistoric monster. But Johnny was not deceived, this was no mythical monster. It was the bear.
What was to be done? The passage was narrow, the bear apparently all but upon them.
“Here!” With hands that trembled slightly, Johnny filled a paper sack with charcoal, then thrust a length of fuse into it.
Again there came that terrifying roar.
“Here. Give me that jug.” Tipping the jug on one side he saturated the charcoal in the paper bag with liquid air. After that, drawing on heavy mittens, he pressed the mixture into a solid mass.
“Now,” he breathed. “We’ll see.”
Donald was trembling from head to foot but Johnny was calm. He stared straight ahead toward the spot where the bear at any second might appear.
With the roar of the enraged bear still ringing in his ears, Johnny calmly lighted the fuse leading to the sack of liquid air and charcoal.
The fuse sputtered and flashed. It was a fairly long fuse. Would it last thirty seconds? Longer perhaps. Johnny felt the hair at the back of his neck prickle and rise. It was a tense moment. Before him was the bear, behind, a narrow passage and at his feet that strange explosive, liquid air and carbon.
“Will it explode?” he said aloud.
“It will,” Donald, his companion, replied. Then, as if awaking to a new and terrible danger, he fairly shouted in Johnny’s ear, “Come on! Run! Run for your life!” Without a further word, he turned and fled.
Johnny, who understood not at all, stood still watching that fuse grow shorter and shorter.
Then came the bear. With tongue lolling, white teeth all agleam, he came roaring out of the shadows. Johnny turned as if about to flee. Then, remembering that a bear was fast, that in that narrow passageway, he had no chance, he turned resolutely about.
The bear, apparently catching a glimpse of that sputtering spark of fire, reared himself on his hind legs. With a sudden inspiration, Johnny seized the bag of strange explosives and hurled it at the bear. To his vast surprise, he saw the bear catch it neatly between his steel-like jaws.
“A chilly mouthful,” was Johnny’s mental comment as he turned and fled.
Never in all his life had he travelled so fast as now. Unconsciously, as he ran, he waited for something. Just as he reached the last straight stretch that led to daylight, the thing happened. There came a dull explosion and Johnny, as if seized by soft but powerful hands, was lifted and pushed up and out of the cave to land, sprawling, on a pile of gravel.
“Ah! There you are!” Donald exclaimed. “Ten seconds more and you would have been too late.
“But what happened?” he asked in a puzzled tone. “You had enough explosive there to fairly blow the roof off the mountain.”
“The bear caught it.” Johnny’s head was in a whirl. “He—he must have chewed it up and wasted most of it. Do—do you suppose it got him?”
“Well,” Donald chuckled, “I’m not going back to see.”
“Neither am I,” said Johnny. “So let’s get going. We’ve got a coal mine to blow up before dark.”
The mining experiment was a complete success. Donald made up small parcels of liquid air and carbon while Johnny drilled holes in the coal. The charges were quickly stamped, the fuses were lighted, and then they were scampering up the rope ladder leading to the mine and were away. There followed six loud booms.
“That should do it,” Johnny grinned.
As Johnny and Donald were walking back to the mill, Donald stopped quite suddenly. Looking away toward the top of the ridge where a single power line cut across to a distant coal mine, he said, “We might do it.”
“Do what?” Johnny asked in surprise.
“Bring a bolt out of the blue. At least we might make it seem that way for the benefit of that man, Blinkey Bill Blevens you know, who’s been going to make it hard for old Uncle Mose.”
“You might?” said Johnny.
“Yes. Anyway, I’ll give it a good think,” was Donald’s reply.
Truth was, Johnny had only half heard him. He had suddenly remembered something. Jack Dawson, the aviator, who had come to live down there on the edge of the meadow, had said, “We’d have made the trip faster if we’d had my new motor going.”