Chapter XI: A Ride in the Night

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.