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.