“Lightnin’! Lightnin’ out of a clear sky!” The look on Blinkey Bill’s face at that moment was a terrible thing to see.
“It does sort of seem like lightning,” Johnny said quietly.
“Seem like!” Ballard had not been let into the entire secret. “It IS lightning!”
“Shore! Shore hit’s lightnin’!” Blinkey Bill was trembling like a cottonwood leaf in a high wind.
Once more there came the zig-zag flash across the sky. This time the roar that followed was fairly deafening.
“Hit’s judgment!” Blinkey Bill mumbled. “Judgment of the Lord almighty!”
“What you all been a doin’?” Ballard asked, dropping into native speech.
“Nothin’. Not nary a thing! I tell you nary a thing!” Blinkey Bill fairly screamed these words.
“How about Uncle Mose and his coal mine?” Johnny suggested softly.
“That no-count old—” Blinkey Bill broke off. Mouth open, eyes staring, he once again took in that terrifying spectacle that, so far as he knew, was a special act of God, a bolt from the blue.
“Tell you the truth,” he was fairly whimpering now. “Fact is I ain’t for sartin’ sure my Pappy bought in them coal rights.”
“Then,” suggested Johnny, “you better let Uncle Mose mine his coal.”
“I reckon as how I orter do that,” Blinkey Bill agreed.
“Wait. I’ll write it out.” Johnny drew pencil and paper from his pocket and pretended to write. Truth was he and Donald had carefully prepared the release on Uncle Mose’s coal rights hours before.
“There,” he exclaimed at last. “You sign right there.”
“Now wait a leetle,” Blinkey Bill began to hedge. “I ain’t plumb sure fer sartin that—”
Just then the most dazzling flash of all zig-zagged its way across the blue-black sky. It was followed at once by a terrific roar.
“Here! Here!” Blinkey Bill’s voice trembled so he could scarcely speak. “Here! Gimme that air paper. Hit’s proper to sign hit, plumb proper.”
So the paper was signed. The boys departed and old Uncle Mose’s coal mine was saved for all time.
CHAPTER XIX WITH THE SPEED OF A WHIRLWIND
Later that night had anyone happened along the mountain trail above Colonel Crider’s pasture, as Johnny Thompson had done one night some time before, they might have seen as on that other night, two dark figures darting back and forth across old Nicodemus’ pen. One led, the other followed but not once did the one catch up with the other. At last, the one that always led, climbed up the side of the pen to go tumbling over it and disappear in the shadows that lie thick along the Stone Mountain trail in the moonlight. The Kentucky football star had been having a little practice. If one were to judge by his action it might be proper to say that Nicodemus had enjoyed this nocturnal adventure quite as much as the boy.