“All right you other two!”
Little Bexter gulped. He turned first red then white. It was evident that he had never ridden in a plane.
“I’ll go,” Johnny said quietly. “Be glad to.” An airplane was nothing new to him.
“I—I’ll go,” little Bexter breathed. “Bal—Ballard,” he caught his breath sharply, “you—you tell my folks I might not come back nev—never.”
“Oh come now, sonny!” the aviator exclaimed. “It’s not half as bad as that. Tell his mother he’ll be home for breakfast. Hot cakes and molasses. Hey, son?” He gave Bexter an assuring slap on the back.
Two minutes later they were in the air, all of them but Ballard. Skimming along over the narrow meadow, they rose higher and higher until the whole beautiful panorama of the Blue Ridge—Big Black Mountain, Little Black, Pine Ridge, and all the rest, lay spread out beneath them.
Little Bexter drew in a long, deep, breath, then shouted in Johnny’s ear: “I never dreamed it could be like this. I—”
He broke off. A pair of keen, gray eyes, were studying his face. Malcomb MacQueen had apparently regained consciousness.
Johnny too saw those eyes and liked them. “Keen eyes,” he thought. “He knows a great deal. Hope I can get to be his friend.” Then again came that haunting question: “How could this man go down into a mysterious space beneath a grist mill and by setting some sort of machinery in motion, produce something very valuable out of nothing but air and water?
“Perhaps he will tell me,” he thought. “But at least, not now.” He saw those gray eyes close, whether in unconsciousness or sleep, he could not tell. Sleep under such unusual circumstances appeared impossible, but this, he realized was a remarkable man.