“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.
CHAPTER IV
THE HAUNTED POOL
Next day Johnny disappeared among the rhododendrons and mountain ivy that grow along the right bank of Pounding Mill Creek. His step was light, his heart was gay. And why not? Had he not fulfilled his mission? Had he not discovered the much needed half-back for the Hillcrest coach? And did he not carry in his hands, beside a short split bamboo rod, a can of “soft craws”? And were not soft craws the bait of baits for this season of the year? He looked with pride and joy upon the half dozen crawfish, that, having recently shed their shells, held up soft and harmless claws for his inspection.
“I’ll get that old sport, the king of all black bass, today,” he assured himself. “I’ll have him in less than an hour.”
He might have fulfilled this promise had it not been for a lurking shadow that, passing silently on before him, came to rest at last on a rocky ledge, above the second deep pool in Pounding Mill Creek.
Johnny had little interest in that second pool for the present. In fact that particular pool had a peculiar sort of horror for Johnny. A man had been drowned in that pool. He recalled the story with a chill. A group of foreign laborers, so the story went, had driven up the creek from the Gap. They had meant to dynamite this pool and get a mess of fish. Since this was against the law and since they found Zeb Page, a deputy sheriff, sitting on a near-by boulder, they had decided to take a swim. The pool was deep, all of twenty feet. Four of the foreigners could swim. The water was fine. They enjoyed it immensely.
They had all crawled out on the bank to sun themselves when one of their number, who had never known the delights of swimming, said, “That’s nothing. I can do that.” He dove in, clothes and all. He disappeared beneath the placid surface of the pool. Ten seconds elapsed, twenty, forty, a full moment, and he did not reappear.
Alarmed, his comrades dove for him. Ten minutes later they brought him to the top, dead. In each of his two coat pockets, they found a heavy revolver.