“Mebby I do,” Ballard admitted. “But Bex knows ’em better. He’s a regular mountain goat, Bex is.”
“Saw a bear up here day before yesterday,” Bex put in eagerly. “Regular big one. Scared me half to death.”
“Sure nuf?” Ballard paused to stare. “Must have come over the mountains.”
Without quite forgetting the bear, they struggled on up the rocky slope. Johnny was thinking, “Suppose we get back into the cave and the bear comes after us?” He did not quite know the answer to this. To ask, however, might be showing what these folks called “the white feather,” so he did not ask.
Instead he began wondering again what that old man could produce down there beneath the mill, out of water and air. “He takes nothing down but brings something up.” Here indeed was a puzzler. “If he took some of the corn down there you might think he was making moonshine whisky,” he told himself. “And—and perhaps he does when Ballard is asleep. And yet—”
Someone had told him that this old man, Malcomb MacQueen, had a noble character, that he had helped bring well educated teachers down to the school at the fork of the river. “Wouldn’t do that and then go peddling poisonous moonshine,” Johnny thought. There had been men who did good deeds to cover up the evil that was hidden in their hearts. But somehow, he had a feeling that moonshine was not the answer. “What can it be?” he asked himself. Johnny’s reflections were broken in upon by a word from Ballard.
“Listen,” he whispered, as seizing Johnny’s arm he brought him to a sudden halt.
To Johnny’s keen ears came a faint, high keyed sound.
“It’s a pig, a young pig! He’s squealing. Something’s got him!” It was Bex who whispered this excitedly.
For one full minute the three boys stood there, breathing softly, silently listening. Then Ballard murmured low, “He’s coming this way. We—we’d better hide.” His eyes, searching the ridge above, spied a cluster of beech trees clinging to the rocks. “Up! Up there.”