“Something like that,” Bex agreed.
“But you know,” he went on, “Uncle Mose has earned money mining coal beneath his little patch of land and selling it to people down in the settlement. It’s a terrible sort of mine. The coal doesn’t lay flat down. It stands half on edge. Mose has managed somehow. But now—” he sprang to his feet. “Now Blinkey Billy Blevens, the meanest old skunk out of jail claims that his father bought the coal rights on all the land up on Mose’s creek, and he says he can stop Mose from mining it.”
“Why he can’t do that can he?” Johnny stared.
“Of course he can if he wants to. What we’ll have to do is to make him not want to. But how? That’s the question.” Bex stared at the floor.
“Appeal to his better nature,” Johnny suggested.
“He hasn’t any that anyone has ever discovered. People have tried to find some good side to him many times,” Bex answered gloomily. “They’ve never found it.”
“Some people can be frightened into doing what is right. It’s not very nice but sometimes it’s the only way. What’s he likely to be afraid of?” Donald asked.
“Lightning,” Bex replied promptly. “Lightning out of a clear sky. He claims he was once knocked over and nearly killed by what he calls a ‘bolt from the blue.’”
“H’m,” Johnny mused. “That’s a large contract.”
Then the new boy, Donald Day, said something very strange. What he said was, “I shouldn’t be surprised if we should be able to arrange it.”