RED DYNAMITE

By
ROY J. SNELL

The Reilly & Lee Co.
Chicago

COPYRIGHT, 1936
BY
THE REILLY & LEE CO.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Gold from the Sky 11

II The Bridge Falls 27

III With the Aid of Nicodemus 40

IV The Haunted Pool 52

V The Crimson Flood 62

VI Old Kentucky 76

VII Panther Eye’s Return 85

VIII Ha! Ha! Big Joke! 94

IX The “Ghost” Walks Again 106

X Kentucky’s Downfall 119

XI A Ride in the Night 133

XII Strange Wealth 141

XIII A Strange Bear Hunt 152

XIV Wild Men, Baboons, and Something Strange 162

XV Victory 175

XVI One Minute to Play 181

XVII Gliding Toward Fresh Adventure 193

XVIII Ten Gallons of Air 199

XIX With the Speed of a Whirlwind 210

XX In the Grip of a Giant 219

XXI Dynamite Takes It on the Chin 234

RED DYNAMITE

CHAPTER I
GOLD FROM THE SKY

“You mean to say he takes those big, jug-like things down there empty and brings them up full?” Johnny Thompson, the boy from Illinois who had travelled far and seen many strange things, stared at Ballard Ball, the red-headed boy of the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky, with surprise. If the truth were told, he found himself doubting the other boy’s story.

Here he was standing in the grinding room of an old fashioned mill watching massive stone wheels grind the corn he had carted from his cousin’s store and at the same time discovering what promised to be a first class mystery right down here in the slow old Cumberland mountains where, he had supposed, nothing unusual ever happened.

“But what’s down there?” He was looking at the floor of the mill. At the same time he was hearing a curious sound, a sucking and hissing that might, he thought, have been the working of a small steam engine. But of course there was no steam engine, for there was no smoke stack and no smoke.

“Nothing down there but water. Some machines he brought months ago. They’re down there. The water wheel runs them,” the other boy drawled. “Of course he wouldn’t bring water up in the jugs and cart them away. Why should he? There’s water everywhere. This river runs for miles. Besides,” his voice dropped, “that stuff he brings up is queer. It’s cold and it smokes. Yes sir, a sort of white smoke comes off it all the time.”

“White smoke,” Johnny said slowly. “And it’s cold. That’s odd!”

“You’d have thought it was odd!” Ballard gave vent to a low chuckle. “I stood with my leg against one of those jugs—if that’s what they are—once and all of a sudden my leg tingled and went sort of dead. I jumped away quick, but not quick enough. Three or four days after that, the skin all peeled off the side of my leg.”

“Cooked your leg!” Johnny exclaimed.

“It must have!” Ballard amended.

“How—how long’s he been doing it?” Johnny asked.

“Almost a year!”

“A year!” Johnny whistled. “And you never asked him what it was he was bringing up nor how he got it?”

“No-o.” The other boy smiled a queer smile. “He pays me for my work here, keeping the grinding mill going, pays me well and besides—” He hesitated. “Well, you know, we mountain folks don’t like for other people to ask us too many questions so, naturally, we don’t ask too many ourselves.

“Not,” he added hastily, “that there are not people round about here who are burning up to know all about it. There are. But up to now nary a one of ’em’s learned anything worth telling.”

“You’re a good watchman,” Johnny laughed.

“I sleep here at the mill,” the mountain boy said simply. “And the lower part of the mill, down where he makes that—that stuff, whatever it is, is boarded up pretty tight, all two inch planks, spiked good and plenty. You see—” Ballard broke off. “Wait a little. There’s Aunt Sally Ann Setser out there. She’s got rheumatism, sort of stiff in her joints. I’ll take down her bag of corn to her.”

Left to himself, Johnny allowed his eyes to roam about the place. This was no ordinary grinding mill. It was much larger.