"WHAT'S the matter?" Larry demanded, his lips curling angrily. "Is your conscience bothering you?"
"I guess you could call it that," Danny Orlis replied.
"I suppose this is some more of that Christian business," Larry snorted.
Danny looked about. This was the first chance he had had to make friends with any of the guys at school. Now it would probably be the last. For a brief instant he hesitated, almost yielding before the angry, taunting stares of his cousin and the rest of the gang.
"I don't feel that it's best for a Christian to go to movies," he said at last.
The gang laughed as he walked out of the lobby to the street.
Danny took a deep breath. It certainly was different being a Christian at the Angle where his folks and friends were all Christians too. There it seemed easy, almost as though it was the only way a person could live. Here in Iron Mountain it was just the opposite.
For a brief instant a wave of homesickness engulfed him. The people up there wouldn't laugh at him and make fun of him. They believed as he did, or most of them did anyway, and understood what to live like a Christian really meant.
Danny went home, finished his homework, and was just getting ready for bed when Larry came bursting into his room.
"You certainly made a fool of yourself tonight," his cousin stormed. "If you were going to do something like that, why didn't you stay at home in the first place?"
Danny looked up slowly. "That's where I made my mistake, Larry," he said seriously.
"It wouldn't have been so bad if they'd just made fun of you over the deal," Larry continued angrily, "but you made a laughingstock of me too!"
"I'm sorry about that," Danny replied.
"I'll bet you are!" Larry walked over to the dresser, turned and strode back to the door. His face was white, and his lips were trembling with anger. "And another thing—you don't need to bring your government agent buddy to speak to us! We don't want to hear him."
Danny watched in stunned silence while Larry whirled on his heel and stomped back upstairs. The young woodsman bit his lower lip uncertainly, then groped for the switch to turn off the light, and dropped miserably to his knees beside the bed.
The next morning at school a group of guys were waiting on the steps for him.
"There's our preacher boy!" one of them sang out, laughing.
"Won't you preach us a sermon?" another jeered. "Give us one on the evil of movies. Will you, Reverend Orlis?"
Even the girls who were standing nearby snickered openly.
"Sometime I'll take you up on that," Danny replied. He spoke pleasantly enough, but he could feel his temper rising and his face beginning to flush. And when he met Larry in the hall, his cousin turned the other way quickly and hurried past.
Back home after supper Danny went down into his room to write a letter home to his folks, trying hard to make it sound as happy and carefree as he knew they wanted him to be.
Meanwhile, in Larry's radio room on the other side of the partition the guys began to gather, coming down the stairs by ones and twos.
"Where's that preacher cousin of yours?" He heard one of the guys ask, tauntingly.
"Let's quit worrying about that stupid cousin of mine and get in here," Larry said, "so we can get the door shut."
"Did you get your broadcasting outfit fixed?" someone asked.
"Got the condenser after school," Larry replied. Then the door must have closed because he didn't hear them anymore.
Danny stared at the half-finished letter on the desk before him and began to write again. There was a timid little knock at the door.
He got up wearily to open it. A red-haired, freckle-faced lad about his own age was standing there. He remembered having seen him the night before, but he didn't know his name.
"I'm Glen Davis," the newcomer said. "I don't think you know me, but I just had to come over and talk to you tonight."
Danny shut the door and motioned his guest to a chair. "Sure thing," he said, curious to learn what his visitor had to say.
Young Davis sat down across from Danny, and for a moment or two the silence hung like a curtain between them.
"I was at the movie last night with the rest of the guys," Glen said at last. "I'm a Christian too, but I haven't had the nerve to turn around and leave like you did when I get in a spot like that. I...I've felt lots of times as though I wanted to, but I've always been afraid of what the other guys would say."
Danny looked at him questioningly.
"But last night when I saw you go out," Glen went on, "I began to see how wrong I've been. I...I did the same thing a couple of minutes later."
"You...you did?" Danny echoed.
The newcomer nodded.
For a moment Danny couldn't say anything. A few minutes before he had been all alone in Iron Mountain without even one friend. Now he had Glen Davis, who was also a Christian. A big smile broke across his face.
They talked for a time like old friends. Then Glen got up and reached for his coat. "I've got to be going now. Why don't we go down to the drugstore and get a soda?"
"That sounds good," Danny replied. "I'll get my coat."
They started out the door when Danny stopped suddenly.
"Listen!" he exclaimed. "Somebody's sending Morse code."
"Sure," Glen replied, "that's Larry and the gang. They come over and broadcast every once in a while."
One of the guys on the other side of the door was talking in a muffled voice. "This is station RATS. Rats. Are there any cats out that way?" The guys in the room laughed uproariously.
"I wonder if they could be—" Danny said slowly, the smile leaving his face.
"What are you talking about?" Glen demanded.
"Do those guys stay on one frequency, or do they broadcast across the band, Glen?" he asked.
His companion shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know enough about radio to know," he said. "I just joined the club a month ago. Why? What's wrong?"
"When we flew here from Minneapolis, just before school started, we were almost wrecked in the mountains because someone was jamming the radio signal we were to come in on," he explained. "It was someone who was broadcasting a lot of silly stuff like that. It could have been Larry!"
"What's so bad about that?" Glen asked.
"It's a penitentiary offense," Danny said slowly. "And I...I promised Clarence Gray that I'd send him any information I uncovered."