THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WELL

Chapter 11 – page 17

"Hey, look what I found," exclaims G. "Here’s some little metal cans underneath on a shelf, Hoo." "Guess we better take some of the walls back with us too." "I wonder how they made the candy?" asked J. "Do you see a book around anywhere?" asks G. "Maybe it will tell us." "Nope. They probably just knew how," says J.

"Then this pink stuff piled up around the bottom edges of the floor is peppermint candy, or sorta," says J. "Should we take it from there or from the walls?" he asked. "Well, I’d say the stuff from the walls is fresher. We don’t want any stale ‘ole peppermint, now do we?" says G. So Julio takes out his pocketknife and begins scraping off the sweaty beads into a little metal jar. His knife was getting all gummed up. Granma helps some with a sharp broken piece of stone spoon. The walls were thick with Peppermint. Maybe the room was really huge, and the years of sweating peppermint had just closed it down to this small area.

They worked for what seemed like hours, until they heard the horses getting restless. All along the inside mountain walls the horses had found more mossy lichen to eat, so that wasn’t the problem. Maybe they didn’t like the peppermint smell. G & J had been smelling it for so long and so strong, that now they didn’t even notice it at all. "Oh well," says G, "guess we better be getting on." "Yeah, just one more slice … ooomphfff. They now had another eight small metal cans to carry, full of sticky peppermint scrapings. I wonder if there is a chocolate mountain somewhere?" ponders the Hoo, raising and wiggling his eyebrows in ‘oh, boy’ fashion and licking his lips. "I bet there is somewhere, Hoo-man," says the G. "We’ve got enough peppermint candy to last a lifetime." "How are we gonna' get this sticky stuff off our hands and your pocket knife?" pondered the G. "Oh Muff! Muff! ... she could lick them off. Hahahahaha!

They loaded up the peppermint cans and decided it was time to ride now and look for a way out. "Man, this place is a gold mind" says Hoo. "That’s mine" corrects G. "More like a diamond, peppermint-water mine," she says.

Ka clomp .. Ka clomp .. Ka clompity clomp …. Man having bowing down horses sure was handy. There wasn’t always a rock nearby to get on from. Hoo threw da Muff a big slab of Peppermint which she now carried in her mouth like a bone. She had done a good job of cleaning up their hands, but the sticky pocketknife was left in a basket for safe keeping.

There was now beginning to definitely be a salt-air breeze inside the mountain. They could feel it, and mixed with the peppermint, they could even smell it. Ever smell salty peppermint?