CHAPTER IIITHE BLOOD COVENANTDAVID JOSLIN turned from his own wastrel fire, his own decrepit gate, as but now he had from his father’s, and he did not look back at what he had left. Steadily his feet slushed forward, as he held his course through the dripping rain, faced now up the valley of the stream near which he lived. Here and there, on this side or that of the swollen river, showed infrequent lights at the windows of homes—each a hospitable home where he would be welcome at any time of the day or night. But he did not turn to any one of these, homeless as he was himself.For a considerable distance he kept to the valley until finally he turned into a narrow, deeply sheltered ravine which as he knew had no occupant. It was a wild, uncultivated spot, the mouth of the gulch known as Semmes’ Cove. At its foot trickled a stream of water leading far back into the hills through a district where as yet home-building man had not come. The tall trees still stood here unreaped—the giant white oaks and the tremendous trees known as “old-timepoplar,” among which not even the slightest garnering had as yet been done by timber-hunting man.There were secrets of a certain sort up this gulch, as David Joslin knew. Few men openly went into the mouth of this wild ravine, and there was no definite path up the creek such as marked most of the others thereabout. None the less Joslin in the darkness of the night turned into it as one wholly familiar with the vicinity.He was a woodsman, a wild man fit to conquer and prevail in any wild land. He went now about the business he purposed as steadily as though he were well accustomed to it. With not even the slight assistance of an occasional star, he found the trunk of a giant poplar tree which had fallen—perhaps he knew it from his many wanderings here. The bark upon the trunk was dry, and with the aid of a broken branch he loosed a long fold, sufficient for a roof when propped up on the trunk of the tree itself. He felt within the rotted trunk and drew out an armful of rotted but dry wood, which made him good floor enough for his bed, keeping him above the dampness. A part of it also offered punk for the tinder which he found within the breast of his own blouse. Here also were the primitive tools of the frontiersman in this land—flint and steel. And with flint and steel David Joslin now managed to build himself a fire even in the dripping rain.He cast himself down, not to sleep, but to ponder and to brood. The wall of blackness shut him in all about, but before him passed continually the panorama of his dreams.The night wore through, and at length the gray dawn came. The wind was rising now, high in the tops of the trees, and the air was colder since the rain had ceased. Any but a hardened man who had slept thus would have waked stiffened and shivering. Not so Joslin, who rebuilt his fire and looked about him for something with which to stay a hunger natural after twenty-four hours of abstinence. A few fallen nuts from the trees, a frozen persimmon or so, made all the breakfast he could find. In his cupped hand he drank from the little stream. In a few moments he was at the débouchement of the creek trail leading up to his father’s home. He halted here as he heard the sound of hoof-beats coming down the stream bed.A rider came into view making such speed as he could down the perilous footing. He drew up his horse, startled at seeing a man here, but an instant later smiled.“That ye, Dave?” said he. “Ye had me skeered at fust.”“What’s yore hurry? Whar ye goin’?”“Hurry enough—I was a-comin’ atter ye,”“What’s wrong?”“Plenty’s wrong—yore daddy’s daid—right up thar.”“What’s that?—What do ye mean?” demanded Joslin. “Daid—I left him last night—he was well.”“Huh! He’s daid now all right,” rejoined the rider, finding a piece of tobacco, from which he bit a chew. “I was a-goin’ down atter ye. I seed him a-hangin’ thar right by his neck on a tree this side the house. He must of hung hisself, that’s all.”“That’s a lie,” said Joslin. “My daddy kill hisself——”“Come on an’ see then. If he hain’t daid by now, my name hain’t Chan Bullock! He’s done finished what old Absalom started. I rid over to the house to see how he was a-gittin’ along, an’ I come spang on him when I come down offen the hill. He was still a-kickin’ then.”David Joslin approached him, his hands hooked as though to drag him from his horse. But an instant later he curbed his wrath, caught at the stirrup strap of the rider’s horse, swung the horse’s head up the stream, and urged it into speed, himself running alongside with great strides which asked no odds.He found full verification of all the messenger had told him. From the forked branch of a tree, extending out beyond the steep side of the bank, swung a grim bundle of loose clothing covering what but now had been a strong man. A quick sob came into thethroat of David Joslin as he sprang to the bank. Even as he did so he heard the sound of footsteps coming. The bent and broken figure of Granny Joslin came into view.“What’s wrong here? Who was that I heerd a-hollerin?—— My God A’mighty, who’s a-hangin’ thar?—— My son—my son!”She also was endeavoring to scramble up the bank.“Was it ye a-hollerin’? Why didn’t ye cut him down, ye fool?” she demanded of Bullock, who still sat on his horse.“Hit hain’t lawful, Granny,” said he. “Ye mustn’t cut him down.”“I’d cut him down if I was damned fer it,” cried the old dame. “Ye coward, how long since ye seen this? When ye hollered? Was he livin’ then? Ye mought have saved his life. Git outen my way, boy,” she said to her grandson, and an instant later she herself, old as she was, had leaned far out along the branch and with a stroke of the knife she always carried had cut loose the rope. There was a thudding, sliding fall. The body of old Preacher Joslin rolled to the foot of the bank among the sodden leaves.Bullock dismounted and stood looking down at the limp figure. But David pushed him aside.“Leave him be,” said he, and so he slipped his arms around the body of his father, and, lifting him, strode up along the little stream bed to the home now leftthe more desolate and abandoned. The dead man’s mother, dry-eyed, hobbled along behind. She showed where the body might be laid.“He hain’t daid yit, I most half believe,” said she, laying her hand on his heart. “Lay him down here, boys, on his own bed. Thar kain’t no one prove then he didn’t die in his own bed. The Gannts didn’t git him.”If there was indeed a fluttering gasp or two at the lips after they had placed the body of Preacher Joslin upon his own bed in his own house, it was but the last that marked the passing. When not even this might be suspected, Granny Joslin broke into a sort of exalted chant of her own invention.“I got a son!” she crooned in her shrill, high voice. “He’s strong an’ tall. He hain’t a-feared. He has the hand to kill. He’ll slay ‘em all. He’ll strow the blood. He’ll make the fight fer me an’ him an’ all of us!”She chanted the words over and over again, the kindling of her dark eyes a fearsome thing to see. Now and again she turned from the dead man to the motionless figure of his son, who stood at his bedside.“He’ll strow the blood,” she sang. “He’ll kill ‘em all!“May God curse old Absalom Gannt an’ all his kin,” she said at last, shaking a skinny hand toward heaven. “I pledge ye to it, Davy. Tell the last one of themall’s gone, we’ll not fergit. Oh, Davy, it was fer this that ye was borned!”They stood thus, a grim enough group, when the sound of hoofs in the creek bed intruded. Bullock stepped to the door and accosted the newcomer.“Howdy, Cal,” said he. “Light down an’ come in.”The rider dismounted, casting his bridle rein across the top of a picket.“Andy home?” asked he.“Well, he is an’ he hain’t,” said Bullock. “Come on in.”“Well, I thought I’d come in an’ see him——”“Come in. Ye can see all thar is of him,” and he led the way.“Good God A’mighty! God damnme!” exclaimed the visitor, as he caught sight of what lay on the bed in the room to which they led him. “Granny, how come this? He’s daid!”“Yes, he’s daid,” said Granny Joslin calmly. “He hung hisself down below by the spring right now. Ye kin see whar the rope cut in his neck. He was a-breathin’ when they put him thar. If that fool boy Chan had had any sense at all he’d of cut him down an’ done saved him.”“Well, now, Granny,” began the accused one. “Well, now——”“Wait!” David Joslin raised his own hand. “Granny, don’t say that. Hit’s the wish of the Lord.Blessed be the name of the Lord. I think my father is better off. Sence he wished it, let’s call it well an’ good. I reckon it all got too much fer him.”“Well, I was just a-comin’ down,” said the newcomer, Calvin Trasker, “to ask ye all out fer a little frolic to-night over to Semmes’ Cove. They’re a-goin’ to draw out this evening, an’ a lot of the neighbors’ll be thar, like enough.”“Old Absalom?” asked the tall young man, unemotionally.“Yes,” he nodded, “him an’ his boys.”“Not all of ‘em,” said the old dame suddenly. “My boy fixed a couple of them people yesterday afore they got him. Lookahere, whar old Absalom cut him”—her long, bony finger pointed out the spot. “Spite of ‘em he wouldn’t of died. He killedhisself, an’ he died in his own bed. Thar kain’t no Gannt on airth say they killed my boy.”David Joslin quietly walked over to the foot of the bedstead and unbuckled the belt of the heavy, worn revolver which he found hanging there—the revolver without which his father rarely had traveled in his circuit riding. This he fastened about his own waist, accepting the burden of his father’s feud. He made no comment.“Well, now, how come that diffikilty, Granny? Whar were it?” asked Trasker. “War he hurt bad?”“He got worse along towards mornin’,” said thedead man’s mother. “I seen myself that he war cut deep in his innards, an’ couldn’t live long noways. He lay all night a-beggin’ me to see that case he died the rest of us would kerry on the quarl fer him. Now ye say Absalom an’ some of his folks is a-goin’ to be over thar to-night?”The visitor nodded.“That’s a mighty good thing,” said Granny Joslin, nodding her own approval. “Go on over, Davy. See what ye kin do. Will ye promise me ye’ll go?”“I promise ye, yes, Granny,” replied David Joslin slowly. “But I’ll tell ye now, it hain’t to my likin’. I’m only goin’ fer one reason.”Seeing that they all three stood looking at him in silence, he went on.“I don’t believe in these fights and feuds no more. I don’t believe in it even now that it’s come closeter than ever to me. I don’t believe I’d orter go over thar an’ kill nobody else jest because they killed my daddy. Hit hain’t right.”They looked at him in cold silence. He raised his hand. “But because I know ye’d all call me a coward if I didn’t go, I’m a-goin’ over thar with you-all. I’m a-goin’ over thar before my own daddy is real daid and buried. I’ll face Absalom Gannt an’ ary of his kin. I reckon you-all will ride with me. Ye needn’t have no doubt that I’ll flicker—I won’t—none of us nuvver did. But I’m a-tellin’ ye now I don’t believein it, an’ I don’t want to go. I pray on my knees I’ll not have to kill no man, no matter what happens.”He felt the strong clutch of a skinny hand at his arm. His grandmother whirled him about and looked into his eyes with her own blazing orbs.“My God, I more’n half believe ye’re a-skeered, Dave Joslin. God!—have I fetched into the world ary one of my name that’s afeerd to kill a rattlesnake like ary one of them Gannts? I wish to God I was a man my own self—I’d show ye. I thought ye was a man, Dave. Hain’t ye—tell me—hain’t ye, David Joslin?”“No,” said Joslin, “I don’t think ... a coward! But I believe the law orter have charge of all these things. If I kill ary man over thar to-night, I’m a-goin’ to give myself up to the law.”“Listen at the fool talk!” broke out his fierce grandma. “Listen at him. Law?—law?—what’s the law got to do with a thing like this? I reckon we-all know well enough what the law is.”“I hope to live to see the real law come into these mountings yit,” said David Joslin solemnly. “Only question is, what’s the law? I hope I’ll live to see a different way of figgerin’ in these hills.”“Then ye’ll wait till hell freezes,” said Granny Joslin, savagely. “Hit’ll take more’n ye to reform the people in these mountings from real men inter yaller cowards.”“Come in an’ eat, men,” she added, and led the way to the side of the table, where presently she brought a few half-empty dishes—the same table which soon would hold the body of the dead man. “What we got ye’re welcome to. I reckon somehow I kin run this farm alone an’ make a livin’ here, an’ while I run it I’ll feed the friends of my fam’ly an’ I’ll shoot the enemies of my fam’ly that comes, free as if I’d been a man. God knows I’d orter been, with the trouble I’ve had to carry. Set up an’ eat.”“Chan,” said she, after a time, her mouth full of dry cornpone, “ride up the creek an’ git some of our kin to jine ye over thar in Semmes’ Cove this evenin’. They mought be too many fer ye.”Chan Bullock nodded.“I’ll go on with Dave up through the cut-off to the head of the Buffalo, an’ jine Chan an’ the others up in thar,” said Calvin Trasker. “Ye needn’t be a-skeered, Granny. Thar’s like enough to be some hell a-poppin’ in thar afore we hold the funer’l here. Them Gannts may have a funer’l too.”“Come around tomorrow, them of ye that’s left alive,” said the old woman calmly. “We’ll bury him out in the orchud, whar most of his folks is. Come on now—lend me a hand an’ we’ll lift him up on the table. I don’t reckon he’ll bleed no more now.”CHAPTER IVTHE FROLIC AT SEMMES’ COVEIT WAS late afternoon when David Joslin and Calvin Trasker, his kinsman, started into the hills. They rode in silence as they followed the winding little path which led up into the wilderness of the upper ridges. Each was armed with a heavy revolver which swung under his coat, and each carried in his side pockets abundance of additional ammunition for his weapon. Neither spoke. Neither showed any agitation.They pulled up at the imprint of horses’ hoofs on the trail coming up from one of the little side ravines.Trasker spoke. “Absalom, he don’t live so far off from here.”“I wish’t he’d stay at home,” said David Joslin moodily.“Look-a-here, Dave,” began the other testily. “What’s the matter with ye? Is thar arything in this here talk I heerd about ye feelin’ maybe ye was called to be a preacher, same as yore daddy?”Joslin replied calmly. “I don’t know. I’m askin’fer a leadin’. I kain’t see that this here business is quite right no more.”“Ye don’t belong in here then,” said Trasker, and half drew rein.“I do belong in here, an’ nowhars else!” said David Joslin. “If I ever was called—if I ever come to preach in these here hills, you-all’ll feel I wasn’t no coward. I’m a-goin’ to prove it to you-all that I hain’t.”“Go ahead,” said Trasker succinctly, and again Joslin led the way up the mountain slope.They paused presently at the rendezvous where their kinsmen presently would join them, granted Bullock had been successful in passing the feudal torch. Trasker talked yet further.“He was a great old sport, yore daddy,” said he. “I reckon he was shot in half a dozen places in his time. Seemed like they couldn’t kill him, nohow. An’ him an’ old Absalom had it fist an’ skull together more’n once in their day.”Joslin nodded. “That was afore he took up preachin’. Heathen—why, we all been worse’n ary heathen in the world. An’ here’s ye an’ me worse’n ary heathen right now, ridin’ out to squar what only the hand of God kin squar.”“Well,” rejoined Trasker, meditatively chewing his quid, “maybe with four or five of us together we kin help the hand of God jest a leetle bit. That’s the leadin’ I git, anyways, for this evenin’.”“Well, here’s our fellers comin’,” he went on, turning in his saddle. “Even a few is better’n none.”They were joined now by three other riders, Chan Bullock and two younger men, one scarce more than a boy, the beard not yet sprouted on his face. They did not make even a salutation as they drew up alongside the two horsemen who had tarried at the rendezvous.They turned up the hillside, once more resuming the winding path along the crooked divide which separated the two forks of the main stream which bored deep into the Cumberlands thereabouts. They all knew well enough the entry point for the head of Semmes’ Cove, and here in due time they halted to hold counsel.“Sever’l been here,” said David Joslin, pointing out the horse tracks which led down into the thickets of the unbroken gulch before them. Without any comment they all dismounted and advanced, leading their horses, Joslin ahead. They walked in this way for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then Joslin, without a word, turned and tied his own horse to a tree, the others following his example.There had been an illicit stillhouse in this wild ravine how long none might tell—in fact, many stillhouses had been there sporadically and spasmodically conducted as the fancy of this man or that might determine, for the region was wild and remote, and never visited by any of the outside world. These visitors allknew well enough where the present stillhouse was hidden—in a thicket of laurel just at the edge of a rock escarpment which jutted out upon the farther side. They followed on now steadily, alertly, until at length Joslin raised a hand.Silently they pushed their way into the edge of the thicket. Sounds of laughter, of song, greeted them. A faint, sickish odor rose above the tops of the low laurel. The visitors, five in all in number—Joslin, Calvin Trasker, Chan Bullock, and two other “cousins,” Nick Cummings and Cole Sennem—all pulled up at a point whence they could view the scene, whose main features they knew well enough without inspection.There were a dozen men here and there, taking turns at the little copper cups which stood upon the hewn face of a log. A couple of barrels, a copper pipe between, made pretty much all the visible external aspect of the still. The great bulb was hidden in one barrel, the curled copper tube cooled in another. Here and there lay empty sacks once carrying corn. A cup-peg or so driven into a tree trunk showed the openness and confidence with which matters hereabout had been conducted, and the spot showed every sign of frequent use.One of the men, taking up one of the copper vessels from the low log table, stooped at the pipe at the foot of one of the barrels, watching the trickle ofwhite liquid which came forth. He drank it clear and strong as alcohol, undiluted. Like fire it went through all his veins.“Whoopee!” he exclaimed, throwing up a hand. “I’m the ole blue hen’s chicken! I kin outwrastle er outjump er outshoot ary man here er anywhar’s else.”“Ye wouldn’t say that if old Absalom war here,” laughed a nearby occupant of a rude bench.“No, nor if Old Man Joslin war, neither.”“I would too! I hain’t a-skeered o’ nobody,” replied the warlike youth. “I’ll show ary of ‘em.”“What’ll ye show us?” demanded David Joslin. Silent as an Indian he had left the fringe of cover, and stood now in the open, his eyes steady, his arms folded, looking at the men before him. And now at his side and back of him ranged his little body of clansmen.Sudden silence fell upon all those thus surprised. They looked at him in amazement.“Whar’s old Absalom?” he demanded of a man whom he knew, who stood, the half-finished cup of liquor still in his hand.“Air ye lookin’ to start ary diffikilty?” replied his neighbor, also with a question.“That’s fer us to say,” said David Joslin. “My daddy’s daid. He got hurt yesterday by old Absalom an’ his people. I come over here to-day to see old Absalom an’ ary kin he happens to have along with him. Whar is he?”Silence for a long time held the group. It behooved all to be cautious.“He’s been in here somewhar,” went on Joslin, “an’ he hain’t fur now. Tell me, is he down at the dance house?”“Well, ye mought go an’ see,” rejoined the first speaker, grinning. “Ye know, Dave Joslin, I hain’t got no quarl with ye, nor has ary o’ my people. Ye set right here now, boys,” he continued, sweeping out a long arm toward the merrymakers, who still lingered about the liquor barrel.“Thar’s more of them than thar is of ye,” he whispered hurriedly to Joslin as he stepped up. “The house is full, an’ they’re dancin’. Three or four gals from down on the Buffalo is in thar now. They’re havin’ a right big frolic.”Without a word Joslin turned and hurried down the path. He knew the location of the building to which reference had been made—a long log structure rudely floored with puncheons, sometimes employed locally as a sort of adjunct of the still. The sounds of dancing, the music of one or two reedy violins, the voice of a caller now and then, greeted the party of avengers who now approached this curious building hidden in the heart of the mountain wilderness. Whether or not all of the occupants of the dance house were of Absalom Gannt’s party, neither David Joslin nor any one else might tell. There might be a generalmingling here of friend and foe until some overt act should light again the ancient fire, forever smouldering.Joslin beckoned to his companions. “Git behind them rocks right over thar, boys,” he whispered. “I’m a-goin’ up to the door.”The young men with him went about their business with perfect calmness, although the eye of each was alert and glittering. They took their stations under the leadership of the man who they now regarded as the chieftain of their clan, and watched him go to what seemed certain death.Joslin advanced steadily to the door, his thumbs in the waist band of his trousers. With his left hand he knocked loudly on the jamb of the door. He spoke to some one, apparently an acquaintance, who noticed him.“Is Absalom Gannt here?” he demanded. “If he is, tell him to come out. I’ll wait till he comes out fair.”“Good God A’mighty, Davy,” said the other who stood within. “Air ye atter trouble? This is jest a little frolic.”“Tell him to come out,” repeated Joslin. “I want Absalom Gannt!” The courage of this deed went into the sagas of the Cumberlands—the act of a man who scorned certain death.It must have been some friend of Absalom Gannt, some relative perhaps, who heard this summons andsaw the gray face of David Joslin staring into the half-darkened interior. With a shout he himself sprang to the door, gun in hand. Joslin leaped aside. As he did so he heard the roar of a heavy revolver back of him. Chan Bullock, the long blue barrel of his six-shooter resting on his arm at the top of the protecting boulder, fired at the man who appeared in the door. The latter fell forward and slouched over on his face, his head on his arms.A half instant of silence, then came the roar of a pistol at the window near where Joslin stood. The men at the boulders, in turn, began firing generously at every crack and cranny of the house, regardless of who or what might be within. The marksman at the window was deliberate. With care he rested the barrel of his weapon against the window sash. At its third report, Joslin heard back of him a heavy groan, but he did not see Calvin Trasker roll over on his back, his doubled arm across his face.The sound of gunfire now was general on every side. None might say who was harmed, who as yet was safe. As for Joslin, he had work to do. Absalom Gannt was still inside the house.He stepped forward again deliberately to the door, pushed aside the man who stood there peering out, and broke his way into the crowd. Two or three women, cowering, shrank into the farther corner of the room. Men stood here and there, each with weaponin hand. The acrid taste of gunpowder, which hung in the blue pall of smoke, was in the nostrils of all.“Absalom Gannt!” rose the high, clear voice of David Joslin, “I’ve come fer ye. Come out here an’ meet me fair if ye hain’t a coward. Absalom Gannt! Absalom Gannt——”That was the last word the friends of David Joslin heard him speak, and, as they told the story, it was apparent that the Joslin blood “never flickered onct.”What happened to David Joslin they did not know—he himself did not. He was perhaps conscious of a heavy blow at the base of his head, then came unconsciousness, oblivion. He fell upon the floor of the rude revel house.Firing ceased now. The occupants of the cabin rushed out. The defenders of the line of boulders, three only in number now, broke and sprang up the mountain side, pursued by a rain of bullets which touched none of them.The frolic at Semmes’ Cove had found its ending—not an unusual ending for such scenes.CHAPTER VTHE AWAKENING OF DAVID JOSLININ THE old apple orchard of Preacher Joslin—whose gnarled trees had been planted by some unknown hand unknown years ago—a long and narrow rift showed in the rocky soil. The owner of these meager acres was now come to his rest, here by the side of many others of his kin whose graves, unmarked, lay here or there, no longer identified under the broken branches of the trees.A neighbor blacksmith had wrought sufficient nails to hold together a rough box. In this he and Granny Joslin had placed the dead man. Word passed up and down the little creek that the burying of Andrew Joslin would be at noon that day; so one by one horses came splashing down the creek—usually carrying a man with a woman back of him, the woman sometimes carrying one child, sometimes two.These brought fresh word. Calvin Trasker, killed in the frolic at Semmes’ Cove, had already been buried. He was accounted well avenged. It was almost sure he had killed his man before he had received his own death wound. As for Chan Bullock and his twoyoung cousins, they were no less than heroes. Four of the Gannt family had been left accounted for, whether by aim of the fallen or that of the three escaping feudists none might say. The Joslins had none the worst of it. Had not one of them—which, no one could tell—fired the shot which broke old Absalom’s arm? This funeral party, practically a rallying of the Joslin clan, was no time more of special mourning than of exultation. The talk was not so much of the dead man, not so much of the dead man’s son David, who was still missing, as it was of the victory attained over the rival clan.And so they buried Preacher Joslin, and thereafter, all having been duly concluded, and a simple, unmarked stone having been set up at the head of his grave, old Granny Joslin, robbed of her son and her son’s son, asked them once more to eat of what she had, and so presently bade them good-by.“I’ll git along somehow, folks,” said she. “Don’t you-all worry none about me. If Davy’s daid, why, he’s daid, an’ that’s all about it. Atter a few days, you-all go over in thar an’ watch for buzzards an’ crows—if they hain’t buried him deep, we’ll find out whar he’s at.”But after the funeral party had departed, plashing their way back up the creek-bed road, Granny Joslin sat down to make her own accounting. David—her boy Davy—the one who understood her—whom sheunderstood so well—where was he? Had they indeed killed him? Was he lying out there in the mountains somewhere, his last resting place unknown to any save his enemies?“Curse the last of them—them cowardly Gannts!” Again she raised her skinny hand in malediction. “May mildew fall on them an’ theirs. May their blood fail to breed, an’ may they know sorrer an’ trouble all their lives! I wish to God I was a man. Oh, God, bring me back my man—my boy Davy!”But the mountain side against which she looked, against which she spoke, made no answer to her. She sat alone. A film came over her fierce eye like that which crosses the eye of a dying hawk. Whether or not a tear eventually might have fallen may not be said, but before that time old Granny Joslin rose, grunting, and hobbled back into her own desolate home. She lighted the fire. She set all things in order. The castle of the Joslins had not yet been taken. But David came not back that day, nor upon the third, nor yet upon the fourth day. By that time she had given him up for dead.Yet it was upon the morning of that fourth day that David Joslin himself sat concealed, high upon the mountain side, and looked down upon the broken home of Granny Joslin. He saw the smoke curling up from the chimney, and knew it as the banner of defiance.He knew that the old dame would live out her life to its end according to her creed.His keen eye saw the new mound in the apple orchard—the broken clay now dried in the sun of several days. He could guess the rest. For himself, he was alive. He had been dead, but now he was born again.At the end of the fight in Semmes’ Cove, there was a general scattering and confusion. The Gannt party finally had taken care of their own dead and wounded, and, passing on up the ravine toward the usual paths of escape, had tarried at the stillhouse only long enough to refresh themselves as was their need. For those of the attacking party left behind they had small care. A man or two was down somewhere behind the rocks. As for the man who had broken into the house—David Joslin—he was dead. Had they not caught him neck and crop, and thrown him headlong into the gully? Yes, one thing was sure, David Joslin was dead; and he had been the leader of the attack. Therefore, the Gannts accounted themselves as having won a coup also for their side of the feud.When Joslin awoke to the consciousness of bitter pain, he reached out a hand in the darkness which enshrouded him. He felt damp earth. So, then, he reasoned, he was dead and buried, and this was his grave! For some time he made no attempt to breathe or to move. Yes, this was his grave. He lay he knew nothow long in the full realization that life was done for him.Then, as the cool of the night refreshed him, he felt about him, felt the weeping of dew-damp leaves above him, and slowly reasoned that he was not dead at all, and not in his grave, but that he had been flung somewhere here into the bottom of the ravine.Slowly he struggled to his knees. He staggered up the side of the slope as best he might, more by chance than otherwise, taking that side which lay nearest the dance house. He saw in the gloom the low boulders, behind which his fighting men had lain. He stumbled across the dead body of Calvin Trasker, left where he had fallen. There remained to him sensibility enough to put the dead man’s hat across his face; but he could do no more than that. He knew that if he were found here he would be killed indeed. So, knowing that there was no longer need for him or chance for him here, he staggered on down the ravine of Semmes’ Cove, until at length he could go no farther, and so fell once more unconscious.When again he awoke it was broad sunshine. How long he had lain he could not tell. But now thirst assailed him, thirst which he might quench in the trickle of water which lay below. The provender of the woods, a few nuts, a pawpaw or so, seemed grateful to him now. He staggered on, knowing that it would be no more than two or three miles down the ravineuntil he came to the little camp he had made in the rain, after he had left his own home on that unhappy day. And so at length he found that bivouac and dropped into the bed of rotten wood once more, and lay prostrate all that day and the next.It was really upon the morning of the fourth day after the encounter—although Joslin himself could not have said as to that—that, strong enough now to walk, he staggered out of the thicket-covered lower entrance of Semmes’ Cove into the little creek bed, which made the path to his father’s home. He must look once more at the house where he himself was born.Was born, did he say? No, he had been born a second time! In these long hours of misery and pain, David Joslin had taken accounting as best he might with life and the philosophies thereof. In his fashion of thought, he had gained the conviction that his “call” had come to him. He was called for a different life. There was no doubt about it. New duties lay before him—all of a new life—because he had been born again! To him his salvation was not less than a miracle, and he accepted it as such solemnly and reverently, feeling himself now consecrated fully for some cause. What the form of that consecration might be he himself did not clearly know as yet.But there came to him, with this feeling, the solemn conviction that he must leave this country. This opportunity seemed to him providential. No, he wouldnot even go to say farewell to his wife, nor to greet his grandma, Granny Joslin, to give counsel to her. He, being dead, must depart secretly forever from these hills until he might return to them to do the thing given him to do.Such, unnatural and hard as that might seem to others, was the ancient, grim, uncompromising creed of David Joslin of the Cumberlands. Let the dead bury its dead. Let the living live their own lives.Weakly, slowly, he climbed along the mountain side above the creek bed, to avoid any passerby, and so at length reached the point upon the opposing hill whence he might look down upon the little home once owned by the man who lay there now, under the drying yellow ridge in the apple orchard planted by his sires.How long David Joslin sat here, his chin in his hands, he himself might not have told. He sat looking down, pondering, resolving.... Yes, he was born again! What must he do?At length he rose, staggeringly rose, seeking about for some broken branch to aid him further in his journey. For now he purposed a long, long journey out from these hills. He was going away from his own people!His hand fell against something hard in the side pocket of his ragged coat. It was the old book he had borrowed of his father—the well-thumbed volume of Calvin’s Institutes. His belt and revolver were gone—heknew not where—but here was this ancient, iron book. He recalled now, with the tenacious memory of the mountaineer, a passage which he had read therein:Truly, I have no refuge but in Him. Let no man flatter himself, for of himself he is only a devil. For what have you of your own but sin? Take for yourself sin, which is your own. Your righteousness belongs to God. Nature is wounded, distressed and ruined. It needs a true confession, not a false defense.“A true confession—not a false defense!” All the honesty, all the ignorance, all the hope of these mountains were in the mind of David Joslin, as he repeated these vague words of the old mystic to himself. He now felt himself a prophet.And now, a prophet, he was going out into the world.
CHAPTER IIITHE BLOOD COVENANTDAVID JOSLIN turned from his own wastrel fire, his own decrepit gate, as but now he had from his father’s, and he did not look back at what he had left. Steadily his feet slushed forward, as he held his course through the dripping rain, faced now up the valley of the stream near which he lived. Here and there, on this side or that of the swollen river, showed infrequent lights at the windows of homes—each a hospitable home where he would be welcome at any time of the day or night. But he did not turn to any one of these, homeless as he was himself.For a considerable distance he kept to the valley until finally he turned into a narrow, deeply sheltered ravine which as he knew had no occupant. It was a wild, uncultivated spot, the mouth of the gulch known as Semmes’ Cove. At its foot trickled a stream of water leading far back into the hills through a district where as yet home-building man had not come. The tall trees still stood here unreaped—the giant white oaks and the tremendous trees known as “old-timepoplar,” among which not even the slightest garnering had as yet been done by timber-hunting man.There were secrets of a certain sort up this gulch, as David Joslin knew. Few men openly went into the mouth of this wild ravine, and there was no definite path up the creek such as marked most of the others thereabout. None the less Joslin in the darkness of the night turned into it as one wholly familiar with the vicinity.He was a woodsman, a wild man fit to conquer and prevail in any wild land. He went now about the business he purposed as steadily as though he were well accustomed to it. With not even the slight assistance of an occasional star, he found the trunk of a giant poplar tree which had fallen—perhaps he knew it from his many wanderings here. The bark upon the trunk was dry, and with the aid of a broken branch he loosed a long fold, sufficient for a roof when propped up on the trunk of the tree itself. He felt within the rotted trunk and drew out an armful of rotted but dry wood, which made him good floor enough for his bed, keeping him above the dampness. A part of it also offered punk for the tinder which he found within the breast of his own blouse. Here also were the primitive tools of the frontiersman in this land—flint and steel. And with flint and steel David Joslin now managed to build himself a fire even in the dripping rain.He cast himself down, not to sleep, but to ponder and to brood. The wall of blackness shut him in all about, but before him passed continually the panorama of his dreams.The night wore through, and at length the gray dawn came. The wind was rising now, high in the tops of the trees, and the air was colder since the rain had ceased. Any but a hardened man who had slept thus would have waked stiffened and shivering. Not so Joslin, who rebuilt his fire and looked about him for something with which to stay a hunger natural after twenty-four hours of abstinence. A few fallen nuts from the trees, a frozen persimmon or so, made all the breakfast he could find. In his cupped hand he drank from the little stream. In a few moments he was at the débouchement of the creek trail leading up to his father’s home. He halted here as he heard the sound of hoof-beats coming down the stream bed.A rider came into view making such speed as he could down the perilous footing. He drew up his horse, startled at seeing a man here, but an instant later smiled.“That ye, Dave?” said he. “Ye had me skeered at fust.”“What’s yore hurry? Whar ye goin’?”“Hurry enough—I was a-comin’ atter ye,”“What’s wrong?”“Plenty’s wrong—yore daddy’s daid—right up thar.”“What’s that?—What do ye mean?” demanded Joslin. “Daid—I left him last night—he was well.”“Huh! He’s daid now all right,” rejoined the rider, finding a piece of tobacco, from which he bit a chew. “I was a-goin’ down atter ye. I seed him a-hangin’ thar right by his neck on a tree this side the house. He must of hung hisself, that’s all.”“That’s a lie,” said Joslin. “My daddy kill hisself——”“Come on an’ see then. If he hain’t daid by now, my name hain’t Chan Bullock! He’s done finished what old Absalom started. I rid over to the house to see how he was a-gittin’ along, an’ I come spang on him when I come down offen the hill. He was still a-kickin’ then.”David Joslin approached him, his hands hooked as though to drag him from his horse. But an instant later he curbed his wrath, caught at the stirrup strap of the rider’s horse, swung the horse’s head up the stream, and urged it into speed, himself running alongside with great strides which asked no odds.He found full verification of all the messenger had told him. From the forked branch of a tree, extending out beyond the steep side of the bank, swung a grim bundle of loose clothing covering what but now had been a strong man. A quick sob came into thethroat of David Joslin as he sprang to the bank. Even as he did so he heard the sound of footsteps coming. The bent and broken figure of Granny Joslin came into view.“What’s wrong here? Who was that I heerd a-hollerin?—— My God A’mighty, who’s a-hangin’ thar?—— My son—my son!”She also was endeavoring to scramble up the bank.“Was it ye a-hollerin’? Why didn’t ye cut him down, ye fool?” she demanded of Bullock, who still sat on his horse.“Hit hain’t lawful, Granny,” said he. “Ye mustn’t cut him down.”“I’d cut him down if I was damned fer it,” cried the old dame. “Ye coward, how long since ye seen this? When ye hollered? Was he livin’ then? Ye mought have saved his life. Git outen my way, boy,” she said to her grandson, and an instant later she herself, old as she was, had leaned far out along the branch and with a stroke of the knife she always carried had cut loose the rope. There was a thudding, sliding fall. The body of old Preacher Joslin rolled to the foot of the bank among the sodden leaves.Bullock dismounted and stood looking down at the limp figure. But David pushed him aside.“Leave him be,” said he, and so he slipped his arms around the body of his father, and, lifting him, strode up along the little stream bed to the home now leftthe more desolate and abandoned. The dead man’s mother, dry-eyed, hobbled along behind. She showed where the body might be laid.“He hain’t daid yit, I most half believe,” said she, laying her hand on his heart. “Lay him down here, boys, on his own bed. Thar kain’t no one prove then he didn’t die in his own bed. The Gannts didn’t git him.”If there was indeed a fluttering gasp or two at the lips after they had placed the body of Preacher Joslin upon his own bed in his own house, it was but the last that marked the passing. When not even this might be suspected, Granny Joslin broke into a sort of exalted chant of her own invention.“I got a son!” she crooned in her shrill, high voice. “He’s strong an’ tall. He hain’t a-feared. He has the hand to kill. He’ll slay ‘em all. He’ll strow the blood. He’ll make the fight fer me an’ him an’ all of us!”She chanted the words over and over again, the kindling of her dark eyes a fearsome thing to see. Now and again she turned from the dead man to the motionless figure of his son, who stood at his bedside.“He’ll strow the blood,” she sang. “He’ll kill ‘em all!“May God curse old Absalom Gannt an’ all his kin,” she said at last, shaking a skinny hand toward heaven. “I pledge ye to it, Davy. Tell the last one of themall’s gone, we’ll not fergit. Oh, Davy, it was fer this that ye was borned!”They stood thus, a grim enough group, when the sound of hoofs in the creek bed intruded. Bullock stepped to the door and accosted the newcomer.“Howdy, Cal,” said he. “Light down an’ come in.”The rider dismounted, casting his bridle rein across the top of a picket.“Andy home?” asked he.“Well, he is an’ he hain’t,” said Bullock. “Come on in.”“Well, I thought I’d come in an’ see him——”“Come in. Ye can see all thar is of him,” and he led the way.“Good God A’mighty! God damnme!” exclaimed the visitor, as he caught sight of what lay on the bed in the room to which they led him. “Granny, how come this? He’s daid!”“Yes, he’s daid,” said Granny Joslin calmly. “He hung hisself down below by the spring right now. Ye kin see whar the rope cut in his neck. He was a-breathin’ when they put him thar. If that fool boy Chan had had any sense at all he’d of cut him down an’ done saved him.”“Well, now, Granny,” began the accused one. “Well, now——”“Wait!” David Joslin raised his own hand. “Granny, don’t say that. Hit’s the wish of the Lord.Blessed be the name of the Lord. I think my father is better off. Sence he wished it, let’s call it well an’ good. I reckon it all got too much fer him.”“Well, I was just a-comin’ down,” said the newcomer, Calvin Trasker, “to ask ye all out fer a little frolic to-night over to Semmes’ Cove. They’re a-goin’ to draw out this evening, an’ a lot of the neighbors’ll be thar, like enough.”“Old Absalom?” asked the tall young man, unemotionally.“Yes,” he nodded, “him an’ his boys.”“Not all of ‘em,” said the old dame suddenly. “My boy fixed a couple of them people yesterday afore they got him. Lookahere, whar old Absalom cut him”—her long, bony finger pointed out the spot. “Spite of ‘em he wouldn’t of died. He killedhisself, an’ he died in his own bed. Thar kain’t no Gannt on airth say they killed my boy.”David Joslin quietly walked over to the foot of the bedstead and unbuckled the belt of the heavy, worn revolver which he found hanging there—the revolver without which his father rarely had traveled in his circuit riding. This he fastened about his own waist, accepting the burden of his father’s feud. He made no comment.“Well, now, how come that diffikilty, Granny? Whar were it?” asked Trasker. “War he hurt bad?”“He got worse along towards mornin’,” said thedead man’s mother. “I seen myself that he war cut deep in his innards, an’ couldn’t live long noways. He lay all night a-beggin’ me to see that case he died the rest of us would kerry on the quarl fer him. Now ye say Absalom an’ some of his folks is a-goin’ to be over thar to-night?”The visitor nodded.“That’s a mighty good thing,” said Granny Joslin, nodding her own approval. “Go on over, Davy. See what ye kin do. Will ye promise me ye’ll go?”“I promise ye, yes, Granny,” replied David Joslin slowly. “But I’ll tell ye now, it hain’t to my likin’. I’m only goin’ fer one reason.”Seeing that they all three stood looking at him in silence, he went on.“I don’t believe in these fights and feuds no more. I don’t believe in it even now that it’s come closeter than ever to me. I don’t believe I’d orter go over thar an’ kill nobody else jest because they killed my daddy. Hit hain’t right.”They looked at him in cold silence. He raised his hand. “But because I know ye’d all call me a coward if I didn’t go, I’m a-goin’ over thar with you-all. I’m a-goin’ over thar before my own daddy is real daid and buried. I’ll face Absalom Gannt an’ ary of his kin. I reckon you-all will ride with me. Ye needn’t have no doubt that I’ll flicker—I won’t—none of us nuvver did. But I’m a-tellin’ ye now I don’t believein it, an’ I don’t want to go. I pray on my knees I’ll not have to kill no man, no matter what happens.”He felt the strong clutch of a skinny hand at his arm. His grandmother whirled him about and looked into his eyes with her own blazing orbs.“My God, I more’n half believe ye’re a-skeered, Dave Joslin. God!—have I fetched into the world ary one of my name that’s afeerd to kill a rattlesnake like ary one of them Gannts? I wish to God I was a man my own self—I’d show ye. I thought ye was a man, Dave. Hain’t ye—tell me—hain’t ye, David Joslin?”“No,” said Joslin, “I don’t think ... a coward! But I believe the law orter have charge of all these things. If I kill ary man over thar to-night, I’m a-goin’ to give myself up to the law.”“Listen at the fool talk!” broke out his fierce grandma. “Listen at him. Law?—law?—what’s the law got to do with a thing like this? I reckon we-all know well enough what the law is.”“I hope to live to see the real law come into these mountings yit,” said David Joslin solemnly. “Only question is, what’s the law? I hope I’ll live to see a different way of figgerin’ in these hills.”“Then ye’ll wait till hell freezes,” said Granny Joslin, savagely. “Hit’ll take more’n ye to reform the people in these mountings from real men inter yaller cowards.”“Come in an’ eat, men,” she added, and led the way to the side of the table, where presently she brought a few half-empty dishes—the same table which soon would hold the body of the dead man. “What we got ye’re welcome to. I reckon somehow I kin run this farm alone an’ make a livin’ here, an’ while I run it I’ll feed the friends of my fam’ly an’ I’ll shoot the enemies of my fam’ly that comes, free as if I’d been a man. God knows I’d orter been, with the trouble I’ve had to carry. Set up an’ eat.”“Chan,” said she, after a time, her mouth full of dry cornpone, “ride up the creek an’ git some of our kin to jine ye over thar in Semmes’ Cove this evenin’. They mought be too many fer ye.”Chan Bullock nodded.“I’ll go on with Dave up through the cut-off to the head of the Buffalo, an’ jine Chan an’ the others up in thar,” said Calvin Trasker. “Ye needn’t be a-skeered, Granny. Thar’s like enough to be some hell a-poppin’ in thar afore we hold the funer’l here. Them Gannts may have a funer’l too.”“Come around tomorrow, them of ye that’s left alive,” said the old woman calmly. “We’ll bury him out in the orchud, whar most of his folks is. Come on now—lend me a hand an’ we’ll lift him up on the table. I don’t reckon he’ll bleed no more now.”CHAPTER IVTHE FROLIC AT SEMMES’ COVEIT WAS late afternoon when David Joslin and Calvin Trasker, his kinsman, started into the hills. They rode in silence as they followed the winding little path which led up into the wilderness of the upper ridges. Each was armed with a heavy revolver which swung under his coat, and each carried in his side pockets abundance of additional ammunition for his weapon. Neither spoke. Neither showed any agitation.They pulled up at the imprint of horses’ hoofs on the trail coming up from one of the little side ravines.Trasker spoke. “Absalom, he don’t live so far off from here.”“I wish’t he’d stay at home,” said David Joslin moodily.“Look-a-here, Dave,” began the other testily. “What’s the matter with ye? Is thar arything in this here talk I heerd about ye feelin’ maybe ye was called to be a preacher, same as yore daddy?”Joslin replied calmly. “I don’t know. I’m askin’fer a leadin’. I kain’t see that this here business is quite right no more.”“Ye don’t belong in here then,” said Trasker, and half drew rein.“I do belong in here, an’ nowhars else!” said David Joslin. “If I ever was called—if I ever come to preach in these here hills, you-all’ll feel I wasn’t no coward. I’m a-goin’ to prove it to you-all that I hain’t.”“Go ahead,” said Trasker succinctly, and again Joslin led the way up the mountain slope.They paused presently at the rendezvous where their kinsmen presently would join them, granted Bullock had been successful in passing the feudal torch. Trasker talked yet further.“He was a great old sport, yore daddy,” said he. “I reckon he was shot in half a dozen places in his time. Seemed like they couldn’t kill him, nohow. An’ him an’ old Absalom had it fist an’ skull together more’n once in their day.”Joslin nodded. “That was afore he took up preachin’. Heathen—why, we all been worse’n ary heathen in the world. An’ here’s ye an’ me worse’n ary heathen right now, ridin’ out to squar what only the hand of God kin squar.”“Well,” rejoined Trasker, meditatively chewing his quid, “maybe with four or five of us together we kin help the hand of God jest a leetle bit. That’s the leadin’ I git, anyways, for this evenin’.”“Well, here’s our fellers comin’,” he went on, turning in his saddle. “Even a few is better’n none.”They were joined now by three other riders, Chan Bullock and two younger men, one scarce more than a boy, the beard not yet sprouted on his face. They did not make even a salutation as they drew up alongside the two horsemen who had tarried at the rendezvous.They turned up the hillside, once more resuming the winding path along the crooked divide which separated the two forks of the main stream which bored deep into the Cumberlands thereabouts. They all knew well enough the entry point for the head of Semmes’ Cove, and here in due time they halted to hold counsel.“Sever’l been here,” said David Joslin, pointing out the horse tracks which led down into the thickets of the unbroken gulch before them. Without any comment they all dismounted and advanced, leading their horses, Joslin ahead. They walked in this way for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then Joslin, without a word, turned and tied his own horse to a tree, the others following his example.There had been an illicit stillhouse in this wild ravine how long none might tell—in fact, many stillhouses had been there sporadically and spasmodically conducted as the fancy of this man or that might determine, for the region was wild and remote, and never visited by any of the outside world. These visitors allknew well enough where the present stillhouse was hidden—in a thicket of laurel just at the edge of a rock escarpment which jutted out upon the farther side. They followed on now steadily, alertly, until at length Joslin raised a hand.Silently they pushed their way into the edge of the thicket. Sounds of laughter, of song, greeted them. A faint, sickish odor rose above the tops of the low laurel. The visitors, five in all in number—Joslin, Calvin Trasker, Chan Bullock, and two other “cousins,” Nick Cummings and Cole Sennem—all pulled up at a point whence they could view the scene, whose main features they knew well enough without inspection.There were a dozen men here and there, taking turns at the little copper cups which stood upon the hewn face of a log. A couple of barrels, a copper pipe between, made pretty much all the visible external aspect of the still. The great bulb was hidden in one barrel, the curled copper tube cooled in another. Here and there lay empty sacks once carrying corn. A cup-peg or so driven into a tree trunk showed the openness and confidence with which matters hereabout had been conducted, and the spot showed every sign of frequent use.One of the men, taking up one of the copper vessels from the low log table, stooped at the pipe at the foot of one of the barrels, watching the trickle ofwhite liquid which came forth. He drank it clear and strong as alcohol, undiluted. Like fire it went through all his veins.“Whoopee!” he exclaimed, throwing up a hand. “I’m the ole blue hen’s chicken! I kin outwrastle er outjump er outshoot ary man here er anywhar’s else.”“Ye wouldn’t say that if old Absalom war here,” laughed a nearby occupant of a rude bench.“No, nor if Old Man Joslin war, neither.”“I would too! I hain’t a-skeered o’ nobody,” replied the warlike youth. “I’ll show ary of ‘em.”“What’ll ye show us?” demanded David Joslin. Silent as an Indian he had left the fringe of cover, and stood now in the open, his eyes steady, his arms folded, looking at the men before him. And now at his side and back of him ranged his little body of clansmen.Sudden silence fell upon all those thus surprised. They looked at him in amazement.“Whar’s old Absalom?” he demanded of a man whom he knew, who stood, the half-finished cup of liquor still in his hand.“Air ye lookin’ to start ary diffikilty?” replied his neighbor, also with a question.“That’s fer us to say,” said David Joslin. “My daddy’s daid. He got hurt yesterday by old Absalom an’ his people. I come over here to-day to see old Absalom an’ ary kin he happens to have along with him. Whar is he?”Silence for a long time held the group. It behooved all to be cautious.“He’s been in here somewhar,” went on Joslin, “an’ he hain’t fur now. Tell me, is he down at the dance house?”“Well, ye mought go an’ see,” rejoined the first speaker, grinning. “Ye know, Dave Joslin, I hain’t got no quarl with ye, nor has ary o’ my people. Ye set right here now, boys,” he continued, sweeping out a long arm toward the merrymakers, who still lingered about the liquor barrel.“Thar’s more of them than thar is of ye,” he whispered hurriedly to Joslin as he stepped up. “The house is full, an’ they’re dancin’. Three or four gals from down on the Buffalo is in thar now. They’re havin’ a right big frolic.”Without a word Joslin turned and hurried down the path. He knew the location of the building to which reference had been made—a long log structure rudely floored with puncheons, sometimes employed locally as a sort of adjunct of the still. The sounds of dancing, the music of one or two reedy violins, the voice of a caller now and then, greeted the party of avengers who now approached this curious building hidden in the heart of the mountain wilderness. Whether or not all of the occupants of the dance house were of Absalom Gannt’s party, neither David Joslin nor any one else might tell. There might be a generalmingling here of friend and foe until some overt act should light again the ancient fire, forever smouldering.Joslin beckoned to his companions. “Git behind them rocks right over thar, boys,” he whispered. “I’m a-goin’ up to the door.”The young men with him went about their business with perfect calmness, although the eye of each was alert and glittering. They took their stations under the leadership of the man who they now regarded as the chieftain of their clan, and watched him go to what seemed certain death.Joslin advanced steadily to the door, his thumbs in the waist band of his trousers. With his left hand he knocked loudly on the jamb of the door. He spoke to some one, apparently an acquaintance, who noticed him.“Is Absalom Gannt here?” he demanded. “If he is, tell him to come out. I’ll wait till he comes out fair.”“Good God A’mighty, Davy,” said the other who stood within. “Air ye atter trouble? This is jest a little frolic.”“Tell him to come out,” repeated Joslin. “I want Absalom Gannt!” The courage of this deed went into the sagas of the Cumberlands—the act of a man who scorned certain death.It must have been some friend of Absalom Gannt, some relative perhaps, who heard this summons andsaw the gray face of David Joslin staring into the half-darkened interior. With a shout he himself sprang to the door, gun in hand. Joslin leaped aside. As he did so he heard the roar of a heavy revolver back of him. Chan Bullock, the long blue barrel of his six-shooter resting on his arm at the top of the protecting boulder, fired at the man who appeared in the door. The latter fell forward and slouched over on his face, his head on his arms.A half instant of silence, then came the roar of a pistol at the window near where Joslin stood. The men at the boulders, in turn, began firing generously at every crack and cranny of the house, regardless of who or what might be within. The marksman at the window was deliberate. With care he rested the barrel of his weapon against the window sash. At its third report, Joslin heard back of him a heavy groan, but he did not see Calvin Trasker roll over on his back, his doubled arm across his face.The sound of gunfire now was general on every side. None might say who was harmed, who as yet was safe. As for Joslin, he had work to do. Absalom Gannt was still inside the house.He stepped forward again deliberately to the door, pushed aside the man who stood there peering out, and broke his way into the crowd. Two or three women, cowering, shrank into the farther corner of the room. Men stood here and there, each with weaponin hand. The acrid taste of gunpowder, which hung in the blue pall of smoke, was in the nostrils of all.“Absalom Gannt!” rose the high, clear voice of David Joslin, “I’ve come fer ye. Come out here an’ meet me fair if ye hain’t a coward. Absalom Gannt! Absalom Gannt——”That was the last word the friends of David Joslin heard him speak, and, as they told the story, it was apparent that the Joslin blood “never flickered onct.”What happened to David Joslin they did not know—he himself did not. He was perhaps conscious of a heavy blow at the base of his head, then came unconsciousness, oblivion. He fell upon the floor of the rude revel house.Firing ceased now. The occupants of the cabin rushed out. The defenders of the line of boulders, three only in number now, broke and sprang up the mountain side, pursued by a rain of bullets which touched none of them.The frolic at Semmes’ Cove had found its ending—not an unusual ending for such scenes.CHAPTER VTHE AWAKENING OF DAVID JOSLININ THE old apple orchard of Preacher Joslin—whose gnarled trees had been planted by some unknown hand unknown years ago—a long and narrow rift showed in the rocky soil. The owner of these meager acres was now come to his rest, here by the side of many others of his kin whose graves, unmarked, lay here or there, no longer identified under the broken branches of the trees.A neighbor blacksmith had wrought sufficient nails to hold together a rough box. In this he and Granny Joslin had placed the dead man. Word passed up and down the little creek that the burying of Andrew Joslin would be at noon that day; so one by one horses came splashing down the creek—usually carrying a man with a woman back of him, the woman sometimes carrying one child, sometimes two.These brought fresh word. Calvin Trasker, killed in the frolic at Semmes’ Cove, had already been buried. He was accounted well avenged. It was almost sure he had killed his man before he had received his own death wound. As for Chan Bullock and his twoyoung cousins, they were no less than heroes. Four of the Gannt family had been left accounted for, whether by aim of the fallen or that of the three escaping feudists none might say. The Joslins had none the worst of it. Had not one of them—which, no one could tell—fired the shot which broke old Absalom’s arm? This funeral party, practically a rallying of the Joslin clan, was no time more of special mourning than of exultation. The talk was not so much of the dead man, not so much of the dead man’s son David, who was still missing, as it was of the victory attained over the rival clan.And so they buried Preacher Joslin, and thereafter, all having been duly concluded, and a simple, unmarked stone having been set up at the head of his grave, old Granny Joslin, robbed of her son and her son’s son, asked them once more to eat of what she had, and so presently bade them good-by.“I’ll git along somehow, folks,” said she. “Don’t you-all worry none about me. If Davy’s daid, why, he’s daid, an’ that’s all about it. Atter a few days, you-all go over in thar an’ watch for buzzards an’ crows—if they hain’t buried him deep, we’ll find out whar he’s at.”But after the funeral party had departed, plashing their way back up the creek-bed road, Granny Joslin sat down to make her own accounting. David—her boy Davy—the one who understood her—whom sheunderstood so well—where was he? Had they indeed killed him? Was he lying out there in the mountains somewhere, his last resting place unknown to any save his enemies?“Curse the last of them—them cowardly Gannts!” Again she raised her skinny hand in malediction. “May mildew fall on them an’ theirs. May their blood fail to breed, an’ may they know sorrer an’ trouble all their lives! I wish to God I was a man. Oh, God, bring me back my man—my boy Davy!”But the mountain side against which she looked, against which she spoke, made no answer to her. She sat alone. A film came over her fierce eye like that which crosses the eye of a dying hawk. Whether or not a tear eventually might have fallen may not be said, but before that time old Granny Joslin rose, grunting, and hobbled back into her own desolate home. She lighted the fire. She set all things in order. The castle of the Joslins had not yet been taken. But David came not back that day, nor upon the third, nor yet upon the fourth day. By that time she had given him up for dead.Yet it was upon the morning of that fourth day that David Joslin himself sat concealed, high upon the mountain side, and looked down upon the broken home of Granny Joslin. He saw the smoke curling up from the chimney, and knew it as the banner of defiance.He knew that the old dame would live out her life to its end according to her creed.His keen eye saw the new mound in the apple orchard—the broken clay now dried in the sun of several days. He could guess the rest. For himself, he was alive. He had been dead, but now he was born again.At the end of the fight in Semmes’ Cove, there was a general scattering and confusion. The Gannt party finally had taken care of their own dead and wounded, and, passing on up the ravine toward the usual paths of escape, had tarried at the stillhouse only long enough to refresh themselves as was their need. For those of the attacking party left behind they had small care. A man or two was down somewhere behind the rocks. As for the man who had broken into the house—David Joslin—he was dead. Had they not caught him neck and crop, and thrown him headlong into the gully? Yes, one thing was sure, David Joslin was dead; and he had been the leader of the attack. Therefore, the Gannts accounted themselves as having won a coup also for their side of the feud.When Joslin awoke to the consciousness of bitter pain, he reached out a hand in the darkness which enshrouded him. He felt damp earth. So, then, he reasoned, he was dead and buried, and this was his grave! For some time he made no attempt to breathe or to move. Yes, this was his grave. He lay he knew nothow long in the full realization that life was done for him.Then, as the cool of the night refreshed him, he felt about him, felt the weeping of dew-damp leaves above him, and slowly reasoned that he was not dead at all, and not in his grave, but that he had been flung somewhere here into the bottom of the ravine.Slowly he struggled to his knees. He staggered up the side of the slope as best he might, more by chance than otherwise, taking that side which lay nearest the dance house. He saw in the gloom the low boulders, behind which his fighting men had lain. He stumbled across the dead body of Calvin Trasker, left where he had fallen. There remained to him sensibility enough to put the dead man’s hat across his face; but he could do no more than that. He knew that if he were found here he would be killed indeed. So, knowing that there was no longer need for him or chance for him here, he staggered on down the ravine of Semmes’ Cove, until at length he could go no farther, and so fell once more unconscious.When again he awoke it was broad sunshine. How long he had lain he could not tell. But now thirst assailed him, thirst which he might quench in the trickle of water which lay below. The provender of the woods, a few nuts, a pawpaw or so, seemed grateful to him now. He staggered on, knowing that it would be no more than two or three miles down the ravineuntil he came to the little camp he had made in the rain, after he had left his own home on that unhappy day. And so at length he found that bivouac and dropped into the bed of rotten wood once more, and lay prostrate all that day and the next.It was really upon the morning of the fourth day after the encounter—although Joslin himself could not have said as to that—that, strong enough now to walk, he staggered out of the thicket-covered lower entrance of Semmes’ Cove into the little creek bed, which made the path to his father’s home. He must look once more at the house where he himself was born.Was born, did he say? No, he had been born a second time! In these long hours of misery and pain, David Joslin had taken accounting as best he might with life and the philosophies thereof. In his fashion of thought, he had gained the conviction that his “call” had come to him. He was called for a different life. There was no doubt about it. New duties lay before him—all of a new life—because he had been born again! To him his salvation was not less than a miracle, and he accepted it as such solemnly and reverently, feeling himself now consecrated fully for some cause. What the form of that consecration might be he himself did not clearly know as yet.But there came to him, with this feeling, the solemn conviction that he must leave this country. This opportunity seemed to him providential. No, he wouldnot even go to say farewell to his wife, nor to greet his grandma, Granny Joslin, to give counsel to her. He, being dead, must depart secretly forever from these hills until he might return to them to do the thing given him to do.Such, unnatural and hard as that might seem to others, was the ancient, grim, uncompromising creed of David Joslin of the Cumberlands. Let the dead bury its dead. Let the living live their own lives.Weakly, slowly, he climbed along the mountain side above the creek bed, to avoid any passerby, and so at length reached the point upon the opposing hill whence he might look down upon the little home once owned by the man who lay there now, under the drying yellow ridge in the apple orchard planted by his sires.How long David Joslin sat here, his chin in his hands, he himself might not have told. He sat looking down, pondering, resolving.... Yes, he was born again! What must he do?At length he rose, staggeringly rose, seeking about for some broken branch to aid him further in his journey. For now he purposed a long, long journey out from these hills. He was going away from his own people!His hand fell against something hard in the side pocket of his ragged coat. It was the old book he had borrowed of his father—the well-thumbed volume of Calvin’s Institutes. His belt and revolver were gone—heknew not where—but here was this ancient, iron book. He recalled now, with the tenacious memory of the mountaineer, a passage which he had read therein:Truly, I have no refuge but in Him. Let no man flatter himself, for of himself he is only a devil. For what have you of your own but sin? Take for yourself sin, which is your own. Your righteousness belongs to God. Nature is wounded, distressed and ruined. It needs a true confession, not a false defense.“A true confession—not a false defense!” All the honesty, all the ignorance, all the hope of these mountains were in the mind of David Joslin, as he repeated these vague words of the old mystic to himself. He now felt himself a prophet.And now, a prophet, he was going out into the world.
THE BLOOD COVENANT
DAVID JOSLIN turned from his own wastrel fire, his own decrepit gate, as but now he had from his father’s, and he did not look back at what he had left. Steadily his feet slushed forward, as he held his course through the dripping rain, faced now up the valley of the stream near which he lived. Here and there, on this side or that of the swollen river, showed infrequent lights at the windows of homes—each a hospitable home where he would be welcome at any time of the day or night. But he did not turn to any one of these, homeless as he was himself.
For a considerable distance he kept to the valley until finally he turned into a narrow, deeply sheltered ravine which as he knew had no occupant. It was a wild, uncultivated spot, the mouth of the gulch known as Semmes’ Cove. At its foot trickled a stream of water leading far back into the hills through a district where as yet home-building man had not come. The tall trees still stood here unreaped—the giant white oaks and the tremendous trees known as “old-timepoplar,” among which not even the slightest garnering had as yet been done by timber-hunting man.
There were secrets of a certain sort up this gulch, as David Joslin knew. Few men openly went into the mouth of this wild ravine, and there was no definite path up the creek such as marked most of the others thereabout. None the less Joslin in the darkness of the night turned into it as one wholly familiar with the vicinity.
He was a woodsman, a wild man fit to conquer and prevail in any wild land. He went now about the business he purposed as steadily as though he were well accustomed to it. With not even the slight assistance of an occasional star, he found the trunk of a giant poplar tree which had fallen—perhaps he knew it from his many wanderings here. The bark upon the trunk was dry, and with the aid of a broken branch he loosed a long fold, sufficient for a roof when propped up on the trunk of the tree itself. He felt within the rotted trunk and drew out an armful of rotted but dry wood, which made him good floor enough for his bed, keeping him above the dampness. A part of it also offered punk for the tinder which he found within the breast of his own blouse. Here also were the primitive tools of the frontiersman in this land—flint and steel. And with flint and steel David Joslin now managed to build himself a fire even in the dripping rain.
He cast himself down, not to sleep, but to ponder and to brood. The wall of blackness shut him in all about, but before him passed continually the panorama of his dreams.
The night wore through, and at length the gray dawn came. The wind was rising now, high in the tops of the trees, and the air was colder since the rain had ceased. Any but a hardened man who had slept thus would have waked stiffened and shivering. Not so Joslin, who rebuilt his fire and looked about him for something with which to stay a hunger natural after twenty-four hours of abstinence. A few fallen nuts from the trees, a frozen persimmon or so, made all the breakfast he could find. In his cupped hand he drank from the little stream. In a few moments he was at the débouchement of the creek trail leading up to his father’s home. He halted here as he heard the sound of hoof-beats coming down the stream bed.
A rider came into view making such speed as he could down the perilous footing. He drew up his horse, startled at seeing a man here, but an instant later smiled.
“That ye, Dave?” said he. “Ye had me skeered at fust.”
“What’s yore hurry? Whar ye goin’?”
“Hurry enough—I was a-comin’ atter ye,”
“What’s wrong?”
“Plenty’s wrong—yore daddy’s daid—right up thar.”
“What’s that?—What do ye mean?” demanded Joslin. “Daid—I left him last night—he was well.”
“Huh! He’s daid now all right,” rejoined the rider, finding a piece of tobacco, from which he bit a chew. “I was a-goin’ down atter ye. I seed him a-hangin’ thar right by his neck on a tree this side the house. He must of hung hisself, that’s all.”
“That’s a lie,” said Joslin. “My daddy kill hisself——”
“Come on an’ see then. If he hain’t daid by now, my name hain’t Chan Bullock! He’s done finished what old Absalom started. I rid over to the house to see how he was a-gittin’ along, an’ I come spang on him when I come down offen the hill. He was still a-kickin’ then.”
David Joslin approached him, his hands hooked as though to drag him from his horse. But an instant later he curbed his wrath, caught at the stirrup strap of the rider’s horse, swung the horse’s head up the stream, and urged it into speed, himself running alongside with great strides which asked no odds.
He found full verification of all the messenger had told him. From the forked branch of a tree, extending out beyond the steep side of the bank, swung a grim bundle of loose clothing covering what but now had been a strong man. A quick sob came into thethroat of David Joslin as he sprang to the bank. Even as he did so he heard the sound of footsteps coming. The bent and broken figure of Granny Joslin came into view.
“What’s wrong here? Who was that I heerd a-hollerin?—— My God A’mighty, who’s a-hangin’ thar?—— My son—my son!”
She also was endeavoring to scramble up the bank.
“Was it ye a-hollerin’? Why didn’t ye cut him down, ye fool?” she demanded of Bullock, who still sat on his horse.
“Hit hain’t lawful, Granny,” said he. “Ye mustn’t cut him down.”
“I’d cut him down if I was damned fer it,” cried the old dame. “Ye coward, how long since ye seen this? When ye hollered? Was he livin’ then? Ye mought have saved his life. Git outen my way, boy,” she said to her grandson, and an instant later she herself, old as she was, had leaned far out along the branch and with a stroke of the knife she always carried had cut loose the rope. There was a thudding, sliding fall. The body of old Preacher Joslin rolled to the foot of the bank among the sodden leaves.
Bullock dismounted and stood looking down at the limp figure. But David pushed him aside.
“Leave him be,” said he, and so he slipped his arms around the body of his father, and, lifting him, strode up along the little stream bed to the home now leftthe more desolate and abandoned. The dead man’s mother, dry-eyed, hobbled along behind. She showed where the body might be laid.
“He hain’t daid yit, I most half believe,” said she, laying her hand on his heart. “Lay him down here, boys, on his own bed. Thar kain’t no one prove then he didn’t die in his own bed. The Gannts didn’t git him.”
If there was indeed a fluttering gasp or two at the lips after they had placed the body of Preacher Joslin upon his own bed in his own house, it was but the last that marked the passing. When not even this might be suspected, Granny Joslin broke into a sort of exalted chant of her own invention.
“I got a son!” she crooned in her shrill, high voice. “He’s strong an’ tall. He hain’t a-feared. He has the hand to kill. He’ll slay ‘em all. He’ll strow the blood. He’ll make the fight fer me an’ him an’ all of us!”
She chanted the words over and over again, the kindling of her dark eyes a fearsome thing to see. Now and again she turned from the dead man to the motionless figure of his son, who stood at his bedside.
“He’ll strow the blood,” she sang. “He’ll kill ‘em all!
“May God curse old Absalom Gannt an’ all his kin,” she said at last, shaking a skinny hand toward heaven. “I pledge ye to it, Davy. Tell the last one of themall’s gone, we’ll not fergit. Oh, Davy, it was fer this that ye was borned!”
They stood thus, a grim enough group, when the sound of hoofs in the creek bed intruded. Bullock stepped to the door and accosted the newcomer.
“Howdy, Cal,” said he. “Light down an’ come in.”
The rider dismounted, casting his bridle rein across the top of a picket.
“Andy home?” asked he.
“Well, he is an’ he hain’t,” said Bullock. “Come on in.”
“Well, I thought I’d come in an’ see him——”
“Come in. Ye can see all thar is of him,” and he led the way.
“Good God A’mighty! God damnme!” exclaimed the visitor, as he caught sight of what lay on the bed in the room to which they led him. “Granny, how come this? He’s daid!”
“Yes, he’s daid,” said Granny Joslin calmly. “He hung hisself down below by the spring right now. Ye kin see whar the rope cut in his neck. He was a-breathin’ when they put him thar. If that fool boy Chan had had any sense at all he’d of cut him down an’ done saved him.”
“Well, now, Granny,” began the accused one. “Well, now——”
“Wait!” David Joslin raised his own hand. “Granny, don’t say that. Hit’s the wish of the Lord.Blessed be the name of the Lord. I think my father is better off. Sence he wished it, let’s call it well an’ good. I reckon it all got too much fer him.”
“Well, I was just a-comin’ down,” said the newcomer, Calvin Trasker, “to ask ye all out fer a little frolic to-night over to Semmes’ Cove. They’re a-goin’ to draw out this evening, an’ a lot of the neighbors’ll be thar, like enough.”
“Old Absalom?” asked the tall young man, unemotionally.
“Yes,” he nodded, “him an’ his boys.”
“Not all of ‘em,” said the old dame suddenly. “My boy fixed a couple of them people yesterday afore they got him. Lookahere, whar old Absalom cut him”—her long, bony finger pointed out the spot. “Spite of ‘em he wouldn’t of died. He killedhisself, an’ he died in his own bed. Thar kain’t no Gannt on airth say they killed my boy.”
David Joslin quietly walked over to the foot of the bedstead and unbuckled the belt of the heavy, worn revolver which he found hanging there—the revolver without which his father rarely had traveled in his circuit riding. This he fastened about his own waist, accepting the burden of his father’s feud. He made no comment.
“Well, now, how come that diffikilty, Granny? Whar were it?” asked Trasker. “War he hurt bad?”
“He got worse along towards mornin’,” said thedead man’s mother. “I seen myself that he war cut deep in his innards, an’ couldn’t live long noways. He lay all night a-beggin’ me to see that case he died the rest of us would kerry on the quarl fer him. Now ye say Absalom an’ some of his folks is a-goin’ to be over thar to-night?”
The visitor nodded.
“That’s a mighty good thing,” said Granny Joslin, nodding her own approval. “Go on over, Davy. See what ye kin do. Will ye promise me ye’ll go?”
“I promise ye, yes, Granny,” replied David Joslin slowly. “But I’ll tell ye now, it hain’t to my likin’. I’m only goin’ fer one reason.”
Seeing that they all three stood looking at him in silence, he went on.
“I don’t believe in these fights and feuds no more. I don’t believe in it even now that it’s come closeter than ever to me. I don’t believe I’d orter go over thar an’ kill nobody else jest because they killed my daddy. Hit hain’t right.”
They looked at him in cold silence. He raised his hand. “But because I know ye’d all call me a coward if I didn’t go, I’m a-goin’ over thar with you-all. I’m a-goin’ over thar before my own daddy is real daid and buried. I’ll face Absalom Gannt an’ ary of his kin. I reckon you-all will ride with me. Ye needn’t have no doubt that I’ll flicker—I won’t—none of us nuvver did. But I’m a-tellin’ ye now I don’t believein it, an’ I don’t want to go. I pray on my knees I’ll not have to kill no man, no matter what happens.”
He felt the strong clutch of a skinny hand at his arm. His grandmother whirled him about and looked into his eyes with her own blazing orbs.
“My God, I more’n half believe ye’re a-skeered, Dave Joslin. God!—have I fetched into the world ary one of my name that’s afeerd to kill a rattlesnake like ary one of them Gannts? I wish to God I was a man my own self—I’d show ye. I thought ye was a man, Dave. Hain’t ye—tell me—hain’t ye, David Joslin?”
“No,” said Joslin, “I don’t think ... a coward! But I believe the law orter have charge of all these things. If I kill ary man over thar to-night, I’m a-goin’ to give myself up to the law.”
“Listen at the fool talk!” broke out his fierce grandma. “Listen at him. Law?—law?—what’s the law got to do with a thing like this? I reckon we-all know well enough what the law is.”
“I hope to live to see the real law come into these mountings yit,” said David Joslin solemnly. “Only question is, what’s the law? I hope I’ll live to see a different way of figgerin’ in these hills.”
“Then ye’ll wait till hell freezes,” said Granny Joslin, savagely. “Hit’ll take more’n ye to reform the people in these mountings from real men inter yaller cowards.”
“Come in an’ eat, men,” she added, and led the way to the side of the table, where presently she brought a few half-empty dishes—the same table which soon would hold the body of the dead man. “What we got ye’re welcome to. I reckon somehow I kin run this farm alone an’ make a livin’ here, an’ while I run it I’ll feed the friends of my fam’ly an’ I’ll shoot the enemies of my fam’ly that comes, free as if I’d been a man. God knows I’d orter been, with the trouble I’ve had to carry. Set up an’ eat.”
“Chan,” said she, after a time, her mouth full of dry cornpone, “ride up the creek an’ git some of our kin to jine ye over thar in Semmes’ Cove this evenin’. They mought be too many fer ye.”
Chan Bullock nodded.
“I’ll go on with Dave up through the cut-off to the head of the Buffalo, an’ jine Chan an’ the others up in thar,” said Calvin Trasker. “Ye needn’t be a-skeered, Granny. Thar’s like enough to be some hell a-poppin’ in thar afore we hold the funer’l here. Them Gannts may have a funer’l too.”
“Come around tomorrow, them of ye that’s left alive,” said the old woman calmly. “We’ll bury him out in the orchud, whar most of his folks is. Come on now—lend me a hand an’ we’ll lift him up on the table. I don’t reckon he’ll bleed no more now.”
THE FROLIC AT SEMMES’ COVE
IT WAS late afternoon when David Joslin and Calvin Trasker, his kinsman, started into the hills. They rode in silence as they followed the winding little path which led up into the wilderness of the upper ridges. Each was armed with a heavy revolver which swung under his coat, and each carried in his side pockets abundance of additional ammunition for his weapon. Neither spoke. Neither showed any agitation.
They pulled up at the imprint of horses’ hoofs on the trail coming up from one of the little side ravines.
Trasker spoke. “Absalom, he don’t live so far off from here.”
“I wish’t he’d stay at home,” said David Joslin moodily.
“Look-a-here, Dave,” began the other testily. “What’s the matter with ye? Is thar arything in this here talk I heerd about ye feelin’ maybe ye was called to be a preacher, same as yore daddy?”
Joslin replied calmly. “I don’t know. I’m askin’fer a leadin’. I kain’t see that this here business is quite right no more.”
“Ye don’t belong in here then,” said Trasker, and half drew rein.
“I do belong in here, an’ nowhars else!” said David Joslin. “If I ever was called—if I ever come to preach in these here hills, you-all’ll feel I wasn’t no coward. I’m a-goin’ to prove it to you-all that I hain’t.”
“Go ahead,” said Trasker succinctly, and again Joslin led the way up the mountain slope.
They paused presently at the rendezvous where their kinsmen presently would join them, granted Bullock had been successful in passing the feudal torch. Trasker talked yet further.
“He was a great old sport, yore daddy,” said he. “I reckon he was shot in half a dozen places in his time. Seemed like they couldn’t kill him, nohow. An’ him an’ old Absalom had it fist an’ skull together more’n once in their day.”
Joslin nodded. “That was afore he took up preachin’. Heathen—why, we all been worse’n ary heathen in the world. An’ here’s ye an’ me worse’n ary heathen right now, ridin’ out to squar what only the hand of God kin squar.”
“Well,” rejoined Trasker, meditatively chewing his quid, “maybe with four or five of us together we kin help the hand of God jest a leetle bit. That’s the leadin’ I git, anyways, for this evenin’.”
“Well, here’s our fellers comin’,” he went on, turning in his saddle. “Even a few is better’n none.”
They were joined now by three other riders, Chan Bullock and two younger men, one scarce more than a boy, the beard not yet sprouted on his face. They did not make even a salutation as they drew up alongside the two horsemen who had tarried at the rendezvous.
They turned up the hillside, once more resuming the winding path along the crooked divide which separated the two forks of the main stream which bored deep into the Cumberlands thereabouts. They all knew well enough the entry point for the head of Semmes’ Cove, and here in due time they halted to hold counsel.
“Sever’l been here,” said David Joslin, pointing out the horse tracks which led down into the thickets of the unbroken gulch before them. Without any comment they all dismounted and advanced, leading their horses, Joslin ahead. They walked in this way for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then Joslin, without a word, turned and tied his own horse to a tree, the others following his example.
There had been an illicit stillhouse in this wild ravine how long none might tell—in fact, many stillhouses had been there sporadically and spasmodically conducted as the fancy of this man or that might determine, for the region was wild and remote, and never visited by any of the outside world. These visitors allknew well enough where the present stillhouse was hidden—in a thicket of laurel just at the edge of a rock escarpment which jutted out upon the farther side. They followed on now steadily, alertly, until at length Joslin raised a hand.
Silently they pushed their way into the edge of the thicket. Sounds of laughter, of song, greeted them. A faint, sickish odor rose above the tops of the low laurel. The visitors, five in all in number—Joslin, Calvin Trasker, Chan Bullock, and two other “cousins,” Nick Cummings and Cole Sennem—all pulled up at a point whence they could view the scene, whose main features they knew well enough without inspection.
There were a dozen men here and there, taking turns at the little copper cups which stood upon the hewn face of a log. A couple of barrels, a copper pipe between, made pretty much all the visible external aspect of the still. The great bulb was hidden in one barrel, the curled copper tube cooled in another. Here and there lay empty sacks once carrying corn. A cup-peg or so driven into a tree trunk showed the openness and confidence with which matters hereabout had been conducted, and the spot showed every sign of frequent use.
One of the men, taking up one of the copper vessels from the low log table, stooped at the pipe at the foot of one of the barrels, watching the trickle ofwhite liquid which came forth. He drank it clear and strong as alcohol, undiluted. Like fire it went through all his veins.
“Whoopee!” he exclaimed, throwing up a hand. “I’m the ole blue hen’s chicken! I kin outwrastle er outjump er outshoot ary man here er anywhar’s else.”
“Ye wouldn’t say that if old Absalom war here,” laughed a nearby occupant of a rude bench.
“No, nor if Old Man Joslin war, neither.”
“I would too! I hain’t a-skeered o’ nobody,” replied the warlike youth. “I’ll show ary of ‘em.”
“What’ll ye show us?” demanded David Joslin. Silent as an Indian he had left the fringe of cover, and stood now in the open, his eyes steady, his arms folded, looking at the men before him. And now at his side and back of him ranged his little body of clansmen.
Sudden silence fell upon all those thus surprised. They looked at him in amazement.
“Whar’s old Absalom?” he demanded of a man whom he knew, who stood, the half-finished cup of liquor still in his hand.
“Air ye lookin’ to start ary diffikilty?” replied his neighbor, also with a question.
“That’s fer us to say,” said David Joslin. “My daddy’s daid. He got hurt yesterday by old Absalom an’ his people. I come over here to-day to see old Absalom an’ ary kin he happens to have along with him. Whar is he?”
Silence for a long time held the group. It behooved all to be cautious.
“He’s been in here somewhar,” went on Joslin, “an’ he hain’t fur now. Tell me, is he down at the dance house?”
“Well, ye mought go an’ see,” rejoined the first speaker, grinning. “Ye know, Dave Joslin, I hain’t got no quarl with ye, nor has ary o’ my people. Ye set right here now, boys,” he continued, sweeping out a long arm toward the merrymakers, who still lingered about the liquor barrel.
“Thar’s more of them than thar is of ye,” he whispered hurriedly to Joslin as he stepped up. “The house is full, an’ they’re dancin’. Three or four gals from down on the Buffalo is in thar now. They’re havin’ a right big frolic.”
Without a word Joslin turned and hurried down the path. He knew the location of the building to which reference had been made—a long log structure rudely floored with puncheons, sometimes employed locally as a sort of adjunct of the still. The sounds of dancing, the music of one or two reedy violins, the voice of a caller now and then, greeted the party of avengers who now approached this curious building hidden in the heart of the mountain wilderness. Whether or not all of the occupants of the dance house were of Absalom Gannt’s party, neither David Joslin nor any one else might tell. There might be a generalmingling here of friend and foe until some overt act should light again the ancient fire, forever smouldering.
Joslin beckoned to his companions. “Git behind them rocks right over thar, boys,” he whispered. “I’m a-goin’ up to the door.”
The young men with him went about their business with perfect calmness, although the eye of each was alert and glittering. They took their stations under the leadership of the man who they now regarded as the chieftain of their clan, and watched him go to what seemed certain death.
Joslin advanced steadily to the door, his thumbs in the waist band of his trousers. With his left hand he knocked loudly on the jamb of the door. He spoke to some one, apparently an acquaintance, who noticed him.
“Is Absalom Gannt here?” he demanded. “If he is, tell him to come out. I’ll wait till he comes out fair.”
“Good God A’mighty, Davy,” said the other who stood within. “Air ye atter trouble? This is jest a little frolic.”
“Tell him to come out,” repeated Joslin. “I want Absalom Gannt!” The courage of this deed went into the sagas of the Cumberlands—the act of a man who scorned certain death.
It must have been some friend of Absalom Gannt, some relative perhaps, who heard this summons andsaw the gray face of David Joslin staring into the half-darkened interior. With a shout he himself sprang to the door, gun in hand. Joslin leaped aside. As he did so he heard the roar of a heavy revolver back of him. Chan Bullock, the long blue barrel of his six-shooter resting on his arm at the top of the protecting boulder, fired at the man who appeared in the door. The latter fell forward and slouched over on his face, his head on his arms.
A half instant of silence, then came the roar of a pistol at the window near where Joslin stood. The men at the boulders, in turn, began firing generously at every crack and cranny of the house, regardless of who or what might be within. The marksman at the window was deliberate. With care he rested the barrel of his weapon against the window sash. At its third report, Joslin heard back of him a heavy groan, but he did not see Calvin Trasker roll over on his back, his doubled arm across his face.
The sound of gunfire now was general on every side. None might say who was harmed, who as yet was safe. As for Joslin, he had work to do. Absalom Gannt was still inside the house.
He stepped forward again deliberately to the door, pushed aside the man who stood there peering out, and broke his way into the crowd. Two or three women, cowering, shrank into the farther corner of the room. Men stood here and there, each with weaponin hand. The acrid taste of gunpowder, which hung in the blue pall of smoke, was in the nostrils of all.
“Absalom Gannt!” rose the high, clear voice of David Joslin, “I’ve come fer ye. Come out here an’ meet me fair if ye hain’t a coward. Absalom Gannt! Absalom Gannt——”
That was the last word the friends of David Joslin heard him speak, and, as they told the story, it was apparent that the Joslin blood “never flickered onct.”
What happened to David Joslin they did not know—he himself did not. He was perhaps conscious of a heavy blow at the base of his head, then came unconsciousness, oblivion. He fell upon the floor of the rude revel house.
Firing ceased now. The occupants of the cabin rushed out. The defenders of the line of boulders, three only in number now, broke and sprang up the mountain side, pursued by a rain of bullets which touched none of them.
The frolic at Semmes’ Cove had found its ending—not an unusual ending for such scenes.
THE AWAKENING OF DAVID JOSLIN
IN THE old apple orchard of Preacher Joslin—whose gnarled trees had been planted by some unknown hand unknown years ago—a long and narrow rift showed in the rocky soil. The owner of these meager acres was now come to his rest, here by the side of many others of his kin whose graves, unmarked, lay here or there, no longer identified under the broken branches of the trees.
A neighbor blacksmith had wrought sufficient nails to hold together a rough box. In this he and Granny Joslin had placed the dead man. Word passed up and down the little creek that the burying of Andrew Joslin would be at noon that day; so one by one horses came splashing down the creek—usually carrying a man with a woman back of him, the woman sometimes carrying one child, sometimes two.
These brought fresh word. Calvin Trasker, killed in the frolic at Semmes’ Cove, had already been buried. He was accounted well avenged. It was almost sure he had killed his man before he had received his own death wound. As for Chan Bullock and his twoyoung cousins, they were no less than heroes. Four of the Gannt family had been left accounted for, whether by aim of the fallen or that of the three escaping feudists none might say. The Joslins had none the worst of it. Had not one of them—which, no one could tell—fired the shot which broke old Absalom’s arm? This funeral party, practically a rallying of the Joslin clan, was no time more of special mourning than of exultation. The talk was not so much of the dead man, not so much of the dead man’s son David, who was still missing, as it was of the victory attained over the rival clan.
And so they buried Preacher Joslin, and thereafter, all having been duly concluded, and a simple, unmarked stone having been set up at the head of his grave, old Granny Joslin, robbed of her son and her son’s son, asked them once more to eat of what she had, and so presently bade them good-by.
“I’ll git along somehow, folks,” said she. “Don’t you-all worry none about me. If Davy’s daid, why, he’s daid, an’ that’s all about it. Atter a few days, you-all go over in thar an’ watch for buzzards an’ crows—if they hain’t buried him deep, we’ll find out whar he’s at.”
But after the funeral party had departed, plashing their way back up the creek-bed road, Granny Joslin sat down to make her own accounting. David—her boy Davy—the one who understood her—whom sheunderstood so well—where was he? Had they indeed killed him? Was he lying out there in the mountains somewhere, his last resting place unknown to any save his enemies?
“Curse the last of them—them cowardly Gannts!” Again she raised her skinny hand in malediction. “May mildew fall on them an’ theirs. May their blood fail to breed, an’ may they know sorrer an’ trouble all their lives! I wish to God I was a man. Oh, God, bring me back my man—my boy Davy!”
But the mountain side against which she looked, against which she spoke, made no answer to her. She sat alone. A film came over her fierce eye like that which crosses the eye of a dying hawk. Whether or not a tear eventually might have fallen may not be said, but before that time old Granny Joslin rose, grunting, and hobbled back into her own desolate home. She lighted the fire. She set all things in order. The castle of the Joslins had not yet been taken. But David came not back that day, nor upon the third, nor yet upon the fourth day. By that time she had given him up for dead.
Yet it was upon the morning of that fourth day that David Joslin himself sat concealed, high upon the mountain side, and looked down upon the broken home of Granny Joslin. He saw the smoke curling up from the chimney, and knew it as the banner of defiance.He knew that the old dame would live out her life to its end according to her creed.
His keen eye saw the new mound in the apple orchard—the broken clay now dried in the sun of several days. He could guess the rest. For himself, he was alive. He had been dead, but now he was born again.
At the end of the fight in Semmes’ Cove, there was a general scattering and confusion. The Gannt party finally had taken care of their own dead and wounded, and, passing on up the ravine toward the usual paths of escape, had tarried at the stillhouse only long enough to refresh themselves as was their need. For those of the attacking party left behind they had small care. A man or two was down somewhere behind the rocks. As for the man who had broken into the house—David Joslin—he was dead. Had they not caught him neck and crop, and thrown him headlong into the gully? Yes, one thing was sure, David Joslin was dead; and he had been the leader of the attack. Therefore, the Gannts accounted themselves as having won a coup also for their side of the feud.
When Joslin awoke to the consciousness of bitter pain, he reached out a hand in the darkness which enshrouded him. He felt damp earth. So, then, he reasoned, he was dead and buried, and this was his grave! For some time he made no attempt to breathe or to move. Yes, this was his grave. He lay he knew nothow long in the full realization that life was done for him.
Then, as the cool of the night refreshed him, he felt about him, felt the weeping of dew-damp leaves above him, and slowly reasoned that he was not dead at all, and not in his grave, but that he had been flung somewhere here into the bottom of the ravine.
Slowly he struggled to his knees. He staggered up the side of the slope as best he might, more by chance than otherwise, taking that side which lay nearest the dance house. He saw in the gloom the low boulders, behind which his fighting men had lain. He stumbled across the dead body of Calvin Trasker, left where he had fallen. There remained to him sensibility enough to put the dead man’s hat across his face; but he could do no more than that. He knew that if he were found here he would be killed indeed. So, knowing that there was no longer need for him or chance for him here, he staggered on down the ravine of Semmes’ Cove, until at length he could go no farther, and so fell once more unconscious.
When again he awoke it was broad sunshine. How long he had lain he could not tell. But now thirst assailed him, thirst which he might quench in the trickle of water which lay below. The provender of the woods, a few nuts, a pawpaw or so, seemed grateful to him now. He staggered on, knowing that it would be no more than two or three miles down the ravineuntil he came to the little camp he had made in the rain, after he had left his own home on that unhappy day. And so at length he found that bivouac and dropped into the bed of rotten wood once more, and lay prostrate all that day and the next.
It was really upon the morning of the fourth day after the encounter—although Joslin himself could not have said as to that—that, strong enough now to walk, he staggered out of the thicket-covered lower entrance of Semmes’ Cove into the little creek bed, which made the path to his father’s home. He must look once more at the house where he himself was born.
Was born, did he say? No, he had been born a second time! In these long hours of misery and pain, David Joslin had taken accounting as best he might with life and the philosophies thereof. In his fashion of thought, he had gained the conviction that his “call” had come to him. He was called for a different life. There was no doubt about it. New duties lay before him—all of a new life—because he had been born again! To him his salvation was not less than a miracle, and he accepted it as such solemnly and reverently, feeling himself now consecrated fully for some cause. What the form of that consecration might be he himself did not clearly know as yet.
But there came to him, with this feeling, the solemn conviction that he must leave this country. This opportunity seemed to him providential. No, he wouldnot even go to say farewell to his wife, nor to greet his grandma, Granny Joslin, to give counsel to her. He, being dead, must depart secretly forever from these hills until he might return to them to do the thing given him to do.
Such, unnatural and hard as that might seem to others, was the ancient, grim, uncompromising creed of David Joslin of the Cumberlands. Let the dead bury its dead. Let the living live their own lives.
Weakly, slowly, he climbed along the mountain side above the creek bed, to avoid any passerby, and so at length reached the point upon the opposing hill whence he might look down upon the little home once owned by the man who lay there now, under the drying yellow ridge in the apple orchard planted by his sires.
How long David Joslin sat here, his chin in his hands, he himself might not have told. He sat looking down, pondering, resolving.... Yes, he was born again! What must he do?
At length he rose, staggeringly rose, seeking about for some broken branch to aid him further in his journey. For now he purposed a long, long journey out from these hills. He was going away from his own people!
His hand fell against something hard in the side pocket of his ragged coat. It was the old book he had borrowed of his father—the well-thumbed volume of Calvin’s Institutes. His belt and revolver were gone—heknew not where—but here was this ancient, iron book. He recalled now, with the tenacious memory of the mountaineer, a passage which he had read therein:
Truly, I have no refuge but in Him. Let no man flatter himself, for of himself he is only a devil. For what have you of your own but sin? Take for yourself sin, which is your own. Your righteousness belongs to God. Nature is wounded, distressed and ruined. It needs a true confession, not a false defense.
“A true confession—not a false defense!” All the honesty, all the ignorance, all the hope of these mountains were in the mind of David Joslin, as he repeated these vague words of the old mystic to himself. He now felt himself a prophet.
And now, a prophet, he was going out into the world.