She sat alone now, gazing out across the hills.

Page [312]

THE
WAY OUT

BY

EMERSON HOUGH

McKinlay, Stone & Mackenzie

NEW YORK

copyright, 1918, by
EMERSON HOUGH

Printed in the United States of America

To
JAMES ALEXANDER BURNS
Prophet of His People

CONTENTS

BOOK I

THE WAY OUT

CHAPTER I

THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL

“HUSH! Stop it, Davy. He’s a-comin’!”

The old woman who spoke—a wrinkled dame she was, bowed down by years and infirmity, her face creased by a thousand grimed-in, wrinkled lines—moved with an odd sprightliness as she stepped across the floor. She placed a hand upon the shoulder of the young man whom she accosted, standing between him and the door of the little cabin of which they were the only occupants.

The young man turned toward her, smiling half dreamily. He was a tall man, as his outstretched legs, one crossed over the other, would attest; a man well developed, muscular and powerful. His gray eyes seemed now half a-dream, his wide mouth fixed itself in pleasant lines, so that he seemed far away, somewhere in the lands to which music offers access. For now he had been engaged in the production of what perhaps might have been called music. It was an old ballad tune he had been playing on his violin, and but now his grandam had joined in high and cracking treble on the old air of “Barbara Allen,” known time out of mind in these hills. It was the keener ear of the old woman which first had caught warning of approaching danger.

“Take keer, I say!” she repeated, and shook him impatiently. “I tell ye I heerd him come in at the lower gate. He’ll be here direckly. Git shet of that fiddle, boy!”

She bent on him a pair of deep-set hazel eyes, sharp as those of some wild creature. Her voice had in it a half-masculine dominance. Every movement of her stooped and broken body bespoke a creature full of resolution, fearless, fierce.

“Gawd knows why he’s back so soon,” she went on, “but he’s here. Give him time to turn old Molly loose and git a few years of corn, an’ he’ll be right in. Onct he hears that fiddle he’ll raise trouble, that’s what he’ll do. I reckon I know a preacher, an’ most of all yore daddy. For him thar hain’t nothin’ sinfuller’n a fiddle; he’s pizen on ’em—all preachers is—him wust of all. What does he know about music? Now, if he was French an’ Irish, like me, it mought be different. But then——”

“I kain’t hep it, Granny,” said the young man, still slowly, still unchanged, his fingers still trailing across the strings. “‘Barbara Allen’—do ye call that wicked, even on a Sunday? Besides, this is the fust time I’ve ever strung this fiddle up full. I couldn’t git the strings till jest now. Melissa says——”

“Never mind what Meliss’ says neither—she’s a triflin’ sort, even if she is yore own wife. For all that, ye’d orter be home this minute, like enough.”

“As if ye understood!” said the young man, sighing now and dropping the instrument to his knee. For the first time a shade of sadness crossed his face, giving to his features a certain sternness and masculine vigor.

“Why shouldn’t I understand, Davy? Listen—ye hain’t for these hills. Ye’re a throw-back somehow, ye don’t belong here. I say that, though yore daddy is my own son. Don’t I know him—he’d skin us alive if he found us two here fiddlin’ on Sunday atternoon. He certainly would shake us out over hell fire, boy! When he gits started to exhortin’ and damnin’ around here, he certainly is servigerous. Ye know that. Hist, now!”

The young man himself now heard the sound of heavy footsteps slopping on the sodden earth, the slam of the slat gate’s wooden latch as someone entered. There followed the stamp of heavy feet on the broken gallery, where evidently someone was stopping for an instant to kick off the mud.

Before the newcomer could enter the young man arose, and with one stride gained the opening that led up to the loose-floored loft of the single-storied log house. He reached up a long arm and laid the offending fiddle back out of sight upon the floor.

Just as he turned there entered the person against whose advent he had been warned—a tall man, large of frame, bushy and gray-white of hair and as to a beard whose strong, close-set growth gave him a look of singular fierceness. As he stood he might have seemed fifty years old. In reality he was past seventy. The young man who faced him now—his son—was twenty-eight. A stalwart breed this, housed here in this cabin in a cove of the ancient Cumberlands. The old dame who stood now, her eyes turning from one to the other, would never see her ninetieth birthday again.

Andrew Joslin, commonly known through these half-dozen mountain communities where he rode circuit as “Preacher Joslin,” stood now in the door of his own home and looked about him with his accustomed sternness—a sternness always more intense upon the Lord’s Day. A somber, dour nature, that of this mountain minister, whose main mission in life was to proclaim the wrath of God. A man of yea, yea, and nay, nay, one must have said who saw him standing now, his gray eyes looking out fiercely, searchingly, beneath his bushy brows.

“What ye been doin’?” he asked suspiciously now, indifferently of the old woman, his mother, and the stalwart young man, his own son. “What ye doin’ here, David? Why hain’t ye home? Why hain’t ye at church to-day, like ye’d orter be?”

“Thar’s no sarvices nowhars near here, an’ ye know it, Andrew,” said the old woman somewhat querulously.

“Thar kin be sarvices anywhar whar a few is gethered together in the name of the Lord. Ye two right here could hold sarvices for the glory of God, if so as ye wanted to.”

Neither made answer to him, and he went on:

“David, have ye read all of that thar book I give ye? Ye’d orter git some good outen Calvin’s Institutes. Ye’ll maybe be a preacher some time like yore daddy.”

“Well, daddy, I done tried to read her. I set up all one night with Preacher Cuthbertson from over in Owsley, an’ we both read sever’l chapters in them Institutes. Hit was nigh about midnight when we both went to sleep, an’ atter I’d went to sleep he done shuk me by the shoulder an’ woke me up, an’ he says to me, ‘David, David, I’ve been thinkin’ over them Institutes so hard.... I believe they’ve injured my mind’!”

The young man broke into a wide-mouthed smile as he made this recountal. But it was a thundercloud of wrath upon the face of his father which greeted such levity.

“Ye wasn’t reverent!” he blazed. “Ye was impyous, both of ye. Injure his mind—why, that feller Cuthbertson never had no mind fer to injure. That’s what ails him. The book of John Calvin is one of the greatest books in the world. What’ll folks like ye and Preacher Cuthbertson be up an’ sayin’ next? An’ I’d set ye apart for the ministry, too, allowin’ I could git ye some schoolin’ atter a while, somewhars.”

He turned from them both, and stood a little apart, his brows drawn down into a scowling frown.

“How come ye come home so soon, Andrew?” asked his mother now. “We wasn’t expectin’ ye back—ye told me ye was a-goin’ over to Leslie to preach a couple days on the head of Hell-fer-Sartin. But ye only left yisterday.”

“Hit’s none yore business how I got back so soon,” replied the old man savagely. “I don’t have to account to no one what I do.”

He turned about now moodily. In his great hand he still clutched the heavy umbrella which he carried, its whalebone ribs and cotton cover dripping rivulets. A step or two brought him to the opening in the loft floor, where he reached up to place the wet umbrella out of the way. As he did so his hand struck some other object hidden there. He grasped it and drew it down—and stood, his face fairly contorted with surprise and anger.

It was his son’s violin which now he clutched in his gnarled and bony hand. As he regarded it the emotion on his face was as much that of horror as aught else. A violin, an instrument of hell, here in his house—his house—a chosen minister of God!

“What’s this?” he demanded at length. “Tell me—how come this thing here—in my house!”

With one stride now—tearing away all the strings of the instrument with one grasp of his hand as he did so—he flung the offending violin full upon the flames in the fireplace, sweeping from him with an outward thrust of his great arm the tall figure of his son, who impulsively stepped forward to save his cherished instrument. As for the wrinkled old woman, she stood arrested in an attitude as near approaching fear as any she ever had evinced. She knew the fierce temper of both these men.

But the young man, the equal in height of his parent, his superior in strength, stayed his own impulse and lowered the clenched hand he had raised. Filial obedience, after all, was strong in his heart

“That’s whar it belongs!” exclaimed the older man, his eyes flashing. “In hell fire is whar all them things belongs, an’ the critters that fosters ‘em. My own flesh an’ blood! O Lord God, lay not up this against thy sarvent!”

“Ye have sinned against the Lord,” he began, excited now in something of the religious fervor which had had no expenditure of late. He thrust a long, bony finger towards his son. “Ye an’ yore granny both have sinned. To Adam was give the grace of perseverin’ in good if he choosed. Adam had the power if he had the will, but not the will that he mought have the power. It was give to all of us subserquents to have both the will an’ the power fer to obstain from sin. But have ye two obstained? Look at that thing a-quoilin’ up in hell. That’s what comes to them that fosters evil when they have both the will an’ the power, an’ don’t use neither.”

They stood looking at him silently, and he went on, still more excited.

“Ye have-ah—tempted of the Lord,” he intoned. “Ye have forgot the holy commandments of the Lord-ah! Ye have sinned in the sight of God on the holy Sabbath day-ah! Ye have kivered up yore sin from me, the sarvent of the Lord-ah! Ye have plotted agin me. Ye have no grace, fer grace is not offered by the Lord to be either received or rejected—it is grace that perjuces both the will an’ the choice in the heart of man. But whar air the subserquent good works of grace? Ye don’t show them. Ye nuvver had no grace, neither one of ye! The both of ye will quoil in hell like that thing thar.”

“Tell me”—he turned now to the old dame—“was he a-fiddlin’ here in my house on the Lord’s day?”

“Yes, he war, an’ it hain’t the first time!” exclaimed the old woman. “I don’t keer who knows it. He war a-playin’ ‘Barbara Allen’ here, an’ I war a-singin’ to it. Now ye know it, an’ what air ye goin’ to do about it?”

For a moment the three stood in tableau, strong, yet sad enough. Then the fierce soul of the old man flamed yet more.

“Disgrace me—in my own house! Out of my house, ye, an’ never darken its doors agin! Yore wife and children need ye plenty ‘thout ye comin’ up here, fiddlin’ in a preacher’s house on Sunday.”

“Do ye mean that, daddy?” asked the young man quietly. “Do ye reelly mean that? Maybe ye’d better think it over.”

“I don’t have to think it over,” retorted the other. “Begone! Don’t nuvver come here again.”

“I reckon I’ll go too,” said the grandam, reaching out a skinny arm for the sunbonnet on its peg at the door.

“Ye’ll do nothin’ of the sort,” replied her son savagely. “Ye belong here. Let him go. I sont his mother outen the same door onct.”

“I know ye did, Andrew,” she replied, her fierce eyes untamed as she faced him. “An’ as good a womern as ever was in the world when she started, ontel ye cowed her an’ abused her, an’ sont her down the river—ye know whar, an’ ye know into what. Ye kin preach till ye’re daid, and shake me over hell fire all ye like, but ye kain’t change me, and ye kain’t scare me, an’ ye know it almighty well. I’ll stay here, an’ I’ll go when I git ready, an’ ye know that.”

“Go on, Davy.” She turned to the young man who stood, gray and silent, his hand upon the half-opened door. “Take him at his word, an’ don’t ye nuvver come back here agin. If ye hain’t happy in yore own home, git outen these mountings—git somewhars else. No matter what ye do, ye kain’t do worsen what ye’re doin’ here. Ye know that yore maw nuvver flickered afore him—nor yore granny neither—an’ don’t ye.”

The gray old man stood silent, at bay, in the center of the squalid little room—a room cluttered up with heavy, homemade chairs, a pair of corded bedsteads, a low board table; an interior lighted now in the approaching gloom of evening by nothing better than the log fire on the deep-worn hearth. It was an old, old room in an old, old house. The threshold of the door, renewed no man might say how often, was worn yet again to the bottom. Its hinges of wood were again worn half in two. The floor, made of puncheons once five inches thick, hewn by a hand-adze two generations ago from some giant poplar tree, now worn almost as smooth as glass by the polishing of bare feet—puncheons more than a yard wide each as they lay here on the ancient floor beams. A pair of windows, once owning glass, partially lighted the room, and there were two doors, one standing ajar at the farther end of the room making upon a covered passageway which led to a second cabin. In this usually went forward, it might be supposed, the cooking operations of the place, such as they were.

At length the old woman stepped to the side of the fireplace and kicked together the ends of the logs. A faint flame arose, now lighting up the interior of this half-savage abode. It showed all the better the tall form of the young man at the door. He spoke no more. With one last glance straight at the face of his father, he turned and passed out into the dusk.

The old man, suddenly trembling, now cast himself into a chair before the fire and sat staring into the flickering flames.

“Whar’s my supper?” he demanded hoarsely after a time.

“Thar hain’t none ready, an’ ye know it,” said his mother. “If I’d a-knowed ye war a-comin’ back I mought have got something ready. What made ye?”

“Hit war the Lord’s will,” he rejoined. “I’ve met causes sufficient. The Lord brung me back to find out what was a-goin’ on here, I reckon. The Sabbath, too!”

“Hit’s no worse one day than another,” said his mother. “Ye’ve druv yore own son outen yore own house. He’s got no house of his own to go to, to speak of—God knows thar’s little enough to keep him thar, that’s shore. Thar’s little enough to keep any of us here, come to that.”

Her attitude certainly was not that of shrinking or fear. Granny Joslin was known far and wide through these mountains as the fightingest of the fighting Joslins; and that was saying much.

“Womern, womern!” The old preacher raised a hand in protest. There was a sort of weakening in his face and his attitude, a sort of quavering in his voice.

She turned and looked at him—looked at the floor where his chair sat before the fireplace. Beside the drip of the old umbrella there was another stain spreading on the floor now—darker than that which first had marked it; a stain which seemed to have darkened his garments and to have caked on his heavy, homemade shoes.

“What’s that, Andy?” she asked imperiously, but knowing well enough what it was. “Who done that?”

He made no answer for a time, but at length remarked with small concern, “Why, old Absalom done that, that’s who. He knifed me in the back when I was lookin’ the other way atter his two boys.”

“Ye taken the old hill trail, then?”

“Yes, it wasn’t so slippy as the creek road up to Hell-fer-Sartin. Oh, I know I was warned outen thar, but I couldn’t show the white feather, could I?”

“No, ye couldn’t, not even if ye war a preacher.” By this time she was busying herself caring for his wound.

“Well, that’s how it come,” went on Andrew Joslin. “I taken the hill trail turnin’ off yander from the creek, like ye know. I met them up in the hills. The Lord led me to ‘em, maybe. The Lord fotched me back here, too, to find what I have found. How have I sinned!”

“If ye didn’t kill old Absalom Gannt ye shore have sinned,” remarked his fierce dam casually. “Was it some fight they made?”

“Well, yes. Thar wasn’t but me along, exceptin’ Chan Bullock from over on the head of the Buffalo—we met up jest as I got up into the hills. When we turned down the head of Rattlesnake we run acrosst them people settin’ under a tree, dry, an’ playin’ a game of keerds, right on the Lord’s day. I rid up with my pistol in my hand, an’ I says to them I didn’t think they war a-doin’ right to play keerds thar. I seen old Absalom thar, an’ two of his boys and two of his cousins. Before I could say much to them, one of the boys he up and fired fust. He hit old Molly in the neck. She pitched some then, an’ afore I could git her whar I could do anything, the feller that fired at me, he slipped over down the big bank back of him, an’ got away in the bush. They had their horses thar, an’ a couple of ‘em jumped on horseback an’ begun firin’ at me, an’ all the time old Molly was a-jumpin’ so nobody could hit nobody offen her. Then come Chan Bullock ridin’ up closeter to me. He had along his old fifty-caliber Winchester—never could bear them big guns; they shoot too high. Well, he fired couple of times, an’ missed, an’ by that time all of Absalom an’ his folks was on the run, either horseback er afoot.

“I seen the boy that done shot at me a-runnin’ down the creek bed more’n a hundred and fifty yard away. I grabbed the gun away from Chan, an’ I says, ‘If I couldn’t shoot no better’n ye kin I’d be ashamed o’ myself.’ So I taken a keerful aim—ye see, I helt a leetle ahead of him—an’ when I pulls the trigger he rolls over about four times atter he hit the ground. I swear that big rifle must be a hard-hittin’ gun—hit war a good two-hundred yard when I shot!

“Chan didn’t have no pistol along, an’ mine had fell on the ground. While all this war a-happenin’, Absalom he had snuck back behint the tree whar they was a-settin’ an’ a-playin’ keerds. Now, when my back was turned, he run out an’ he cut me two er three times right here in the back, afore I could hep myself. Then he run off, too.”

“An’ ye didn’t git ‘im?”

“How could I? He run down the creek bed road towarge whar that other feller was. I covered him fair with Chan’s gun—but she snapped on me. He hadn’t had but a couple of hulls, an’ I’d shot the last shot at Pete when I got him. So Absalom, he got away.”

“Well, you see how come me to come home,” he added presently, having faithfully told his kin the full story of the latest combat. “I didn’t know as I could git acrosst the mountings into Hell-fer-Sartin an’ preach fer a couple days. Somehow it seemed to me I had orter come back home. I did—an’, well you see what I’ve done found here. I didn’t git Absalom. I’ve lost my son, David. Hit ’pears to me like I’m forsaken of the Lord this day!”

His mother made no comment, but stepped up to the mantel-piece and reached down a bottle of white liquid, from which she poured half a pint into a gourd which she found alongside the bottle.

“Drink this,” said she. “We’ll git Absalom some other time.”

CHAPTER II

A NEW CREED

THE young man who had been dismissed from his father’s house walked unmindful of the rain still falling in the evening gloom, nor looked back to the door now closed behind him. His face, strong and deeply lined, now had settled into a sternness which belied the half-humorous expression it but now had borne. He was wide of chest, broad of shoulder, straight of limb as he walked now, hands in pockets, straightforward, not slouching down, his back flat. There was little of apathy or weakness about him, one would have said. Well-clad, such a man as he would attract many a backward gaze from men—or women—on any city street.

He stepped straight down the little bank beyond the fence marking the delimitations of the scant yard and the little cornfield of Preacher Joslin’s cabin, and at once was in the road, or all the road that ever had been known there. It was no better than the rocky bed of the shallow creek which flowed directly in front of the cabin. Here, in the logging days, iron-shod wheels had worn deep grooves into the sand rock. The longer erosion of the years also had cut sharp the faces of some of the clay banks. It might have been seen in a stronger light than this of twilight, that these banks had great seams of black running parallel through them—croppings of the heavy coal seams known throughout the region.

From time to time the young man sprang from rock to rock as he made his way down the bed of the little branch now running full from the heavy rain, but he walked on carelessly, for the road was well known to him by day or night. It had been the path of himself, his family, his ancestors, for well nigh a hundred years.

As he advanced, David Joslin cast an eye now and again upon the mountain sides. They were beautiful, even in the dull of evening, clad in gorgeous autumnal glories of chlorophyll afire under the combined alchemies of the rain, the frost, and the sun. There were reds more brilliant than may be seen even among the maples of the far north when the frost comes, yellows for which a new color name must be invented, browns of unspeakable velvety softness, a thousand ocherous and saffron hues such as no palette carries. They lay now softened and dulled, but very beautiful.

Young Joslin knew every hill, every ravine, every mountain cove which lay about him here,—all the country for fifty miles. Presently he reached the end of this little side trail down from the mountains, and emerged into a wider valley where passed the considerable volume of a fork of the Kentucky River, itself now running yellow from the rains. Had he cared he might have noted, now passing on the flood, scattered logs and parts of rafts, flotsam and jetsam of the old wasteful occupants of the land, who cut and dragged priceless timber to the grudging stream, and lost the more the more they labored.

He turned to the right, followed down the muddy river bank, and within a quarter of a mile turned yet again to the right at a decrepit gate serving in part to stop the way as adjutant of a broken rail fence which marked a scanty field.

Before him now lay a cleared space of some twenty acres or more, occupied at one corner by spare, gnarled apple trees, no man might say how old, appurtenances of acres which David Joslin had “heired” from the husband of the same grandam, whom but now he had left. Behind the apple trees rose a low roof, the broken cover of a scant gallery, a chimney, ragged-topped, at each end of the cabin. Here and there stood a China tree, yonder grew a vine, softening somewhat and beautifying even in the beauty of decay those rude surroundings. Back of the house were other small log buildings, cribs scantily filled with corn. In the barnyard stood two tall poles, behind which, running up into the darkness of the mountain side, stretched the long rusted wires which in the harvesting of the autumn sometimes carried down from the side of the mountains, too steep for the use of horse or mule, the sacks of corn perilously gathered above and sent down in the easiest way to the farmyard.

Apparently the harvest that fall had been but scant. The place had an air of poverty, or meagerness—rather perhaps should one use the latter than the former word. It was not the home of a drunkard, or a ne’er-do-well, or a poverty-smitten man, which David Joslin now approached—his own home, one like to many others all about him in these hills. It was an old, old, out-worn land, a decrepit land, which lay all about him. He was like his neighbors, his home like theirs.

David Joslin walked past the China tree and up to his own door. He stood for a moment scraping the mud from his feet at the end of the broken board on the little gallery before he pushed open the door. A woman rose to meet him.

She was a woman yet young, but seemed no longer young. Perhaps she was twenty-two, perhaps twenty-five years of age. She was tall and strong, after the fashion of the mountain woman, angular, spare. The thin dark hair, swept smoothly back from her bony forehead, seemed to come from a scalp tight-grown upon the skull. She appeared to carry about her the look of a certain raw, rugged strength, though there was little of the soft and feminine about her figure, about her attitude, about her voice as she now spoke to him.

“Why didn’t ye come home long ago?” she demanded with no preliminary.

Joslin made no answer, but sat down sullenly in a chair which he pushed up to the fireplace. The flames were dying down into a mass of coals which likewise seemed sullen. He reached out to the scant pile of firewood at the corner of the hearth, and cast on a stick or so.

“Ye’re always away,” she went on grumbling. “Folks’ll think ye don’t care nothin’ fer yore own fam’ly. Every whip-stitch ye’re off up into the hills, visitin’ somewhars or other, I don’t know whar. What’s it comin’ to?”

Still he made no answer, and she went on upbraiding.

“We been married four years, an’ ye act as free as if we’d nuvver been married at all. Don’t yore fam’ly need nothin’ now an’ agin? Is this all a womern’s got to live fer, I want to know? Look what kind of place we got.”

“Hit’s all ye come from,” he said at length. “Hit’s all yore people ever knowed, er mine. Why should ary of us expect more?”

An even, dull, accepted despair was in his tone. As for her, she cared not so much for philosophy as for the heckling she had held in reserve for him.

“Hit’s a lot to offer ary womern, hain’t it?” said she.

“Had ye much to offer in exchange?” said he, quietly and bitterly. “We traded fair, the best we knowed, the same sort of trade that’s common. We got married—thar was our children. What more is thar fer ye er em er ary of us in these hills, I’d like to know! Such as I’ve had, ye’ve had.”

There was something so stern, so bitter, in his sudden unkind remark that she took another tack.

“Hain’t ye tired?” she began, wheedling. She stooped over and pulled back the coverlet, a gaudy, patchwork quilt upon the single bed of the apartment. “Don’t ye want to lay down an’ rest a while?”

“No. I’m a-thinkin’.”

“What was ye thinkin’ about—me?”

“No, I was thinkin’ about the new doctor, an’ what he said to me last week.”

She was silent now. The name of the new doctor seemed to be something she had heard before.

“Ye talk too much with that new doctor. He puts too many fool ideas in yore haid. We’re married, an’ we got to live like that. How do ye figger any different, I’d like to know? Ye brung me here yore own self—ye knowed what ye wanted when ye come up thar courtin’ me at my daddy’s at the haid of Bull Skin. I come right down here to yore house when I was married. I stood right on this floor here, an’ yore daddy, he married us. Ye know that.”

“Yes, I do.” The young man’s face was extremely grave and gray as he spoke.

“—An’ yore daddy was a regular ordained preacher.”

“What’s the matter with ye, anyways?” she went on querulously. “Ye been a-quarlin’ with yore own people well as me?”

“My own daddy jest now ordered me outen his house. I’m nuvver goin’ thar no more.”

“Huh! I reckon yore own free-thinkin’ ways druv it on ye.”

“He burned my fiddle!” said David Joslin, with sudden resentment.

“Ye mought have expected it—goin’ up thar to play a fiddle in a preacher’s house!”

“I jest had her strung up for the fust time,” rejoined her husband. “I was a-playin’ ‘Barbara Allen.’ My daddy accused me of bein’ sinful. We’ve got it hard enough livin’ in these hills without being damned when we die.”

“Hush, Dave! Be keerful of what ye say.”

“I’m a-bein’ keerful. I’m castin’ up accounts this very day. I been castin’ up accounts fer some time. I’m thinkin’ of what that new doctor said to me. That was preachin’ sich as I nuvver heern tell of afore in these hills. I wish’t he’d come here an’ stay right along.”

She made no answer now, but pulled out the rude board table at the side of the fire, and placed upon it a yellowed plate or so, holding a piece of cold cornpone, a handful of parched corn.

“Eat,” said she. “Hit’s all we got. I borrowed some meal from the Taggarts. They’ve got no more to lend.”

“Don’t ask nothin’ of no one, womern. I’ll not be beholden to ary man. I tell ye, I’m castin’ up accounts.”

“What do ye mean—what ye talkin’ about, Dave?” She was half-frightened now.

“I hardly know. I kain’t see very much light jest yit.”

“Hain’t ye goin’ to eat?” she said. “Hain’t ye goin’ to sleep? Hain’t ye goin’ to lay down on the bed?”

“No!” said he. “No! Our children laid thar onct—them two. They died. It was best they died. They’re our last ones.”

“What do ye mean, Dave?” she again demanded, wide-eyed. “What do ye mean—ye hain’t a-goin’ to sleep here with me agin—nuvver?”

“No, I told ye. I said I was a-castin’ up accounts. Meliss’, I’ve got to go away.”

“Ye hain’t a-goin’ to quit me?”

“I don’t like that word. I nuvver quit nobody nor nothin’ that I owed a duty to. But I’ve got to go away. Hit hain’t right fer ye an’ me to live together no more. Children—why, my God!”

“Dave! Air ye crazy? Hain’t I been a good and faithful womern to ye? Tell me!”

He did not answer her.

“Tell me, Dave—have ye——”

“No! I’ve been as faithful as ye. We made our mistake when we was married—we mustn’t make it no more an’ no wuss.”

“The new doctor!” She blazed out now with scorn, contempt, indignation, all in her voice.

“Yes!” he replied suddenly. “The new doctor—ary doctor—ary man with sense could have told us what he told me. I know now a heap of things I nuvver knowed—what my pap an’ mammy nuvver knowed.”

“Ye’re a-goin’ to quit me like a coward!”

“I quit nobody like a coward. I hain’t a coward, Meliss’, an’ you know it. I’m a-goin’ to quit ye because I’m a brave man. I’ve got to be as brave as ary man ever was in the Cumberlands to do what I’ve got to do. Do ye think it’s easy fer me? Don’t ye think I hear my own children cryin’ still—mine as much as yours? An’ this was all I have to give them. Thank God they died! They’d nuvver orter of been borned.”

His wife sank into a chair, her hands dropped limp in her lap. His own hands were trembling as, after a long time, he turned toward her; his voice trembled also.

“Look around us in these hills,” said he, his lips quivering. “Think of what’s in them coves back fer fifty mile yan way, and yan, and yan, up the Bull Skin, up the Redbird, up Hell-fer-Sartin an’ Newfound an’ the Rattlesnake an’ the Buffalo—houses like ours—whisky—killin’—cousins.”

“Cousins?” Her voice was hoarse. “Why not?”

“Whisky—killin’—cousins!” he repeated. “I don’t know which is the wust, but I reckon the cousin part is. We was cousins! Thar’s cousins back in our family, both sides, as far as we know. Those children—thank God! Thar’ll be no more.”

Now indeed a long, long silence fell between them. The woman was pale as death as she turned to him at last, to hear his self-accusing monotone.

“God knows what I’m a-goin’ to do. But one thing shore, if I’ve sinned I’ve got to pay. I reckon it’s a-goin’ to be a right big price I’ve got to pay. Thar’s a wall around us—hit’s around these mountings—hit shets us all out from all the world. Do ye reckon, Meliss’, if I was able to make a way through—do ye reckon they’d say I’d paid?”

“Ye talk like a fool, man!” said she with sudden anger, “like a fool! Ye let a limpy, glass-eyed doctor stir ye all up and fill yer haid with fool idees. Ye say ye’re a-goin’ to quit me, that had our babies—because of what? Yore duty’s to me—to me—me! Ye married me. I want live children—hit’s a disgrace when a womern don’t have none. Hit’s yore business to take care of me, an’ now ye say ye’re a-goin’ to quit me. Ye’re a coward, that’s what ye air, the wustest coward ever was in these mountings. I don’t want furrin ways myself—I don’t want to go Outside—I don’t want ary of them new doctors comin’ in here, fetched on from Outside. This is our country, an’ it’s good enough. Ye talk about leavin’ me. Thar’s some other womern somewhars—that’s what’s the matter with ye, Dave Joslin, an’ I know it!”

He rose now, gray, pallid, half-tottering as he stood under her tirade.

“That’s not true,” said he at last “I don’t reckon ye understand me, er what I mean, er what I think. The only question is, what’s right. We hain’t livin’ the way folks orter do to-day. The new doctor tolt me what’s Outside. Why, womern, that’s the world—that’s life! More’n that—a heap more’n that—that’s duty! If I stay here an’ make a little corn an’ raise a couple of hogs a year, livin’ with ye an’ raisin’ a couple more of childern, I hain’t livin’ the way I’d orter. If we wasn’t cousins—if I didn’t know now it’s a sin to live on this way—I wouldn’t quit ye—I’d die first. I hain’t a-goin’ to quit ye now. As long as I got a dollar in the world it’s yores. I’ll hep ye more by goin’ out. An’ I’m a-goin’ out—I’m a-goin’ Outside.

“I’m sorry fer ye, Meliss’,” said he presently, as she sat stone-cold. “I’m sorry fer all of the wimern like ye in these mountings, sorry fer us all. God knows I don’t want to make it harder fer ye—only easier. Hit’s just a question o’ what’s the right thing to do.”

There was a vast softness, a great pity in his voice as he spoke now. He stood irresolute, and his eyes, in spite of himself, turned sideways to where once had lain two small bundles at the foot of the unkempt bed.

“Ye coward!” she cast at him, bitter and intense. “Ye low-borned coward! Ye’re a-goin’ to quit me, mother of yore dead childern. Well, go on along. I won’t ax ye to stay. Git along.”

“My granny she’s a-goin’ to take keer o’ ye,” said David Joslin. “She’ll be kind to ye, an’ ye’ll have no babies to bother over nuvver. Don’t—don’t talk to me no more. I reckon I kain’t stand no more.”

He stepped to the mantel, took from it the old faded book that lay there—no more and nothing else of all in the house that had been his. Then he turned toward his own door.

She heard his slow footsteps stumbling through the sodden grass. There closed behind him for the second time that evening a door opening upon what he had once called home.

CHAPTER III

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-time poplar,” 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 the throat 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 left the 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 them all’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 damn me!” 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 killed hisself, 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 the dead 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 believe in 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 IV

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 all knew 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 of white 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 general mingling 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 and saw 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 weapon in 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.”