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.”