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 two young 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 she understood 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 not how 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 ravine until 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 would not 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—he knew 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.