THE CLANS

IN THE two years that passed after David Joslin left his home, no word was received from him by any of his friends or his kin, even by his old grandma left alone in the hill cabin. Even had he written, few could have read. But no letter came to the little post-office. David Joslin had vanished as though swallowed up by the great Outside. His enemies sneeringly declared him dead or else “run out.” His friends had much to do to keep their faith in him, Afterward a report came up from Windsor that he had been seen there. None might know that David Joslin was biding his time.

It was two years before a vague stirring came into the life of the little settlement near which he had lived. Then, upon a certain day of the late summer time, there came winding down the rugged pathways of the Cumberland coves, along the rocky creek bottoms, and at length along the well-beaten trails of the larger streams, little groups of riders. For the most part they were tall and silent men, their eyes watchful as they rode. All of them were armed. In many cases a woman sat back of her husband on the family mule. It was a gathering of the clans, and it was well known that in case a man were hurt, his own women folks could nurse him better than anyone else. As for that, the women of the mountains were as grim and savage as their lords and masters.

Slowly, steadily, watchful, alert, these strange people of the hills came riding down, the little threads of the broken procession converging toward the Forks where, so went the vague word, there was going to be a sort of meeting for a day or two—for what purpose, few seemed to know. The general understanding was that this meeting was to be held at the old mill building across the river. The village postmaster and the village blacksmith had passed the assembly call impartially.

There was other advice of import tacitly accepted, but, while it was generally understood that there might be, and probably would be, a reckoning between the tribes of the Gannts and the Joslins, those not immediately concerned in the family quarrel treated both parties with politeness. To carry word from one to the other would have been an act of treason, and punishable by the unwritten law of that country. Men went about their daily duties and talked little even to their own families.

The single street of the little village—scarce half a hundred houses and shops in all—was filled now with groups of men idly strolling, every one of than armed, old and young. Among these were boys, some not older than fifteen years, yet each confident in his own ability to draw quick and hold straight, and longing for the chance. The fingers of many a youth itched to get at the handle of the brand-new gun with which before now he had practiced so faithfully, saving his coppers for “hulls” to feed it. The older men strolled about unagitated. Group passed group upon the street, each man staring into the eyes of his enemy, his own face immobile, over his eye an impenetrable film—the eye of the dangerous man.

Men who casually estimated the respective representation of the Joslins and the Gannts thought there were forty or fifty men on each side. It was doubted if half of these would ever get out of town unhurt. The sheriff was somewhere far to the west, at the county seat. There was no peace officer, nor would it have been a good place for one. It was a meeting of the clans. The Cumberlands were going about their ancient business in their own ancient way.

Some, fitfully interested, spoke of the new railway now advancing from the Middle Fork up Hell-fer-Sartin. There was talk that a pike road had been built in as far as the county seat from somewhere very far in the west, as much as twenty miles. In a general way there seemed to hang in the air an unsettled feeling, as though all knew great events yet might happen. The war Outside—the railroad now impending—the old feud now about to break aflame again—it was a grave time for these strange, somber folk.

But a day passed, two days, and nothing broke. The leaders studiously kept away from the young men all that fiery liquor which, would be certain to set them beyond control. The tenseness of the long hours began to tell on all. Men became restless—boys stood here and there in groups, talking sullenly, looking this way and that, nodding a head hither or yon. But after their old and usual fashion, the leaders of both factions held them together—old Absalom Gannt and Chan Bullock and their respective attendants. “Wait, fellers,” was the arresting word that went around. “Come to the meetin’ at the mill.”

The main floor of the mill building at the Forks afforded a room perhaps fifty feet in one dimension, low-ceiled and dark. The reticent postmaster and the blacksmith had provided a few flickering lamps. And finally thither, soon after twilight of the appointed day, the mountaineers turned, group by group, man after man, silently, two score Joslins and as many or more of the Gannts, all of them too proud to stay away even though a stern mystery lay ahead. Every man of them was armed, every one of them ready for what might come. The old mill building, the only meeting place tacitly held neutral and the only practical town hall available, bade fair to see red history this night.

And there was history done that very night. They had all gathered, the men of both clans, thronging the dark interior. For half an hour they had sat, silent and alert, squatting here or there on their heels, slouching on sacks of grain or something of the sort. The Gannts were on the left-hand side, the Joslins on the right, as one entered the door. No one seemed to know what was expected. There still was mystery as to what had brought them here. Perhaps the postmaster and the blacksmith knew. If so, they would tell in time. That word had been passed to the Gannts that the Joslins would be here, and to the Joslins that the Gannts would come, was the only sure thing; and it was quite enough.

The blacksmith and the postmaster passed here and there, setting alight their lamps. No man spoke on either side. Both factions sat looking across the little white-floored lane of No Man’s Land which lay between them. A quick motion, a shout, the sound of a shot, would have been fatal to half the men present here; but if any one of them felt agitation, it was not manifest by any word or sign, by any paling of the face or trembling of the hand. Unagitated, calm, they sat, each with his eye on his own selected man, ready for what might happen.

What did happen was this: The door darkened against the pale starlight. There stepped slowly into the interior, where the shadows lay heavy upon the floor, the figure of a tall man.

It was a man whom they all knew. As he came into the circle lighted by the lamps, a sort of sigh went up, audible in its united volume.

It was David Joslin!

Now they knew why they were to come here. The leader of the Joslins had come back! That meant trouble. He had not died—everybody knew that—everybody had heard from down the river that he had run out and left the country. But now he had got courage to come back!

Yes, it meant trouble. The men on both sides eased off their pistol belts, loosened their holsters, under pretense of settling their coat tails or fumbling for tobacco.

But David Joslin raised his hand at once. “Wait!” said he. So, still silent, still motionless, they sat and looked at him, many in contempt, as many in judgment suspended.

He seemed thinner even than when he had left. His face bore a certain scholarly whiteness visible even under the burning of the sun—Joslin did not tell them so, but the truth was he had walked more than half the way from Brandon College—where for two years he had slaved at learning as no man in all the history of that school had been thought able to slave. Penniless at his hopeless start, he still was penniless after his overleaping of all rules and schedules and curricula. He had walked to this, his great trial. In some way he had been fed. In his own conviction that had been by direct act of God.

Better clad than when he had left, in a dark suit of clothing which did not fit him ill, with shoes at least not badly broken, and with certain touches of refinements of the civilization outside, none the less he remained the mountain man they had known so well. But something in his voice seemed different His diction had altered perceptibly, if not consistently. He stood before them now at ease, a leader, a speaker, even an orator of some sort, at least in the possession of that gift of oratory which in simple terms commands the attention of an audience.

“Wait!” said David Joslin. “Don’t make any move. I know why you’re here as well as you do, maybe a good deal better. I sent word in for you all to come. I’ve asked you to come here myself—I arranged this meeting with some of my friends here at the Forks. I wanted every moonshiner and feudist in the mountains to be right here to-night, where I could look him in the eye, and he could look me in the eye, and we could have it out together.

“No! I don’t mean to have it out in the old way. I want to tell you those times are past I see you sitting there, Absalom Gannt—I know you’re not a-scared of me, and I’m not a-scared of you. You’re fighting men, every one of you. And you’ve come here to fight each other once more—to kill each other, just like you and I and our fathers have been doing here in these mountains farther back than any of us can remember. You don’t know why you do that, but you think you ought to do it. It’s a sort of religion with us, just to kill each other. We don’t know no better—we never have.

“You thought I was a coward because I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I didn’t tell any of my own people. In a way, I just sneaked out of this country, that’s true, because I wasn’t yet sure about it all. I went down the river. I got to the railroad. I went up North. After a while I got so that I could go to school. That’s what taken me out of the mountains.

“Before I left these hills I had resolved to learn how to read and write and to cipher a little bit. I didn’t know then how much there was to be learned in the world. I didn’t know how hard it was to start—nor how easy once you get started.

“I’ve been at school less than a quarter of the time any boy of these hills ought to have been there. I’ve learned more than I thought there was to be learned anywhere. And this is the first thing I’ve learned—that it’s time we mountaineers stopped raising our children for the slaughter.

“I’ve learned that the only way to stop that sort of thing is by way of schools. You know how my own father died, and he was a preacher. I’m a-going to be a preacher myself some time—I’ve preached once or twice—they made me, up North there. But I don’t want to preach now. I just want to talk to my neighbors.

“Now, I didn’t run away. You know I won’t flicker. If it’s war, I’m here for war—but I don’t want it to be war.

“Outside, in the Old World, where our great-grandpaps came from once, maybe, they’re having war. It’s worse than any of you dream. But they’re all fighting for a principle, as they think. We’re fighting for nothing down here.

“Now, I want to see peace in the Cumberlands. I’m telling you, I want to start a college right here, on the hill yonder. I’m going to do that some time. Don’t you believe me?”

He was looking straight at old Absalom Gannt, and the old man, his eyes fixed steadily upon the speaker, answered him now.

“What law have we got to believe ye? Ye’ve got no money to start a school. Ye couldn’t keep a teacher thar if ye did.” Thus old Absalom.

“That’s true,” replied David Joslin quietly. “That’s the Gospel truth! As I stand here now I haven’t got two dollars in my pockets. It’s plumb taken all the money I’ve got to keep the soul alive in my body so I could study hard as I had to. But when I do get through up there, I promise you I’ll come here and start a college. Money or no money—help or no help—I’ll come and start that college! If I do, will you promise me that between now and that time you’ll not start any trouble here?”

The grizzled old man—leader of his people, therefore leader by strength of mind as well as body—sat silent now, looking him straight in the face, and Joslin returned his gaze with equal fearlessness.

“You know I never flickered, Absalom Gannt! You know my people won’t run away, not one of them. You know I won’t run away. You all know why I left; and now you know why I’ve come back.

“I’ve come here to do a mighty work, you’ll have to admit that fair. It’s a terrible task for all of us. We’ve got to change the ways we’ve been living here for more than a hundred years. We’ve got to break a hole in this wall that shuts us out of the world where we belong, that makes us children and paupers where we ought to be men and citizens. We’ve got to make our own way out.

“Now, if I agree with you to make you a college, and keep it open—a place where the children of these mountains can come to learn to read and write and cipher, and maybe go higher than that—if I can bring people here from the outside to show you what a big world it is that you don’t know about—tell me, will you promise me to keep the peace ontel I’ve succeeded or failed—ontel I’ve made good or ontel I’ve told you I’m a failure?

“Oh, I haven’t got much,” he went on hurriedly. “I’ve had a hard enough time up there—they laughed at me at first—I was ignorant as a child—I was only a savage, a wild man, ignorant as any nigger in the world—and wild—wild. And I was as big a sinner as any in the world—I had a lot of things to forget—me trying to be a preacher. Oh! haven’t I sinned! But I thought if I would come down here and get you all together and promise you that if you didn’t like what I told you, you could kill me here—it seemed to me it would part way make up for the heap of sinning I’ve done in my life, young as I am.

“I’m a Joslin. You’re Gannts over there—you and your kinpeople. We’re fine men, both families of us here. We can kill fifty fine men here in three minutes. Or we can build a school up yonder on the hill, across the river, inside of a couple of years. Which do you want to do?”

He stood silent for a long time, and all he heard was the heavy, half-panting breathing of the men at his right, at his left. There was not the shuffling of a foot, not the movement of a hand on either side. The eyes of each faction were glued upon the faces of the other. A tenser scene could not have been; nor could aught but starkest courage have evoked and dared it.

There came a movement upon one side of the dimly lighted room. A hundred hands went backward, a hundred pairs of eyes gleamed.

It was old Absalom Gannt who had moved. But his right hand went up above his shoulder, above his head. And it was empty!

He rose slowly now to his full, gnarled height, and stood, his right hand, empty, still above his head.

“Wait, boys!” he said. He turned and looked toward his right. Silently as a cat in his motion, Chan Bullock had also risen. But as he saw Absalom’s hand thrown up thus, he himself paused. The two faced one another, each sternly gazing into the face of his foe.

Joslin himself stood motionless, looking from the one to the other, his own hands dropped empty at his sides. He had spoken. But he knew that the fate of the Cumberlands rested here on the decision of these two men.

One false movement on the part of anyone, and the closed space had been a shambles. But Bullock with a quick gesture threw his own right hand above his head. He advanced toward old Absalom, the latter toward him, steadily, grimly, each with boring eyes that never yet had “flickered.” Then there was heard a strong and calm voice.

“Fer’s I’m concerned,” said old Absalom Gammt, “I’m through if ye fellers air.”

“Suits me,” rejoined Bullock.

And so closed the meeting at the Forks of the Kentucky.