[Illustration: She sat alone now, gazing out across the hills.
[PAGE 312]]
THE
WAY OUT
BY
EMERSON HOUGH
[Illustration]
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
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL 3
II. A NEW CREED 18
III. THE BLOOD COVENANT 30
IV. THE FROLIC AT SEMMES’ COVE 41
V. THE AWAKENING OF DAVID JOSLIN 50
VI. THE WANDERING WOMEN 58
VII. THE FABRIC OF A VISION 67
VIII. MARCIA HADDON, AND THE MERRY WIFE OF WINDSOR 72
IX. POLLY PENDLETON 92
X. MR. HADDON’S POINT OF VIEW 117
XI. POLLY PENDLETON’S VISITOR 123
XII. THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW WAY 133
BOOK II
XIII. THE CLANS 141
XIV. THE CROSSROADS 154
XV. THE ORIGINAL SIN 170
BOOK III
XVI. THE CITY ON THE HILL 181
XVII. THESE TWAIN 191
XVIII. MARCIA HADDON 209
XIX. THE NARROWS 215
XX. THE COMING OF JAMES HADDON 227
BOOK IV
XXI. THE FURRIN WOMAN 233
XXII. WHEN GHOSTS ARISE 244
XXIII. GRANNY WILLIAMS’ NARRATIONS 255
XXIV. THE DRUMS 275
XXV. STRANGERS WITHIN THE GATES 281
XXVI. THE UNCERTIFIED 291
XXVII. THE SEEKING 299
XXVIII. THE EDUCATION OF DAVID JOSLIN 306
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.”