“Hajason!” muttered the Jumper, his face scowling.
“Red Hajason!” softly cried Sevier, mechanically shifting his rifle.
The Jumper touched his hand as it lay on the gun, and he warned:
“You must not think of that. You are still in the white path.”
Sevier lowered the rifle and asked—
“Does he trade at Hiwassee?”
The Indian nodded. Had not Sevier’s errand concerned the fate of the Western settlements, he would have considered his journey well worth the danger just for an opportunity to confront and kill this man whose name was anathema from the Watauga to the French Broad and throughout the Carolinas east of the mountains.
Wherever horses were stolen and hurried to hidden forest depots, the name of Red Hajason was known and detested. That he continued to carry on his thievery was due to his practice of sending agents to do the actual work while he remained in his stronghold somewhere at the headwaters of the Hiwassee River in the southwestern corner of North Carolina. When not at this camp, it was said he made his home over the line in South Carolina, “that delight of buccaneers and pyrates,” as the Rev. Hugh Jones, chaplain to the honourable Assembly of Virginia, characterized that commonwealth in 1750.
Border-folks, however, denied that Red Hajason was compelled to shuttle back and forth between the Hiwassee and the Tugalo rivers and openly charged he had been seen in the capital of North Carolina, seemingly on excellent terms with some of those who pretended to safeguard the destiny of the State. This would not be surprising, as in formative periods the devil takes advantage of chaos to walk close to saints.
But the over-mountain country was closed ground to the king of horse-thieves; there was no doubting that fact. A bullet on sight was what he would receive did he venture forth where he sent his men. Thus it had happened that Sevier, while having had the pleasure of hanging several of Red Hajason’s tools, had never looked on his face.