The Indians feared him as they had never feared white or red man, and, although he was unarmed and greatly outnumbered, they kept their distance and nervously covered him with their guns as if fearing some magic. The temporary leader of the band went ahead and frequently glanced back to make sure Chucky Jack was not too close to his heels.
Sevier whistled softly, outwardly calm and indifferent. As a fact, he would have preferred that almost any other man than Watts should be ahead of him. He had fought Watts and whipped him, but he respected him for his courage and shrewdness. He considered him the most astute of all the Cherokee leaders, the one chief destined to succeed Old Tassel. Watts was hopelessly belligerent, where Old Tassel sought to gain his ends by trickery and diplomacy.
“Where is Tall Runner?” Sevier sharply called out to the warrior ahead.
“Ask those who laid down the Black Path for his feet to follow to the Twilight Land,” was the ominous answer.
“Tall Runner will come to give you the lie,” coolly declared Sevier. “He has not gone to the ever-darkening land in the west.”
The savages’ firm belief in the warrior’s demise set the borderer to wondering, however. What if Polcher had overtaken Tall Runner? It might easily have happened that the fleeing horseman had come upon Old Tassel’s messenger. And, had it happened, Sevier hadn’t the slightest doubt concerning the tavern-keeper’s readiness to slay the man and blame his death on Jonesboro. He suddenly decided that his life was most critically in the balance.
“The soul of Tall Runner turns to nothing. It becomes blue,” chanted the warrior ahead, his voice taking on the intonation of a shaman.
Sevier held his tongue, knowing his fight must be waged with Chief Watts. In silence the party passed up the bank for a mile and then crossed and struck into a well-beaten path and turned northwest. Another mile and they came to a village. The habitations were substantial log structures surrounding a council-house. Evidently it was a prosperous village, for hogs and fowls wandered about in large numbers, and many horses grazed on the outskirts. Gardens of beans and corn flourished between potato-fields and fields of squash. Along the edge of the clearing stretched peach orchards.
Women engaged in basketry and pottery ceased their labours as Sevier was brought in, then pretended not to have seen him and bowed over their work.
A little girl, carrying a milk-tooth by a string and intent on replacing it by the time-honoured custom of invoking dayi, the beaver, famous for his strong teeth, came running round a cabin. She shrilly cried out four times, “Dayi skinta” (“Beaver, put a new tooth in my jaw”) and completed the formula by throwing the tooth on the parental roof. Not seeing Sevier because of her excitement, she bumped into him as he leaped to the ground.