The borderer had no idea of leading the gang to the ledge, and at once he endeavoured to work north, parallel to the trail. The outlaws pressed him close. He shot one and was instantly engaged by two others. Clubbing his rifle, he knocked one senseless, whereat the second lost all stomach for the fight and fled. The delay permitted others to come up. Dropping his empty gun, he snatched up the rifles belonging to the dead man and his senseless mate and discharged both pointblank at his assailants. They fell back in confusion at this unexpected reception, and the borderer leaped into a thicket armed only with his knives. Frantic cries from the trail, followed by a volley of rifle-fire, checked his flight and turned him back to investigate. As he emerged into the trail a horseman threw up his rifle, only to have it knocked aside by Kirk Jackson. “John Sevier!” he yelled. “John Sevier without his shirt!” Chucky Jack beheld his riflemen scuttling into the woods and out again in the process of running the horse-thieves to cover. On the ground were a dozen dead outlaws and two settlers. Stetson was standing beside his horse, tying a bandage about his arm by using his teeth, the process sadly weakening his emphatic sentiments concerning all “varments.” “Hester got away!” panted Sevier, throwing himself on to a horse. “He went north—” “We came from the north. We met him,” gravely informed Jackson. “We’d been here sooner, but the men formed a ring and he and I had it out. I found this on him.” And he touched the money-belt strapped outside his hunting-shirt. “It’ll help raise the militia you’re going to need. Now for Red Hajason—and Elsie!” “Hajason is on the ground here somewhere. Elsie and her father are near. Round up the rascals in the bush and I’ll fetch her to you.” “No; I’ll go with you. Stetson is wounded, but he can handle the fighting,” cried Jackson. A shout from Sevier, and Major Tonpit and his daughter descended from their hiding-place. Tonpit was stupefied by the defeat of his schemes and showed neither resentment nor interest in the young people’s public avowal of their shameless preference for each other’s arms. “Creeks fooled. Cherokees quieted for a time at least. Spain blocked. Hajason wiped out,” checked off Sevier as he rode ahead with the despairing major by his side. “Now for Bonnie Kate and the building of the new State.” Escorted by two thousand men in buckskin, the delegates met at Jonesboro on August twenty-third and voted that the people should elect fifteen representatives, who were to write a constitution for the new State and organize its Government. The North Carolina Legislature met in November and repealed the Cessions Act and granted all that had been asked in the Jonesboro petition. But the fifteen representatives proceeded, nevertheless, and created the State of Franklin with John Sevier as governor, thereby constituting one of the most unique chapters in American history.