With a low word for his daughter to follow him Tonpit backed his horse clear from the crowd and spurred away. For sixty seconds the astounded gathering remained motionless. Sevier stared incredulously at the message, while his neighbours gazed stupidly at the dusty messenger. All felt as if they had been abandoned in the wilderness without shelter or means of self-defence. True, the over-mountain men had always fought their own way and financed their own campaigns, yet in the back of their minds was ever the thought that, should a crisis come, the mother State must aid them. That a crisis was imminent was evidenced by Chucky Jack’s open mention of his petition for soldiers. Chucky Jack was worth many riflemen and had whipped the Indians many times. All the more proof that the settlements must be in desperate straits when he was impelled to beseech help. And of a sudden they were disowned; there was no mother State, no slumbering asset they could call to life. Sevier had not talked much about the possibility of Creeks and Cherokees uniting, but the petition, coupled with whispered rumours seeping through the cabins, now brought morbid speculations. How many Indians would come and when, were the questions more than one man and woman asked themselves. Who would go to hold the line on the French Broad so that the red raiders might not penetrate to the Watauga? Jackson watched Tonpit ride hastily away, followed by Elsie, and he fancied he beheld elation in the man’s hard visage and sorrow in the girl’s gentle face. It was quite a coincidence, too, that Major Tonpit should ride forth just in time to learn the momentous news—unless he had been expecting it and came purposely to hear it. His prompt return home gave colour to the suspicion. The young Virginian shifted his attention to Chucky Jack. Sevier perused the message for the second time, crumpled it into a ball as if to hurl it from him, thought better of it and tucked it inside his buckskin shirt and called to the assemblage: “Women and men of the Watauga, North Carolina will have none of us. We’re shoved through the door and told to shift for ourselves. To be exact, we’re told to look to the central Government for protection. And, as you know, the ink is scarcely dry on the petition I was about to send to the Legislature, asking for courts and militia. “Without consulting one of the twenty-five thousand settlers on this side of the mountains, North Carolina chooses to pay her share of the national debt by the simple process of ceding us to Congress. She proposes to pay her debts with lands we won by rifle and ax. The act was passed by the Legislature a month ago, and for thirty days, while the messenger was bringing the news, we have been set off from North Carolina.