The Watauga region contained reckless and lawless men, and anarchy would have reigned if not for the summary justice occasionally worked by the backwoods tribunals. North Carolina did not seem vitally concerned about her children over the mountains. Perhaps “step-children” would more nearly describe the relationship, with the mother State playing the rôle of an indifferent dame. On a July morning in 1784 the usual bustle and indolence of Jonesboro were in evidence. Men came and went in their linsey trousers and buckskin hunting-shirts, some for the fields, some for the chase. A group of idlers, scorning toil, lounged before the long log tavern kept by Polcher, quarter-blood Cherokee and whispered to be an agent of the great Creek chief, McGillivray. The loungers were orderly enough, as a rule, almost secretive in their bearing. Plotting mischief to be carried out under the protection of night, honest men said. Polcher seemed to have complete control of this class, and more than one seriously minded settler in passing scowled blackly at the silent group. On this particular morning, however, Lon Hester was disturbing the sinister quiet of the tavern with his boisterous manners and veiled prophecies. He held an unsavoury reputation for being strangely welcome among hostile Cherokees, even free to come and go among the “Chickamaugas”—renegade Cherokees, who under Dragging Canoe had withdrawn to the lower Tennessee to wage implacable war against the whites. Polcher followed him anxiously from bar to door and back again, endeavouring to confine his loose tongue to eulogies on the rye whisky and the peach and apple brandy. The other habitues saw the tavern-keeper was deeply worried at Hester’s babblings, yet he seemed to lack the courage to exert any radical restraint. “Got Polcher all fussed up,” whispered one with a broad grin. “He carries it too far,” growled another. Hester, reckless from drink, sensed his host’s uneasiness and took malicious delight in increasing it. Each time he came to the door and Polcher followed at his heels, his hands twisting nervously in the folds of his soiled apron, he would wink knowingly at his mates and say enough to cause the tavern-keeper to tremble with apprehension. This baiting of the publican continued for nearly an hour, and then Hester’s drunken humour took a new slant. Reaching the door, he wheeled on Polcher and viciously demanded: “What ye trailin’ me for? Think I’m only seven years old? Or be ye ’fraid ye won’t git yer pay?” “Now, now, Lon! Is that the way to talk to your old friend?” soothed Polcher, fluttering a hand down the other’s sleeve. “There’s some fried chicken and some bear meat inside, all steaming hot and waiting for you.” Then, dropping his voice and attempting to placate the perverse temper of the man by adopting a confidential tone, he whispered, “And there’s things only you and me ought to talk about. You haven’t reported a word yet of all that Red Hajason must have said.”