He was cavalier and prince in his leadership of men; he had their homage.

Yet he knew how to be comrade and brother to the lowliest.

He won and held the confidence and friendship of the serious-minded Robertson no less than the idolatry of the wildest spirits on the frontier throughout the forty-three years of the spectacular career which began for him on the day he brought his tribe to Watauga.

In his time he wore the governor's purple; and a portrait painted of him shows how well this descendant of the noble Xaviers could fit himself to the dignity and formal habiliments of state; Yet in the fringed deerskin of frontier garb, he was fleeter on the warpath than the Indians who fled before him; and he could outride and outshoot--and, it is said, outswear--the best and the worst of the men who followed him.

Perhaps the lurking smile on John Sevier's face was a flicker of mirth that there should be found any man, red or white, with temerity enough to try conclusions with him.