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Sevier was overthrown by the authorities of North Carolina. Most of the officials who had served under him were soothed by being reappointed to their old positions. Tipton's star was now in the ascendant, for his enemy was to be made the vicarious sacrifice for the sins of all whom he had "led astray."
The basis of the charges was a file of papers from the entry-taker's office which a friend of Tipton's had laid before the Governor; with an affidavit to the effect that the papers were fraudulent. Both the Governor and Jackson believed the charges.
You heard that big, long shaggy-dog story about exactly what happened and where everybody was supposed to have been at the time. I hope you got all that recorded; it was all told for a purpose." Rand had picked up the outside phone and was dialing. In a moment, a girl's voice answered. "Carter Tipton's law-office; good afternoon." "Hello, Rheba; is Tip available?" "Oh, hello, Jeff.
"You warned him, damn you!" he shouted, and turning again leaped to the porch and tried to squeeze past the widow into the house. "How dare you, sir?" she shrieked, giving him a vigorous push backwards. The four of us, his three men and myself, laughed outright. Tipton's rage leaped its bounds.
The sheriff seized all his negro slaves, as they worked on his Nolichucky farm, and bore them for safe-keeping to Tipton's house, a rambling cluster of stout log buildings, on Sinking Creek of the Watanga. Sevier raised a hundred and fifty men and marched to take them back, carrying a light fieldpiece. Tipton's friends gathered, thirty or forty strong, and a siege began.
With a body of his troops and one small cannon, he marched to Tipton's house and besieged it, threatening a bombardment. He did not, however, fire into the dwelling, though he placed some shots about it and in the extreme corners. This opera bouffe siege endured for several days, until Tipton was reinforced by some of his own clique.
Satisfied by the secret advices received, the Spanish minister reported to the home authorities his confident belief that the Tennessee backwoodsmen, if diplomatically handled, would readily throw in their lot with Spain. After the fiasco of his siege of Tipton's home, Sevier had seized upon the renewal of hostilities by the Cherokees as a means of regaining his popularity.
When the news came of the fight between Sevier's and Tipton's men, he judged the time to be ripe, and sent White to Franklin to sound Sevier and bring him over; but he did not trust White enough to give him any written directions, merely telling him what to do and furnishing him with three hundred dollars for his expenses.
We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and myself, all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling. Suddenly, while we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the widow, the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with something like a bellow, to face Mr. Nicholas Temple. Well I knew him!
He raised his eyes to hers. "Good-by, Mr. Temple," she said, there was a tremor in her voice, "and may you save our Jack!" He snatched the bridle from the boy, and with one leap he was on the rearing, wheeling horse. "Come on," he cried to me, and, waving his hat at the lady on the porch, he started off with a gallop up the trail in the opposite direction from that which Tipton's men had taken.
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