Under the high, finely modeled brow,
small keen dark blue eyes sparkled with health, with
intelligence, and with the man's joy in life.
John Sevier indeed cannot be listed as a type; he was individual.
There is no other character like him in border annals. 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. None ever did,
successfully.
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