not long content merely to find a hiding place
from the wrath of broken law and outraged civilization. They were soon
seeking and finding opportunity to commit other and worse offences. It
was no longer a secret that regular stations of outlawry were firmly
established between Natchez on the one side and Duff's Fort, on the
other. The most dreaded of these were known to be within the new state's
border along the line of the Wilderness Road, although the law had not
been able to lay its hand upon them. And thus was southern Kentucky now
bound, blinded and helpless, in a long, strong, bloody chain of crime.

It was knowing this and feeling his own responsibility and powerlessness
that made the judge's good-humored face stern on that October morning.
It was this which made his absent-minded eyes clear and keen as he drew
near the court-house. He had come earlier than usual but others, equally
anxious, were there before him. And then the court-house was in a way
the mart of the whole region, especially for the sale of horses.
Rough-looking men with the marks of the stable and the race-track upon
them, were riding the best quarter nags up and down the forest path and
pointing out the delicate leg, the well-proportioned head, and the
elegant form, which made the traits of the first race-horses in
Kentucky. Foremost among these first men of the turf was Tommy Dye,
scanning the quarter nags with a trained eye. As soon as the judge saw
him, he knew that General Jackson was not far away, for wherever the
general went, there also was to be found his faithful henchman, Tommy
Dye. It was he who arranged the cockfights in which the general
delighted, declaring a game cock to be the bravest thing alive. It was
he who was always trying to find for him a race-horse which could beat
Captain Haynie's Maria. This famous racer had beaten the general's
Decatur in that year's sweepstakes, and he had sworn by his strongest
oath that he would find a horse to beat her if there was one in the
world that could do it. But Tommy Dye and other eager, tireless agents
of the general had already searched far and wide. They had gone over all
the horse-raising states with a drag-net, they had sent as far as other
countries. And no horse which even promised to beat Maria had yet been
found, so that the general's defeat was still rankling bitterly, for it
was the bitterest that he had ever met or ever was to meet. He did not
feel his defeat in the first race