Crockett of Tennessee

by Judd, Cameron

  “I don’t know what it is, David. The very name of Texas strikes a fear into me. I suppose it’s because of the trouble there.”

  “There’s always trouble when you’ve got colonists from one land shifting in under a new government. Such affairs will be settled in time. It’s a chance for us to plant our stake in something that’s going to grow and turn rich.”

  She said nothing, her face set in a frown. There was no point in trying to cover her true feelings any longer. He saw it and glowered.

  “Hang it, Betsy, I’ll be shot if I can understand a woman! Can’t you see the sense in what I’ve been saying?”

  “Of course I can. A woman has a mind just like a man.”

  “Well, if you see the sense in it, why do you stand there looking so unhappy about it?”

  “Because there’s something fearful in it, no matter what you say, and I can’t put a finger on what it is.”

  “If you can’t put a finger on it, why worry about it?”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “You know my rule, Betsy. Always be sure you are—”

  “Yes, yes, yes, God knows I know your rule! Don’t I know I’ve had to put up with aplenty of hardship because of your ‘going ahead,’ regardless of what anybody else thinks of it! And I know you’ll ‘go ahead’ to Texas, whatever I may say, and so why do we stand here wasting our words? Go on with you! Go to Texas! There’s nary a thing I can do to stop you!”

  He glared at her bitterly, turned on his heel and stalked away. She heard the door slam. Thank God there was no one here at the moment but David and herself. She didn’t like the family witnessing this kind of squabble between them. It was only too bad that she and David had such a history of them.

  She went to the table and sank listlessly into a chair. Idly, she picked up a gourd dipper someone had left on the table rather than returning it to the water bucket by the stove. Looking around the room, she viewed the meager but personally precious possessions her life here had brought her. David’s “Pretty Betsey” rifle, its barrel two inches shorter than originally, since David had cut it down to suit him better, hung on pegs on the far wall, with other relics of David’s grand tour nearby it. A corner cupboard stood across from where she sat, its doors open to reveal an assortment of simple but attractive china and pewterware. A Revere lantern sat on a chest of drawers beside a clock that David had never gotten around to properly hanging on the wall, and off in the corner beside a chest was the rocking wooden cradle in which she had once laid her infants and now couldn’t bring herself to part with. The old cane-bottomed high chair was there too, with a ratty quilt draped over it. On the wall hung samplers she had made on the many long nights David was far away in Washington, and on the bed was a big quilt comprised of pieces of cloth taken from countless worn-out pairs of breeches, scraps of petticoats, linsey-woolsey shirts, and even a piece from one of David’s cast-off cravats. Much love and family heritage had gone into that quilt, not to mention countless careful stitches and a lot of eyestrain from the times she had worked on it by candle or lamplight. Yonder, beyond the sprawling rug made from the skin of one of the countless bears David had brought in on his hunts, stood her well-used butter churn, its long dasher handle smoothed and worn thin in the middle. Over by the bed was a nicely varnished washstand with basin and pitcher, with a couple of hand-embroidered towels hanging on the stand’s built-in wooden rack.

  Just common goods in a common house, but she loved them, and it. And long ago she had grown accustomed to debt and squeezing by from one year to the next. She could endure that, to some measure, indefinitely, as long as she had her home and a few personal treasures, and her husband close at hand. As long as David could hunt and as long as she could garden, they would have food for the table. And there would be good years for their crops, and opportunities to buy and sell livestock and such. Bit by bit they could better their situation, just staying right here.

  But David was David; he was not one to stay still for long. His mind and heart were set on Texas, and nothing a wife could do or say would make any real difference.

  Sighing, she stood and carried the gourd dipper over to the water bucket. Then she brushed down her apron and left the house. In the yard she cupped her hand over her eyes against the orange light of the setting sun and looked for David. There he was, silhouetted against the sunset, slicing a quid of tobacco while giving the dogs a run. She strode toward him.

  “Pretty sky this evening,” she said.

  “Humph.”

  “Davy, go on to Texas. It’s all right. I’m sorry for acting as I did.”

  He looked at her evaluatively, as if wondering whether she really meant it.

  “I admit that I don’t feel happy about the prospect of moving so far away. I’m happy here. But if you believe it should be Texas for us, so be it.”

  His face brightened. “You really would go along with it?”

  “Yes.” She tried to put some spark into the word, but it still came out in a tone of resignation. David didn’t seem to notice.

  “Good, Betsy, good.” He put away his knife and faced her, extending his arms and cupping her shoulders in his hands. “If we should go there, we probably wouldn’t be alone. William and Abner are wanting to come with me, and Lindsey Tinkle too. We might find ourselves surrounded by friends and kinfolk. It’d be hardly different than being here.”

  So why go? Elizabeth thought, but did not ask.

  “I’m pleased you’ve changed your mind, Betsy. I’ll not be gone that long, and I’ll be back with good news. It’s in Texas my destiny lies. I know that it is.”

  His destiny. Once again he was thinking like a lone wolf, as was his habit far too often, in Elizabeth’s book. She put her arms around him and hugged him. Don’t go, David. Please don’t go. The thought was like a shout in her mind, but she didn’t verbalize it. She had yielded outwardly to David’s plans, knowing that she really had no choice, but her heart remained unpersuaded. The thought of Texas still made her heart race unaccountably in fear.

  Perhaps David’s intuition was that Texas held his destiny. Hers was that it held nothing but trouble. There was no way she could see how both could be right.

  Three Days Later

  Even as a defeated congressman, Colonel David Crockett still could draw a crowd—this kind of crowd in particular. He was seated on the porch of a small general store, cup of cider in one hand and hunk of cheese in the other, while a gaggle of rough-hewn backwoodsmen with whiskers overhanging their lips and shreds of tobacco from yesterday’s last chew still filling the gaps between their coated teeth, were gathered around. This was a far cry from the besuited, cravat-wearing congressional crowd David had moved among in Washington, or the nicely dressed, dignified city folk who had cheered him during his northern tour—but a crowd was a crowd, and this one suited him fine. He had grown up among this breed of men, had herded cattle and hauled cargo with them, had seen countless numbers of them eat and drink in his father’s tavern in Jefferson County. Among such he could relax and be fully himself, with no pomposities around to sniff at him for it.

  “What you going to do down there in the Texas, Dave? You going to sire you some half-Mex young’uns?”

  “Lord, no, Jimbo. Betsy’d make a gelding of me, sure as the world, if such a thing happened. No, I’ll ride through and pick me a fine spot, plant me a coin or two in the earth, then come back home and fetch the family. By the time we got back to Texas, we’d be rich.”

  “How you figure that?”

  “Good soil down there along the rivers, they say. Good enough to grow a coin into a money tree.”

  “Well, I’m going with you, then.”

  “Come on then, Henry! We’ll take you. ’Cept in your case, I expect you have it in mind to plant that good-time gal you hang about with and grow you a harlot tree.”

  The men laughed. David bit off a hunk of his cheese and washed it down with a swallow of cider. He was happy today, happier than he had been since Huntsm
an took him down politically. All his plans to visit Texas were falling into place very nicely. His brother-in-law Abner Burgin and his nephew William Patton, along with a neighbor named Lindsey Tinkle, were all planning to join him on the journey. He anticipated an interesting, diverting jaunt over new country. He was told that Texas was quite a different kind of place than Tennessee. Though much of it was reported to be green, fertile and well-watered, other parts were by comparison almost devoid of plant life, and what plants did grow were such dry-country plants as prickly pear and mesquite—botanical strangers to David Crockett, whose travels had always centered in the lush landscapes east of the Mississippi.

  “Davy, did you ever get that comet tail wrung off?” one of his audience asked.

  “No sir, Jack, no sir. I clumb the mountain to do it, but the dang thing just swung off the other direction soon as it saw me. But I’m thinking I might try to grab that tail again, should old Halley make another run close by, and let it haul me to Texas.”

  More laughter. David crossed his booted legs, finished his cheese and cider and chewed some tobacco. It was getting into the afternoon now, his wagon parked nearby, laden with the supplies he had come here to purchase, and he needed to be heading toward home. It was hard to hurry, however, considering that he had such a fine group of companions, most of whom he might soon be saying good-bye to for the last time. If he did wind up moving to Texas, he doubted he would make many social runs all the way back to Tennessee.

  “Well, gentlemen, I believe the time has come for me to go. I bid you … Lord have mercy, what’s that? A cat in a churn?”

  All the others, except the oldest and deafest ones, had heard it too. It was a high-pitched, whining sound, vaguely musical. As David cocked his ear to pick it up better, he surmised that it was indeed music, or an attempt at music, and it came from the half-open window of one of the rooms in the hotel across the street.

  “That’s somebody scratching on a fiddle,” he said. “Phew! That fiddling’s so bad you can smell it!”

  “I believe somebody’s skinning a cat,” one of the others said.

  “Men, I’ll take my leave. I hope to see you again sometime or another.”

  “When you leaving for Texas?”

  “First of the month.”

  “Good luck to you, Colonel.”

  “Good travel to you, Davy.”

  “Burn up that Texas trail, Crockett.”

  David shook hands all around. He was eager now to get this done, not being fond of partings. Whistling to cover a rising emotional discomfort, he walked briskly to his wagon, climbed aboard, and threw off the brake. He pulled out into the middle of the street, waving at his friends. He winked mischievously at them, then twisted on the seat and shouted up at the hotel window: “Can you come fiddle for my poor departed grandpappy’s wake tonight? That noise ought to be enough to rouse him back from the dead, and if you could do that, Granny would be mighty beholden to you!”

  The men on the porch laughed heartily. The fiddle music stopped. David turned and snapped the lines, lurching into motion again. He heard a man’s hoarse voice from the window, cussing at him, but then the voice broke off and whoever it belonged to went into a fierce fit of coughing, loud and long and painful coughing that made David wince to hear it.

  “God, friend, I’m right sorry I jawed at you. I believe you’re terrible sick at the lungs,” David muttered beneath his breath. Still the hacking, consumptive coughing continued. With his boisterous mood suddenly lessened, David gave a final wave to his friends. The wagon rolled on down the street and out of town.

  Chapter 53

  November 1, 1835

  As he rode out from his home, David Crockett was in a far more reflective mood than he had expected to be at this moment. Betsy had seemed in a sad, strange frame of mind, gazing at him closely in a way he had never seen her do before. Not with anger, not with intent to dissuade him from an adventure he had already firmly determined to undertake, but with … he didn’t really know. Intensity. Sadness, perhaps. Her manner, like her parting kiss, had been unexpectedly unsettling.

  His sober mood didn’t linger for long. Once they were a mile or so along the way, the familiar surge of excitement that the anticipation of this Texas journey had stirred in him came back in an exhilarating rush. No longer anticipation, but the reality! He was on his way into a new life. Texas was land, freedom, opportunity. He’d find rich land to settle on, make his presence known, befriend and charm the people just like he had befriended and charmed so many Tennessee border men through the years. Before long he would be as deeply involved in Texas politics as he had been here at home. He could hardly wait.

  He was dressed in the clothing he liked best: plain trousers, hunting shirt, flop hat, woolen coat. He had packed no gear that couldn’t be fit into his saddlebags, along with his rifle “Betsey”—his older, well-worn hunting weapon, not the fancy engraved rifle given to him by the Philadelphia Whigs. There was nothing in his appearance at the moment to suggest he was a man of prominent reputation. He looked like any West Tennessee bear hunter—except perhaps for the glittering watch chain that stretched across the front of his shirt, linked to the excellent gold pocket watch he had brought with him.

  With him were Tinkle, Patton, and Burgin. All along their route they encountered friends and neighbors who hooted greetings at them and invited them in for meals or drinks, several of which invitations they accepted. David enjoyed such attention. He might have been voted out of office, but there were still plenty about who loved Colonel Crockett! And as for those who had voted against him—well, maybe they had done him a favor without intending to. Let Huntsman have Congress; Texas was better for David Crockett.

  Their first goal was Memphis, where David intended to visit with his old friend Marcus Winchester, who had spurred him and financed him in that first successful congressional race. David was eager to reach Texas, but not so eager that he didn’t intend to have a fine time along the way.

  On the outskirts of Memphis they were met in the road by a very old man who must have heard that the famed Colonel Crockett was coming this way. He waved down the group and approached David.

  “Colonel, I’m privileged to meet you, sir,” he said, looking up at the mounted David. “I’ve been a follower and supporter of yourn right from the start, and if it was up to me, I’d make you President of the whole durn United States nation, which I myself helped fight to create in the big war against the English.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’m moved through and through.”

  “I’ve brung you a gift, Colonel, if you’d be willing to take it. Made it myself.” The man held up a fur cap, made of a fox pelt with the red tail hanging down in the back. “I hope it’ll fit your noggin.”

  David accepted the cap. Removing his hat, he deliberately put the cap on backward so the tail hung over his nose.

  “Well, I don’t know about this, friend. I believe this hat might make me sneeze a right smart.”

  Grinning, the man said, “Try ’er hanging down backward, Colonel.”

  David shifted the hat around properly. “Fits like a glove on a hand, good citizen. I’m shot if it ain’t the finest cap I’ve ever had between me and the sky. I thank you for it, and make you a gift of the one I been wearing.”

  The man accepted David’s old flop hat solemnly. He looked at it as if it were a sacred relic. “I’m honored to own it, Colonel. Thank you, sir.” He looked up suddenly, back down the road along which they had traveled. “What’s that?”

  David looked back over his shoulder. “I don’t see nothing.”

  “No sir, it’s a sound. Right odd one, like a bird or a squealing baby … well, I don’t hear it no more. I’ve always been keen of ear, Colonel Crockett, and I swear that since I’ve got old I hear keener than when I was a boy.”

  It’s just the wind whistling in your ear hole, old partner, David thought. There’s nothing to be heard.

  “Thank you for this here hat, Colonel.”

/>   “Thank you for this one. I’ll wear it proud all over Texas.”

  They went on. David hadn’t worn fur caps like this often, not liking the feel of most he had tried on, and preferring a brim to keep the sun off his face, but now that it was autumn and the sun’s rays weren’t so glaring, a brim didn’t matter so much, and this fox cap would keep his head warmer when winter came on. So he was satisfied.

  “You look fine in a fur hat, Davy,” William Patton said.

  “Thank you, nephew. It couldn’t fit better had the old gentleman laid a measuring string around my melon. Now let’s get a few more miles behind us before we eat a bite. I’m hot to get to Memphis. Old Marcus Winchester knows every good whistle-wetting establishment in the city, and I’m in the humor to pay call on every deuced one.”

  It had been a wild night so far and promised to be wilder yet before it was through. They had started early and now it was late, and there were no signs of a letup.

  David’s anticipation about Marcus Winchester had proven true. He had led the band from one drinking establishment to another, and now all were well-fueled with alcohol. Already there had been several fights among members of David and Winchester’s party, though David had tried valiantly to be the peacemaker. He didn’t want his reputation sullied by tavern fighting here at the end of his Tennessee career.

  They were in the bar of the Union Hotel now, and David was in high form. For the last hour he had told tale after tale from his colorful past—and quite a few from an even more colorful past that existed nowhere but in his imagination. With senses of humor lubricated by liquor, his audience of friends and hangers-on gave a gratifying response to every joke and anecdote he related. For the last little bit he had concentrated on unflattering stories about “King Andrew” Jackson and his cronies, exaggerated for effect. These stories seemed particularly entertaining to his listeners.