Crockett of Tennessee Page 11

  And then it ended. He returned home with his brothers one afternoon and was called aside by a solemn and bleary-eyed John Crockett, whose breath carried the heavy smell of alcohol.

  John held up a piece of paper. “This here’s a note from your schoolmaster, asking me why I ain’t sent you for schooling the last six days. ’Pears to me you got some explaining to do, David Crockett.”

  David blanched. His mouth fell open but no words emerged. Kitching had counterstruck, and David had been utterly unprepared for it.

  “You been laying out, ain’t you, boy?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I know old Kitching will whup me if I go back.”

  “Why would he whup you?”

  David’s throat felt very dry. “Because I had a knock fight with another fellow.”

  John shook his head. “I should have figured it. You’ve got mighty airish and biggity in your ways, David. You think that because you trailed to Virginny and back you’re a full-growed man. Well, you ain’t. You’re a boy, and you’ve done wrong, and I want you to turn tail right now and head back to that schoolhouse with me to tell Mr. Kitching what’s been going on.”

  “Go back? But Kitching ain’t there. School’s out for the day.”

  “If he ain’t there, we’ll find him. Let’s go.”

  David was beginning to get mad. His father, drunk and drooling and stinking, disgusted him. The idea of being forced back by a sorry drunk to face a sorrier schoolmaster was more than he could handle.

  “I won’t do it!”

  “What? You’re defying me, boy?”

  “I won’t go back to Kitching. Call that what you want to call it, you old drunkard!”

  John’s eyes widened, red and hot as the apocalytpic lake of fire. “You disrespecting little poot, I reckon you’re due a little bringing down!” He staggered off to the side and hefted up a heavy hickory stick from the stack of firewood beside the tavern. “Turn around and take your whupping like the man you seem to think you are!”

  David did turn, but not for punishment. He took off at a dead run. John Crockett cursed and shouted for him to halt, but he kept going. John began to chase him, waving the hickory stick.

  It was a long and frantic chase, and David led it, very deliberately, in the direction opposite the schoolhouse. He was astounded that his father was capable of such a run. A half mile of ground fell away behind his racing feet, then three-quarters, but still John Crockett kept up his end. About the mile mark, David saw a hill rise before him. Spurred by inspiration, he crossed it and ducked sideways off the trail and into the bushes. He lay very still, trying to control his panting, and watched the road from hiding. A half minute later John Crockett came puffing and gasping over the hilltop, and continued on, hickory pole in hand.

  David closed his eyes. His ploy had worked. When his breath returned, he rose and headed deeper into the forest. There would be no returning home today. Maybe not ever. He had defied his father and disputed his authority. To go back now would be to take a beating even more severe than the one he had escaped.

  David was glad for his escape, but saddened and sobered as well by an understanding of what this meant. Once again he was on his own—but this time he had no paying work, no protective guide, no prospects, not even a pack of clothing or food.

  David Crockett was alone in the world, and any way he made in it, he would have to make entirely on his own.

  Chapter 14

  At first David just walked for its own sake, having no idea where to go or what to do. Eventually he forced himself to a halt, sat down on a stump and called to mind something his uncle Joseph Hawkins had once advised him: “There’s nothing gained in going if you ain’t figured where it is you’re going to.”

  David reasoned it out. He couldn’t return home; that much was clear. In his boyish mind the prospect of his father’s wrath loomed monstrously. But neither could he simply set out across the country with no provisions, no work, and no destination.

  For a quarter of an hour he sat there, pondering, his elbows on his knees and his chin resting in his hands. Then his expression brightened and he stood with resolution. He had a place to go after all, and perhaps even a way to escape his father’s domain, and Kitching’s, long enough for tempers to cool.

  The walk that followed covered several miles. When David reached his destination, he felt edgy and nervous. He had come to Cheek’s Crossroads, a major landmark that almost every traveler through the area passed through and often lingered at. It was possible that his father, surely by now having ended his chase with the hickory pole, would figure out that he might come here. This was a busy place, a natural spot to which people on the move migrated. So David looked carefully about before making his appearance in the yard of the man he had come seeking, Jesse Cheek, who lived at the crossroads named for his family, and operated a large, well-known store there.

  The first person he saw, however, was his own brother James, a handsome, strong man of about twenty. When James saw David, he looked startled, put down the saddle he had been about to lift onto the back of a tethered horse and ran to meet his younger brother.

  “David? Is something wrong back home?”

  “I reckon there is!”

  A look of dread came over James. “Oh, Lordy! Somebody’s dead?”

  “Not yet. But I’ll wish I was dead if I go back, or if Pap catches me here. I’ve run off, James. I had no choice, or Pap would have beat the fire out of me with a hickory pole.”

  He told his puzzled brother the story about Duff, the fight, the hooky playing, and finally the chase. Jesse Cheek came around the house about the time David began, and heard most of the tale. James listened to it all with an increasingly dour expression, but Cheek laughed loudly at several parts. David was almost offended. He felt like his life was in the balance, and Cheek was laughing! David gave Cheek no indication of his offense, however, because it was Cheek who would rule on the request he was about to make.

  “I want to go with you and James, Mr. Cheek,” David said. “I’ve herded cattle before, all the way to Virginia, and I can do the work.”

  James cut in. “David, that’s fool talk. There’s nothing for you to do but to head back home and face up to what’s due you.”

  “I can’t go back! Pap’ll flay the hide off me!”

  “You’ve earned it, if he does.”

  Jesse Cheek waved his hands. “Peace among the brethren!” he extolled. “David, step over yonder and finish up saddling that horse for James. Me and him, we got some man-to-man talking to do.”

  David saddled the horse while watching the men converse, their backs turned toward him, their voices low and inaudible. From the way James was waving his hands and talking, David surmised that Cheek must have indicated a willingness to take him on against James’s wishes. That was encouraging. Cheek was a persuasive and stubborn man, whereas James could be worn down with only a little argument, and it seemed Cheek was giving him plenty.

  David finished his job, squatted beside the horse and waited for the verdict. When Cheek turned around with a grin on his face, David leaped up, beaming. He knew he had been accepted even before they told him.

  James shrugged in surrender. “It appears you’re coming with us, David. I suppose it won’t matter in the end. I’m too big for Pap to whup, so if he gets wrought up, no harm should come of it to me. Don’t know about you, though, David. Pap will hold that thrashing in store for you a long time. He holds to a grudge like a mud turtle holds to a toe, and you’ll have to come home and face him sooner or later.”

  “I like the sound of later,” David replied. “I want to give him time to get over being so mad. I’m afraid he’d beat me near to death if he got his hands on me just now.”

  They drove the herd through the wintry countryside of eastern Tennessee, moving up the well-trodden road toward Virginia. Along the way they met many travelers, ranging from emigrant families on their way to homesteads farther
west, to trains of wagons laden with cargo, and even one string of fourteen belled packhorses, a sight seldom seen now that the roads were fit for wagons.

  David watched the string of beasts pass, each laden with two hundred pounds of salt and other commodities on wooden packsaddles, as well their own feed of dried corn and beans. At the head of the train was a buckskinned frontiersman, wearing a felt slouch and looking at the world through eyes that were crinkles in a face of old leather. He might have been a long hunter from decades past, or a scout for some frontier army of the days of revolution. The image of that frontiersman, a breed already fading, would remain with David through the years, an image from a time when the wilderness was still king and men still knew it, and respected its authority.

  From Tennessee they headed into Abingdon, once known as the Wolf Hills because of the wolves that would howl there by night, then on to Lynchburg and Charlottesville, through Chester Gap, and finally to Front Royal, their destination. Cheek sold his horses to a man named Vanmetre, and there the party divided.

  James Crockett remained with Jesse Cheek and the balance of the other drovers, planning a later return, but one of Cheek’s brothers, eager to get back home because of pressing business, made an immediate start back toward Tennessee, and David was sent with him, mostly because James urged it. He had begun to worry again about how his parents would react when they found out he had helped his little brother run off.

  Unfortunately, David’s companion was a surly character who hadn’t warmed to the young interloper throughout the entire journey, and he made little effort to be friendly. Worse, he took only one horse with him, riding it himself and never offering to let David ride at all.

  After three days David had enough of this, thought back to his prior journey homeward, and told his partner that he would return on foot independently. The man seemed glad to hear it, even volunteered to give David some food and money to see him home again. David was cheered by this until the man handed him the paltry sum of four dollars, along with some dried-up biscuits, a hunk of hardened cheese, and a bag of partly molded jerky. David knew better than to ask for more, and graciously pretended more gratitude than he really felt.

  He went on, leaving his companion behind. Near Lynchburg he decided to exchange some of his cash for food, and sought out a trading post.

  He took off his hat as he climbed onto the porch of the store. Someone pushed open the door and walked out past him. At once David’s thoughts were thrown back to that trading post in Greene Courthouse, where he had said good-bye to Persius Tarr. The sights and smells that came through that opening door were much the same. Persius … he wouldn’t mind seeing him again, assuming he was still around to be seen. He remembered the report of Persius having made himself a reputation as a horse thief not far from this very place. Persius could easily be dead. Horse thieving was serious business, and could put even a young fellow at the end of a noose just as quickly, or quicker, than committing murder.

  David had a light step developed in hunting and stalking, and always walked in the straight-paced Indian fashion, which he had found worked best for the long cattle-driving treks of which he had already become a veteran. He was far from clumsy, and so was very surprised when he walked through the door and immediately fell prone on the dirty floor. A rumble of masculine laughter rolled through the building. Anger waved a hot hand across David’s face, leaving it red.

  He came nimbly to his feet, furious. The thing he had fallen over was a human foot, thrust out across his path. He might have seen it had his sun-dilated eyes not been adjusting to the shadowed store interior when he walked through. He had been tripped, apparently for the entertainment of the store patrons.

  He wheeled to face the man who had tripped him. Seated on a barrel just inside the door, the culprit was a round-bellied, dirt-caked sack of flesh whose eyes had the oddest, hollowest of glitters. The man was already grinning when David faced him. The smile was all gums and tongue, no teeth there to show.

  “You tripped me, you old jackass!” David yelled into the broad and grinning face. “You think that’s right funny, I reckon, tripping up somebody for sport?”

  More laughter came from the other side of the room. David looked. There were six men there, a couple of them behind the long counter, which pegged them as the store’s operators, the others either customers or, more likely, loiterers. All were laughing. David gave them his harshest look, which had no effect at all. At age thirteen he was not very intimidating.

  The man by the door was still grinning, but not laughing. He said nothing at all, staring at David in an infuriating but also disconcerting manner. David balled up a fist, thinking of striking the man … but something made him hesitate. He looked closer into the face.

  “That’s right—calm down, young fellow,” one of the men behind the counter said, seeing what was about to happen. “Can’t you see that man is simpleminded? He didn’t mean to trip you. He didn’t even know he was doing it.”

  David stepped back, cocking his head. Birdlike, the man did the same, keeping the same silly grin on his face. In an unconscious reaction of surprise, David swept his hair back with his right hand, and the man on the barrel imitated the gesture.

  “Ever seen a traveling show with one of them monkeys in it that’ll do whatever he sees somebody else do?” asked the man behind the counter. “That’s what this poor gent is like. You do something, he’ll do it back at you. He wasn’t trying to trip you, boy. He don’t know what he’s doing.”

  David’s anger dissolved. He felt great pity for the man. “Well, I reckon there’s nothing to be mad about.”

  “That’s right, son. That’s the Christian way of thinking. Can I help you, now?”

  David bought the goods he had come for, mostly crackers, cheese, and other traveling foods, and stowed them here and there around his person. Meanwhile, the man by the door began to sing, loudly, in a language David didn’t know.

  “Listen at him!” one of the loiterers exclaimed. “He’s a-going at it again!” He laughed loudly.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny about some fool singing babble,” one of the others said.

  “It ain’t babble,” said the storekeeper. “That’s French talk. I’ve heard it aplenty down in New Orleans. Don’t you know nothing, Eli?”

  “Does that man live here?” David asked.

  “No, no. He was brought in here maybe an hour ago by a long-legged old lean fellow. Asked us to keep an eye on him while he went for some liquor. What was that you said about that long-legged fellow, Reuben?”

  The indicated man cleared his throat and put on a proud expression. “I said, ‘Look at them long legs! That there long-legged feller, he ort to file a lawsuit against the town for laying out the street too far below his hind end.’ That’s what I said, precisely.”

  The other men laughed until they were red-faced. David smiled politely. He had heard variations of the same line several times back home at the tavern.

  The joker beamed at his audience and said, “Yes sir, I says, “That feller ort to law-sue the town for laying out the street too far from his hind end.’ Said it right off. ‘The town has surely laid the street out too far below that fellow’s hind end. He orta file a lawsuit.’ Them was my exact words.”

  “Shut up, Reuben, shut up, before I shake my bowels out a-laughing!” one of the others pleaded, suffering in great fits of mirth.

  David, far more amused at the men themselves than at the purported witticism, headed for the door. He paused in front of the man on the barrel. “I don’t know if you can hear me or nothing, but I’m sorry I called you a jackass,” he said in a low voice, so none of the others could hear.

  The door burst open suddenly, making him jump back to avoid being struck. He looked up and blanched. Standing before him, clad in his distinctive beaded coat, was Fletcher, the old Indian trader who had taken his father and uncle to bring home Uncle Jimmy. John Crockett had shared the story of the resulting adventure many times, and t
he tense little battle in which the Frenchman trader named Beaulieu, who had treated Uncle Jimmy so animalistically, apparently had been hit by Uncle William’s blind shot into the brush.…

  David spun to face the man on the barrel again. Beaulieu! Who else could it be? He noted a scar on the wide forehead—a scar like a rifle ball would leave, entering the skull.

  So now it was confirmed. Uncle William’s shot had indeed struck Beaulieu, damaging his brain—and the pitiful result even now sat drooling and grinning before David’s eyes.

  “Out of the way, boy,” Fletcher said, pushing David aside and going past him. He strode toward the counter, where the men had abruptly stopped laughing, now that the object of their mirth was present. Fletcher took three steps, then stopped, spun on his heels and looked sharply at David.

  “Don’t I know you, boy?”

  “No sir. I don’t reckon so.”

  “The devil you say … you’re the son of a Crockett, or I’m a son of a whore!”

  David headed out the door on a dead run. Fletcher, cursing and yelling, chased after him, his long legs gaining ground despite David’s best efforts. Panic began to set in. No, David thought. Fear will make him win. Fight back, no matter what. Always keep fighting back.

  He ducked quickly to one side, wheeling and swinging down his hand to pick up a loose stone about the size of a large hen egg. Fletcher was no more than twenty feet from David when he let the stone fly. There was hardly time to aim; he threw almost totally by instinct.

  The rock took Fletcher full in the forehead. He stopped like he had run into a wall, teetered, and fell sideways, blood streaming down both sides of his nose.

  David laughed, not in taunting, but in the sheer joy of an unexpected victory. New energy rose inside him, and his legs churned at twice the speed they had moved before, taking him around the bend and out of sight in the woods. Fletcher, who surely by now had learned it did not pay to dally with a Crockett, would not catch him. Another David had met his Goliath, and the stone had flown as true for the latter-day David as it had for the first one.