Crockett of Tennessee Read online

  “Sir, I don’t know if I should be taking gifts—”

  “It’s not a gift, not really. Just a thing you should have. No—don’t open it yet. Later. When you’re by yourself.” He put the hat back on his head and coughed again, three times. Each time, he hunched his shoulders as if in pain. “I beg your pardon, ma’am. I been sick for a good spell now. I swear I believe it’s liable to kill me soon. Good evening to you, ma’am.”

  He rode on past her and down the road. Elizabeth watched him round the bend and go out of sight, then her eyes fell to the little package in her hand. By the last light of the day she pulled away the twine and ripped off the paper. When she opened the box, she put a hand to her mouth and gasped. It contained the little silver nugget that David had carried with him all his days, the one his beloved uncle Jimmy had given to him so long ago.

  For several moments she gaped at it. How could this man possibly have come by it? David had carried it in his pocket to Texas.… Had he traded it with someone, as he had his pocket watch? It seemed unlikely. He had always treasured it so.

  She had to know more.

  Gripping the nugget in her palm, she gathered her skirts and ran around the bend after the rider. “Sir! Sir! Please sir, wait!”

  He was not far ahead. He stopped and turned in the saddle to see her, then wheeled his horse and waited for her to reach him.

  “Sir … how did you obtain this?”

  “It was dropped by Colonel Crockett in the old mission. It … come into my possession.”

  “But how? They all died there, all of them.”

  He lowered his eyes. “They say there was one who might have got out alive. He was a half-breed, I hear. A rogue and a scoundrel, no good to nobody, but treated well by your husband. Maybe it was him who brought out the colonel’s silver piece.”

  She looked at him probingly, silent a couple of moments. “Yes, sir. Maybe it was.”

  “Ma’am, you may hear a tale that Colonel Crockett was took prisoner and put to work in a Mex salt mine, but I can tell you it ain’t true. They took him, but they killed him before Santa Anna. He died well, and brave. He didn’t bow before them. I know it for a fact. It’s just that folks, they don’t want to let him go. That’s why they tell tales like that. Because they loved him.”

  She looked at the nugget in her hand again. It was growing very dark now on this shaded stretch of road; she was glad, because it hid the tears that had begun to slide down her cheeks. When she lifted her eyes to the rider again, his face was equally hidden in shadow.

  “Who are you, sir?”

  “Nobody who matters.”

  “Please, sir, it matters to me.”

  He said nothing for a time, and seemed to be looking past her, down the road. “Let’s just say I’m a man who’s knowed many a bad and evil thing in his time, but a few good things too. And now and again through his years, the best thing.” He lifted the reins, ready to go on. His straining voice grew even softer. “Let’s just say I’m a man who has knowed what it is to have a friend.”

  He turned his horse and moved slowly down the road, disappearing into the darkness. Elizabeth heard his cough long after she lost sight of him, then even that faded into the distance and was gone.

  She slipped the nugget into her apron pocket, with the gold watch, and slowly trudged through the thickening night, back to her home.

  Afterword

  Crockett of Tennessee is what can best be called an imaginative expansion upon the life history of Colonel David “Davy” Crockett of Tennessee. The facts of Crockett’s life are included in abundance, but supplemented by imagination, the latter most strongly embodied in the fictional story line involving “rogue and scoundrel” Persius Tarr. It is this writer’s hope that many who read this tale of Crockett as molded and expanded upon by a novelist will be spurred to go further and examine the fascinating real man whose life is behind the story.

  Few public figures in American history came closer to achieving the status of “living legend” than did David Crockett, born where Limestone Creek spills into the Nolichucky River in Greene County, Tennessee, only a few miles from this author’s home. Through the Nimrod Wildfire association to word-of-mouth popular anecdotes, from Crockett’s own tales of himself to the wildly exaggerated stories in the Crockett Almanacs, Crockett was a bigger-than-life figure long before he elevated his name to heroic stature at the Alamo.

  Passing years have only added to the Crockett legend. Obviously, the biggest contributor to the modern perception of the man was the famous Walt Disney movie and television series of the 1950s, which set off a Crockett craze that surely would have amazed and amused the real Crockett. He probably would have recognized only a little of himself in his Disney incarnation, but I think he would have appreciated the flattering portrait and loved the attention.

  As best I can see him, the real David Crockett was quite a character, sometimes great, sometimes mundane, sometimes gullible and ambitious, sometimes fully heroic. He overcame a lack of education with natural wit and intelligence. He was not as handsome as a young Fess Parker, but had an appealing face and undeniable charisma. He was politically slick enough to advantageously stretch the facts here and there in his autobiography, yet honest enough to sternly refuse to sugarcoat horrors he had witnessed in the Creek War. The same Crockett who admitted killing Indians “like dogs” at Tallusahatchee also voted against the Indian Removal bill in Congress, despite the tremendous unpopularity of that stand. The same Crockett who went to Texas to find land and new political power, readily put at risk his own ambitions to join the Alamo’s defenders, among whom he fought and died so valiantly that it deeply impressed some of the very enemies who killed him.

  In that Crockett of Tennessee combines history and fiction, it may be useful to help the reader distinguish between the two. Beyond the Persius Tarr story line, most of the fictionalization consists of imaginatively fleshing out characters and situations, occasionally incorporating fictional figures into historical situations, making minor alterations in chronology, or assigning names, personalities, and actions to some of the many persons Crockett mentions, but left anonymous or undescribed in his often terse autobiography.

  Historical figures within the story include the various Crockett relatives mentioned, though the names and ages of David’s siblings are disputed among genealogists; this novel follows the genealogy laid out in 1956 by Robert M. Torrence and Robert L. Whittenburg in their book, Colonel “Davy” Crockett. Other historical figures include the Canadays, Amy Sumner, the Finleys and Elders (though I did create the first name of Annalee for Margaret Elder’s sister, whom Crockett left unnamed in his autobiography), most of David’s various companions and employers during his “wandering boy” stage, most of the individuals named in the Creek War portion of the story, Thomas Chilton and the other political figures from his Washington days, and his fellow defenders at the Alamo, except, of course, Persius Tarr. Some very minor characters, such as McClure, the ship’s captain who seeks to take young David to London, and Kirsten, who introduces David and Polly at the reaping, are historical persons whose roles and actions Crockett described but whose names he either did not remember or chose not to record, and whose identities have not been figured out subsequently by researchers.

  Purely fictional characters, in addition to Persius, include the Cummings brothers, Saul Greer, Ben Kelso, Alonz Tidwell, Fletcher, Beaulieu, and a handful of others. The Dr. Campbell Ibbotson character is a fictional composite of real but unknown people who worked in Crockett’s background during his congressional days, guiding and molding him as a public figure.

  Was Crockett really called Davy within his lifetime? At times, yes, though he went by David in formal affairs. Supporters sometimes shouted “Davy! Davy!” at political rallies; his final political opponent, Adam Huntsman, referred to Crockett as “Davy” in a letter to James K. Polk; the first Crockett Almanac, published within Crockett’s lifetime, called him Davy; and the Natchez, Mississippi, Cou
rier mourned his death in a paragraph that began “Poor Davey Crockett!” Crockett researcher Joe Swann believes ‘Davy’ is a childhood nickname that Crockett was occasionally called throughout life, and I have followed that pattern in Crockett of Tennessee.

  How about the famous animal-skin cap? Did Crockett ever wear one? Apparently not usually, but he was reported to be wearing one when he left Tennessee for Texas, and one of those who saw his corpse at the Alamo noted his “peculiar cap” lying nearby, something that wouldn’t be said if the cap was his usual brimmed hat. And one of the Mexicans involved in the Alamo battle referred to a particularly effective American fighter in a “long buckskin coat and a round cap without any bill, made out of fox skin with the long tail hanging down the back.” This might have been Crockett, a possibility that led me in this novel to put a fox-skin cap, rather than one of coonskin, on David’s head as he heads for Texas.

  How about the mode of Crockett’s death? In Crockett of Tennessee he is presented as dying by execution at the order of Santa Anna after being taken prisoner in the fight, and there is abundant evidence that this may be what happened. Those interested in exploring the evidence for themselves are referred to the 1978 monograph called How Did Davy Die? written by Dan Kilgore, past president of the Texas State Historical Association. I personally think Kilgore is on the right track, though certainly the subject remains an open question, and a touchy one for some. Some Crockett devotees grow quite upset at the suggestion he died by execution, believing this minimizes his heroism. I don’t agree; his heroism is established not by the mode of his death, but by the valiant way he fought to the end.

  I owe thanks to many people for their help in making this project a reality. Thanks first to Bantam Senior Editor Tom Dupree and Editor Tom Beer, both of whom helped guide and mold this novel; to former Bantam Senior Editor Greg Tobin, who first conceived the project; to Tom Burke, editorial assistant, and to all the other fine people at Bantam Books.

  Thanks also to the staffs of the Davy Crockett Birthplace Park at Limestone, Tennessee; the Alamo in San Antonio; the Lawrenceburg, Tennessee, Chamber of Commerce; Gary Crockett of Jamestown, Tennessee; the helpful folks at the East Tennessee Historical Society; and my agent, Richard Curtis, and his staff.

  Most of all, however, I thank the two men to whom this novel is dedicated, Joe Swann and Jim Claborn. Jim has helped keep the Crockett legacy alive in East Tennessee by his work at Morristown’s replica of John Crockett’s tavern, where David spent his boyhood, and through his many appearances at festivals, schools, etc., as a buckskinned Davy Crockett imitator. I’m particularly flattered that Jim was already a fan of my novels before I contacted him during the planning stages of this book; he had written earlier to tell me that while working as an extra in the filming of the Michael Mann production of The Last of the Mohicans, he “died” in one scene with a copy of The Overmountain Men tucked under his British Redcoat uniform.

  Jim steered me to Joe Swann of Maryville, Tennessee. I’m grateful he did. Joe possesses not only the thoroughly provenanced first rifle of David Crockett (now on loan to the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville), but also has collected very detailed information about Crockett’s East Tennessee years. Joe freely shared his data with me, exceeding in generosity and encouragement anything I could have expected, and enabled me to include a few historical facts (such as Canaday’s original ownership of the land where John Crockett built his tavern) that have never before been published, to my knowledge. I appreciate him greatly and look forward to the day his Crockett history-in-progress sees publication, an event that is only a matter of time, considering the quality of his research and writing. I can only hope that Joe will not mind the fact that I employed abundant imagination in my account of how David came by that first rifle.

  And as always, thanks to Rhonda, Laura, Bonnie, and Matthew Judd, truly a great bunch of folks with whom to enjoy family picnics at the riverside place where a very young David Crockett once pranced about, by his own account, not only without shoes, but without “breeches” as well.

  And thanks above all to you, the readers. You are indeed deeply appreciated.

  CAMERON JUDD

  Greene County, Tennessee

  April 2, 1993

  About the Author

  Cameron Judd writes with power and authority, and captures the spirit and adventure of America’s frontier in his fast-paced, exciting novels. Not since Louis L’Amour’s Sackett series has a writer brought to life the struggles, tragedies, and triumphs of our early pioneers with such respect and dignity. The author of more than forty books, Judd is one of today’s foremost writers of the Old West. He lives with his wife and family in Chuckey, Tennessee.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1994 by Cameron Judd

  Cover design by Mimi Bark

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2622-2

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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