Crockett of Tennessee

by Judd, Cameron

  A more serious concern stemmed from Crockett’s well-known friendship with the notorious Persius Tarr, presumed killer of Crider Cummings. Tarr’s name was anathema for miles around. It was a little worrisome that the fellow she was to meet had been his friend, and in fact was said to have been the one who brought him to Jefferson County to begin with.

  “Polly!”

  It was Kirsten’s voice. Polly turned and smiled as her Dutch-ancestry friend approached. Kirsten was the nicest of young women and the most devoted of friends. Polly had nothing but high regard for her, and was frequently angered by the cruel comments people made about Kirsten’s appearance. True, she was far from beautiful, not even pretty. Her teeth were a distant memory, and a bout with skin trouble had left her hair very thin, so that her scalp showed through. But what did that matter? She was a fine person, and it was to Kirsten’s credit, in Polly’s opinion, that she held no bitterness for the lack of physical beauty that made it unlikely she would ever have a man of her own. Polly was made slightly uncomfortable by her awareness that Kirsten actually had quite an attraction to this Crockett fellow herself, yet was, in effect, handing him over to her. Kirsten was a realist, Polly supposed. She knew that because of her looks she would never have him for herself, and so was giving that opportunity to her best friend.

  “He’s here,” Kirsten said, taking Polly’s arm. “Come meet him.”

  Polly held back. Now that the moment had come, she felt very shy. What if she didn’t like his looks? What if he didn’t like hers?

  “Come, my dear,” Kirsten said. “He ain’t going to bite you! Though I’ll tell you true, I wouldn’t mind him biting me!”

  Polly followed Kirsten through the crowd. Off to the side a gourd fiddle squeaked out ragged music, and a handful of dancers reeled and bobbed. Elsewhere a wrestling match was under way, and on the perimeter of the crowd a gang of boys were cruelly engaged in throwing rocks at young ducklings in a pond. Polly’s eyes probed through the crowd, trying to see this David Crockett before he saw her. That way, if she didn’t like the look of him, she could always withdraw before matters became awkward.

  “He’ll be tickled with you,” Kirsten said. “He come to my house and set hisself down, making a sociable call on my mother, you see, and I told him, ‘There’s the prettiest gal I can show to you, the prettiest gal you’ll ever hope to see—all you need to do is come to the reaping, and I’ll make certain you meet her.’ He didn’t fight me long, even though he swore at the first that he wanted nothing more to do with women, having been jilted here a few months back by Margaret Elder.”

  “Yes, I know,” Polly said. Kirsten had told her this story three or four times already. Obviously she was very proud of having arranged this meeting.

  “When he lays eyes on you, he’ll never give another thought to Margaret Elder,” Kirsten said.

  “Where is he?” Polly asked. “I want to see him before he sees me.”

  “Too late for that,” Kirsten said. “There he is now, yonder. He’s looking right at us—see that grin!”

  Polly had already picked him out. All her fears of not liking his looks vanished like birds into the sky. As for her concern about his friendship with the hated Tarr, those were forgotten in the rush of pleasure she felt at this first sight of him.

  David Crockett, standing with rifle in one hand and hat in the other, was a fine-looking young man indeed. His eyes were keen and bright, his face healthy and full, with ruddy cheeks. His dark hair was long and tucked back behind his ears, hanging down the back of his neck to the top of his shoulders. Labor had rendered him firmly built, lean but strong. He struck her as tall, though that impression was perhaps created by the easy straightness of his posture. His rather thin lips were curved in an appealing smile, and when her eyes met his, he nodded in greeting.

  “David Crockett, this here’s the gal I told you of,” Kirsten said. “Polly, come shake the hand of the finest man you’ll meet.”

  Polly blushed; Kirsten’s frank way of speaking put her ill at ease. It didn’t seem to bother David Crockett, however; he smiled all the more and thrust out a powerful hand.

  “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Polly Finley,” he said. “I’m David Crockett.”

  His grip was strong but restrained; she liked the feel of his hand. Despite her deliberate effort to restrain herself, a smile forced its way onto her face. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Crockett.”

  “David, David! I don’t take to being a mister.”

  Kirsten smiled, showing her gums. “Why, with you two taking on like this, we’ll have you married and bedded down together before the week’s out!”

  Polly’s face turned red as a blaze. David blushed a little himself, but laughed easily. It put Polly at ease. She felt drawn to him. And it seemed he was drawn to her as well. The afternoon was bright; the music of the gourd fiddle was beginning to sound remarkably fine, scratchy or not.

  It was going to be a good day.

  David rolled over and slowly opened his eyes. The dim light of a newly borning dawn spilled through the window. He felt drowsy and happy. Why? Sleepily, he strained to remember, and then her face appeared in his mental vision. Polly Finley! Energy began to surge through him, sweeping away the torpor of sleep. He sat up. Across the little gable room, Jed Gilford grumbled and rolled over in his bed, dreading the day as much as David anticipated it.

  Whistling softly, David rose and dressed, then descended to the main level of Canaday’s house and out through the front door. Every morning since the reaping, he had taken these walks by the light of dawn, mentally replaying the hours he had spent with Polly Finley and blessing the name of Kirsten the Dutch girl for having brought them together.

  What a day it had been! And to think that at the beginning he had felt hesitant to meet Polly, not trusting that the homely Kirsten would know what a real beauty was if she was face-to-face with one. How wrong he had been—and Kirsten had been right. As she had promised, Polly Finley was the most appealing, earthily pretty young woman he had ever seen. It crossed his mind that he had thought the same at first of Amy Sumner, then Maggie Elder … but he dismissed the thought. He didn’t want to think about them now, only about Polly.

  At the reaping he had danced a few reels with Polly—she was quite good at it, he was pleased to find—and afterward they had talked for the longest time. Polly was an interesting conversationalist, intelligent and softspoken, with the most pleasing and musical voice he had ever heard.

  He had met her mother, a talkative old Irishwoman named Jean, a Kennedy before she married William Finley back in 1786. David took it as a good omen that Polly’s parents had come together in the same year he had been born. Maybe providence had already been looking out for him, making the necessary arrangements to bring this human angel into his life all these years later.

  Jean Finley, though, was certainly an interesting character, and the only aspect surrounding the Polly Finley matter that made him in the least bit uncomfortable. For one thing, the old Irishwoman had laughingly referred to him a time or two as her “son-in-law.” Whether she said it with jovial intent or otherwise he could not say.

  In any case, he had put about as much effort into winning over Jean Finley as in trying to win her daughter. It was a case of salting the cow to catch the calf, as his father might have put it. He felt it had worked, because neither Jean nor Polly had seemed eager to part from him.

  The reaping had continued through the night. Children were there in abundance, enjoying the rare privilege of playing instead of sleeping the night away. David and Polly had joined their games, leading the children through dozens of old “play-party” activities played by generations before them in distant European lands and brought across the water to the New World. It was nearly day when finally the celebrating ended and David told Polly good-bye.

  He walked now through the forest, listening to the morning song of the birds, thinking about Polly. He badly wanted to see her again—but he had no
horse of his own, and John Canaday’s stock of horses was down at the moment, and he rarely had one to spare for David’s use.

  He was thinking over this situation when he heard the call from the house for breakfast. It was during the meal when a chance reference by Canaday to his son Robert, now husband of Amy Sumner, suggested to David a possible solution to his problem.

  Later in the day, David went to Robert Canaday and struck a bargain with him for an aging, cheap horse he possessed. David offered to work for Robert Canaday two days a week for six months in return for the animal. This would still give him sufficient time to perform his labors for the senior Canaday. Robert was agreeable, and hands were shaken.

  David grinned all the way home. The horse he had bargained for might be old and decrepit, but it was a means of transport. No man could court without access to his intended. Two days’ work a week was a reasonable price to pay for access to Polly Finley, no question about it.

  Much to David’s frustration, it was nearly five weeks before his circumstances allowed him the chance to call on Polly at her home, fifteen miles away. When finally he did ride out to see her, it was in a panic of fear. In this time she might have been courted and won by some other. Five weeks seemed an eternity of time; certainly it was sufficient for some rival to move in and edge him out.

  His fears were not allayed when he found Polly wasn’t at home. Her parents welcomed him kindly, Jean chattering on as before, and William Finley playing the backwoods gentleman to his young guest. But where was Polly? David hated to ask it straight out, fearing that would seem rude to the Finley parents, who seemed to assume he had come to visit them. So he sat there in an agony of ignorance, wondering if he would see Polly today at all.

  At last he heard the approach of people outside. He stood, his heart leaping at the sight of Polly entering the doorway, then falling again when a young man of about his own age followed her. From the way the Finleys greeted him, it was clear he was not of the family. A suitor, just as David had feared! He shook the fellow’s hand upon introduction, hating him all the while.

  The next two hours were among the most difficult and most straining David had ever spent. His perception of the fellow as a rival proved accurate, and he had to hand it to him for effort. Right before David’s eyes he wooed and praised Polly, holding her hand, telling her of her beauty—all the while casting bitter glances at David, clearly wanting him to go. David would not go. He had come for Polly, and with Polly he would be.

  Yet even his staunch will was about to break when finally Polly began to show encouraging signs. Her movements, her words, her manner began to indicate she was tiring of her original suitor and wished him to leave—but like David, he was stubborn. Finally she turned to him and told him outright to go, and he slinked off like a kicked dog, his eyes boring into David like augers.

  David remained at Polly’s side until late in the day, and accepted an invitation from William Finley to stay the night. There were plenty of quilts and such they could pile into a makeshift bedroll near the fireplace. David accepted gladly.

  But it was odd. Something was different, and it took him some time to figure out what it was. It was Jean Finley. No longer did she chatter to him like a parrot, no longer did she praise his looks and manners. Evidently she had developed a preference for one of her daughter’s suitors above the other—and the preferred was not David Crockett.

  The devil with her, then, David thought. It’s not Jean Finley I want, it’s Polly. And nobody—not her, not any rival, nor even heaven or hell—will stop me this time. I’ve lost twice in love, and I’ll not lose again.

  He left the next morning, a Monday. Half a mile away from the Finley house, his rival stepped out onto the road before him, anger written across his face.

  “Reckon it’s me or you,” he said.

  “Oh, no,” David replied. “It ain’t me or you. Just me. That’s done been decided.”

  “You think so, do you?”

  “Why, that’s what I said, ain’t it? Now step aside.”

  “No. I ain’t stepping aside for the likes of you. I know who you are, Crockett. You’re naught but the white coon of a Quaker, and the friend of a murderer.”

  “Persius Tarr, you mean?”

  “That’s right. He’s a murderer. He murdered Crider Cummings.”

  “I ain’t no friend of Persius Tarr no more. Why, I’m way too disappointed in him to stay his friend.”

  The other fellow looked confused. David went on, enjoying himself.

  “You see, Persius didn’t kill Crider Cummings with style, if you know what I mean. Three little old stab wounds! Pshaw! That’s nary worth doing.” He reached to his waist sash and drew out the long butcher knife he usually carried. “Now, us Crocketts, when we kill a man—say for courting a woman we’ve got our eye on or some other such offense—we do it right. Lay him open from his privates to his chin, and clean out the tenderest of his innards to feed our dogs. That way there’s nary going to waste, you see, and there’s no question that the killed feller’s as dead as he’s going to get. Why, with no more than three little stab holes, I wager it took old Crider a half hour to figure out whether he was dead or not. Us Crocketts, we don’t leave such questions unsettled. We’re the bullies of the hill and third cousins to the Philistines. We name our baby girls Jezebel and our boys Beelzebub. We carry the sharpest blades, the meanest dispositions, and grudges longer than the moral law. Toward the lovely ladies we have hearts as soft as butter, but let an enemy come ’round, and they turn hard as an iron skillet. Yes sir, let a fellow get on the bad side of a Crockett and he’ll find his eyes gouged out and ate for grapes and his tongue cut out and tanned down to a razor strop. We eat our enemies for Christmas dinner and make combs for our women from the bones. And we never run from a fight. Never. ’Specially not a knife fight.”

  David turned the knife back and forth, running his finger along the sharp edge and wincing to feign a cut. He put the supposedly sliced finger in his mouth and eyed the other, letting silence hold while his prior words sank in.

  “I believe I’ll be heading home now,” David said. “If I was you, I’d do the same.”

  He heeled the old horse into motion. His challenger stepped aside and let him pass. Not another word was said. When David was about to round the first turn in the road, he glanced back. His rival was already out of sight.

  Chapter 27

  In a great wave the wolf hunters swept through the forest, rifles ready, dogs racing ahead, sniffing the earth. David loped along with the gradually spreading line of hunters, a grin on his face. He had hunted wolves before, but never in such a massive group of hunters. It appeared that at least half the able-bodied men and boys from within a hundred square miles had converged here, with dogs and rifles, to scour the woods in attack on one of the most ancient enemies of man.

  It promised to be great fun, enhanced by the fact that David hadn’t hunted in this particular stretch of forest before. Sport in strange country was always more challenging and gratifying. And this area gave him a warm, positive feeling: it was not many miles from Polly’s home. David’s intention was to drop by and pay a call after the hunt was over.

  The farther the line of hunters went, the more distance spread between them. David plunged ahead on a straight course for a long way, until the forest became hilly and rocky and lined with streams, so that he was forced to divert to the side. He looked around. Nobody nearby him now. His companions, strangers to him, had wandered off without his noticing.

  A ridge rose ahead of him, with a swag at the top. He climbed and went through the swag and into a rugged valley beyond, through which a creek ran. Following the creek, he went a mile or more, then turned north and went through a gap between two wooded hills, down a long draw and across another mile of broken country, where the forest was thicker than before.

  Thunder rolled in the distance. David stopped, surveying the sky. Clouds were thickening and rain seemed likely. He listened for sounds of other
hunters and heard none. How far had he come? He grew concerned, and chided himself for inattention. He had wandered from the others, obviously, and now had not a notion of where he was. Suddenly hunting in strange country didn’t seem quite so fun and novel.

  He sat down on a log and dug some jerky from his pouch. As he ate he evaluated his situation, trying to figure the best way to get back. How many gaps had he passed through? Had there been one ridge and swag, or two? When his meal was done, he hefted up his rifle and headed back the way he had come, hoping he could remember.

  There—the gap was ahead. He grinned. At least he would be able to get back to where he started, even if he was pretty much out of the wolf hunt now. He went between the hills and on another half mile, then stopped again. Something was wrong. This terrain didn’t seem familiar at all. Had he come through the wrong gap? Obviously so.

  Now he truly was lost, and the weather was worsening quickly. The wind kicked, clouds hung low and heavy, and the air tasted damp. Blast it all! David was very angry with himself. He was too experienced a woodsman to have an excuse for getting lost.

  He traveled on, covering five miles, then six. Still no rain had started, but the clouds remained threatening, and he figured that the heavens had turned against him and were saving up their fury for after it turned dark, just to torment him worse. And dark it would be, very soon.

  Muttering an oath at bad luck, he crossed a small ridge and stepped out onto a leaf-strewn level spot. Then he stopped. In the dusk he had seen something quite remarkable: a young woman, racing through the forest as if the devils of hell were at her feet. And it sure as the world appeared that … no. It couldn’t be. That would be too odd to be true.

  He took three great steps forward, ready to run after the girl he had seen. If she was in trouble, maybe he could help her—or maybe she could lead him back to familiar territory. He took a fourth step, and the earth tilted beneath his feet, sending him tumbling until it seemed the ground itself had swallowed him. He sent out a loud yell of alarm and vanished into darkness.