by Lauran Paine
Davy left the man, coursing ahead until he reached an area where a dead horse was lying. From here on there were signs of a fierce fight, broken tree limbs, trampled undergrowth, churned earth, and the lingering scent of burned powder.
He scouted about a mile below this place, angled in the direction of the road, and sat down.
The wagons were coming. There were a few birds. He decided to go back to where the whittler had been sitting. The man was gone, so was the lad with the arrow in his back. Farther back he found where the lost horse had been caught, loaded, and was being led westerly.
When the wagons arrived, Davy was sitting on the verge. Cain was driving the first wagon, which meant his party of scouts had found nothing on the east side and had returned to the wagons.
He dusted off, went down where the lieutenant was astride a gaunt horse, and leaned on his rifle. The officer raised his uninjured arm for the cavalcade to halt.
Davy said, “No ambushers for another mile. Beyond there, it looks like open country.”
The lieutenant straightened in his saddle, looked both east and west, told Davy there was an extra horse at the tailgate of the last wagon, and made his arm gesture for the wagons to begin moving. His command was united again.
Davy got astride the extra horse—which was the mount of the bugler—and waited for the forest to yield to somewhat rolling, mostly treeless country.
When they halted at a full-fledged stream with a bridge over it to water the animals and rest briefly in an area where they could see for miles in three directions, Cain came back where Davy was rebridling after tanking up the bugler’s horse and said, “Wasn’t nary a soul where we scouted easterly.” The old man put a shrewd gaze on Davy. “But you knowed there wouldn’t be, didn’t you.”
Davy accepted Cain’s offer of Kentucky twist, returned the plug, and said, “I can’t figure out who won that fight or where they are. My guess is that Red Sash’s band whupped the Choctaws an’ run ’em off.”
“Likely,” the old man agreed.
“Then where is Red Sash?”
Cain scratched the tip of his nose before speaking. “All’s I care about, Mister Crockett, is reachin’ our destination, gettin’ rid of this army freight, findin’ me a nice tavern with clean hay in the loft, an’ you can have everythin’ else.”
Davy did not mention the whittler. It would serve no purpose and their meeting had seemed to be one of those things that had no place in casual conversation.
They left the creek ground over the bridge, and had a settlement in view when Davy decided he would cut loose and head for home.
Up ahead old Cain let out a howl that caught everyone’s attention. Several hundred yards onward where clay hills lay on both sides of the road and ran southward for some distance, there was a band of horsemen blocking the road as motionless as stone carvings.
The lieutenant sent for Davy and asked if he recognized any of the men barring the road. The distance was too great so Davy volunteered to ride ahead for a closer look.
Actually this had been the reason the lieutenant had sent for Davy. He offered a pistol and an admonition. “Don’t get so close they can hold you hostage.”
Davy ignored both the pistol and the admonition. Around the officer his soldiers sat in silence, watching Davy ride ahead. One of the soldiers, a grizzled man, said, “If that’s Breaux, all’s I got to say is he don’t give up.”
The lieutenant’s reply was curt. “We’re too close to a settlement for renegades to make trouble.”
Whether that was true or not, none of the watchers spoke as Davy got closer to the motionless blockaders.
Davy abruptly drew rein, shifted Betsy to his left arm, and raised his right hand palm forward as he called out. “Jesse!”
One of the riders urged his horse ahead. Where they met some distance from the blockading riders, Jesse Jones smiled. “There was talk in the settlement about a big fight up yonder. Last night some Indians come through … went wide around the settlement. I was goin’ to go south where the boy’s folks was massacred, but the other fellers thought we’d best go north an’ find them army wagons. Was you in that fight, Davy?”
“I was part of it.” Davy looked past at the horsemen barring the road. “Is there a reason they don’t figure to let us pass?”
“No reason at all. What we figured was that so many fellers comin’ with the wagons bein’ led with a feller in buckskin out front, it might be the fight was over the wagons an’ the army lost. Davy, it’s a blessin’ to see you again.”
“It’s a blessing to be here, Jesse. How’s Bess an’ the children?”
“Fat ’n’ sassy. Davy, you recollect the lad named Knight whose folks them raiders killed?”
“How is he, Jesse?”
“He’s back yonder with the others. His first name’s Reno. Most likely this ain’t the place for it, but I’d like to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“I been takin’ the boy with me. I been takin’ him around with me. He’s a good lad. Davy, I’d be right grateful if you’d let me ’n’ the lad build a cabin on the west side of your clearing.”
Davy’s mind flashed back to another youngster—with an arrow in his back. Jesse thought Davy’s hesitation meant something else. He said, “I know it’d make a crowd, us an’ you ’uns, but to be right honest with you, Davy, I had no young ’uns and the lad needs someone.”
Davy leaned, slapped the older man lightly on the shoulder as he said, “Let me get shed of these soldiers an’ their wagons, then you ’n’ me, the lad an’ maybe some of my boys can help build the cabin. Jesse, can you get them men to quit barring the road?”
Jesse smiled and started to rein around. “We just didn’t know is all, what with all the talk of a big fight. I’ll take ’em back to the settlement.”
Davy rode at a walk back where the lieutenant and the others were waiting. He swung his horse and without a word joined the men around him in watching the riders heading southward toward the settlement.
The officer said, “What happened, Mister Crockett? Who were they?”
“That feller I talked to is a partner of mine. He rounded up them fellers to hunt Choctaws for killing an’ burning.” Davy raised his rein hand, which was a signal for the teamsters to get their hitches moving. The officer rode through the narrow place in the road with Davy. Once he stood in his stirrups and said, “How big’s that settlement?”
“Couple hundred, I’d guess. Big enough so’s no one’ll attack it while you ’n’ your men rest up. There ain’t no doctor there, but there’s a real handy midwife.” Davy slouched in the saddle. He had missed a lot of sleep and some meals. His arm ached where he’d been unable to avoid a knife, but he was no more than half a day’s ride from Bess, their clutch of nestlings, and a place to set down and let loose.
The lieutenant roused Davy from his thoughts. “I got authority to pay a scout for he rest of the trip, Mister Crockett.”
Davy did not even look at the man, riding stirrup with him. “Mister, there ain’t enough money in the whole danged country to keep me from going home.”
The lieutenant was understanding, but he was also damn stubborn. “When my report gets read by senior officers, if you’re of a mind, I’d like to get them to offer you an army commission. The pay’s better’n grubbin’ the ground, the army supplies horses an’ uniforms, it even pays for your food and bed.”
Davy finally turned toward the lieutenant. “That’s right decent of you, Lieutenant, but I’ve soldiered my share as a volunteer, and to speak right out, I’ll say, if the choice was between skinning skunks an’ being an army officer, I’d take skinning skunks.”
The lieutenant reddened and rode without another word until they could make out every detail of the settlement, then he asked its name. Davy answered candidly, “I can’t rightly say, but when I left, it was cal
led Shoal Crossing.”
“Why would it be changed?” the officer asked.
“Because settlements in this country change their names oftener’n I change my britches. Sooner or later they name themselves after presidents. Shoal Crossing might be Jacksonville by now, for all I know.”
The one rutted wide roadway of the settlement was crowded with onlookers on both sides as the wagons entered from the north. People waved hats and smiled. The lieutenant took this homage to heart by removing his hat and bowing from the saddle until the people began shouting Davy’s name, then the officer put his hat back on, and rode toward the corrals at the southern end of town as red as a beet.
Chapter Twelve
Colonel Crockett
Davy and Jesse slipped away, heading for the Crockett clearing, but in Shoal Crossing those volunteers Jesse had rounded up were not amenable to disbanding. After supper that evening they congregated at the tavern where the soldiers, muddy, bedraggled, but properly fed and red-faced, not altogether from the hearth fire, bought a round after which an old man with unkempt hair got on a chair, yelled for silence, and put forth an idea that had been discussed at supper.
“We got as good a party of fightin’ men as is around!” he exclaimed. “Trouble in our territory ain’t over with by a long shot. I say we form up a Shoal Crossing militia unit. If we just go on home, we’ll get caught out sure as hell’s hot the next time raiders come. I don’t want that an’ neither do you. I say we take turns havin’ scouts out, organize ourselves so’s we can’t be caught alone from now on, and do things proper.”
A sweaty, large-nosed man called from the bar. “I’m favorable, but we got to have a commander, like the army does!”
The old man smiled so wide his few teeth showed. “Davy Crockett!” he exclaimed.
There was a hush as men looked around nodding. The lieutenant, warm inside and out, spoke from a table among his soldiers, “Captain Crockett!”
The old man seemed to ponder that briefly, then said, “Colonel Crockett.”
The lieutenant emptied a tankard, and one of the enlisted men took it to the bar to be refilled. The lieutenant discreetly belched before smiling slyly. “Colonel for a fact. Maybe even General Crockett.”
The old man scowled. “This ain’t no joke, mister.”
From the bar the red-nosed, sweaty man raised his tankard. “Colonel Davy Crockett, head Indian of the Shoal Crossing Militia!”
The enlisted soldier returned, placed the tankard before his officer, and leaned to say, “They like colonel, sir, an’ there’s some among them that’s tanked up enough to fight.”
It was good advice and the lieutenant accepted it. His injured arm was throbbing. He was as full as a tick and sweaty from liquor. He asked a villager where he could find the midwife.
The villager’s initial reaction was a round-eyed stare. The officer touched his injured arm and the villager arose. “I’ll take you to her cabin. She’s already got your bugler tucked in.”
The matter of organizing the Shoal Crossing Militia required half the night. The tavern keeper was appointed quartermaster with the obligation to make sure, when the militia marched, he’d have the appropriate medicine in his wagon.
There were other appointments. The old man with unkempt hair, although proposed for several ranks, declined each time. He said he had no idea how to conduct himself except as a volunteer, in which capacity he had served during the Creek War and even down at New Orleans.
By the time the meeting at the tavern ended, miles northwesterly, Davy was asleep in a chair with Bess rocking gently as she mended the knife cut in his shirt.
Across the clearing an owl hooted. Bess sewed, rocked occasionally, looked at Davy, and softly shook her head. He needed an all-over bath at the creek; his whiskers scratched and he’d lost weight. What he’d told her before going to sleep in the chair was more than he’d told others.
His story of the man sitting whittling on a log with the body of his dead son close by touched Bess Crockett the way it would not have touched most men.
She had fed him, shooed the children to their loft, had mulled some cider for Davy, and had told him something about Reno Knight.
When Jesse had told the boy he and Davy had buried the lad’s folks, Reno had fled from the house, had disappeared into the westerly forest, and, when he hadn’t returned, Jesse had gone to find him.
She said she had no idea what Jesse had said, but when they returned together, although the boy hadn’t eaten and shrank from the light, when he and Jesse had gone out to the porch, Bess thought the boy had got over the shock. She said she had no idea how Jesse had done it, but beginning the day after Jesse brought the lad back from the forest, they became inseparable.
When Davy awakened along toward first light, Bess had finished with the shirt, had scrubbed it, and had it lying a fair distance from the fire to dry; too close the buckskin would stiffen and crack, too far and it wouldn’t dry for days.
She told him to go to the creek and handed him a chunk of tan lye soap. After he’d departed, she gave his britches the same scrubbing and set them also to dry.
When Davy returned, she had his second pair of buckskins ready. By that time the children had been fed. They swarmed over Davy, sounding like a nest of trilling song birds.
John Wesley told his father that Reno had asked him to help stake out where a cabin was to be built. John Wesley took his hatchet and left the cabin.
Davy stood in the doorway. Across the clearing Jesse and the Knight lad had cut saplings to be sharpened to stakes and were awaiting John Wesley’s arrival.
Bess came to the door. Davy explained what they were doing over yonder, told her of Jesse’s question, and Davy’s answer.
Bess smiled. “He’s a good man, Davy. The children are right fond of him.”
Davy looked down at his wife. Over the years he had made a discovery. Bess Crockett saw good in everyone, which was unusual in a frontier country where trust was fine but only when folks were facing one another. Turning one’s back to a stranger, even to some acquaintances, had resulted in wooden crosses in some isolated places.
Davy was over tying twine between stakes when someone he had not expected to see again came riding across the clearing. As the lieutenant dismounted, Davy noticed the clean bandage showing past the tunic where the officer carried his injured arm.
The lieutenant nodded to Jesse and the two boys before addressing Davy as Colonel Crockett. Jesse, the boys, and Davy stood like stone. The lieutenant told Davy about the formation of the Shoal Crossing Militia, that Davy had been elected colonel commander, and held out his hand. “Congratulations, Colonel. If more settlements would organize militias, the army’s job would be easier. I’ve got to get back. We’re going on south to deliver the freight. If I’m ever down this way again, I’d admire to call on you, Colonel.”
The lieutenant smiled, something Davy had never seen him do before. He gripped the extended hand and smiled back. He held the horse’s bit as the officer mounted, released it, and stepped back. “I’d feel better about you going iffen I knew where them renegades are, Lieutenant.”
“I hired some of your militia to ride escort an’ scout for the rest of the trip,” the officer said, nodded to Davy, to Jesse and the boys, reined around, and loped back the way he had come.
Jesse spat amber, considered the hatchet he’d been using to pound stakes, and dryly said, “I always figured you was set for better things in life.” Then he laughed.
John Wesley and Reno Knight were impressed. Reno in particular showed diffidence until Davy caught hold of him, swung Reno athwart his shoulders, and said, “Let’s get something to eat. I’m hungrier’n a bear cub.”
At the cabin the boys told Bess why the soldier had ridden to the clearing. She evinced less diffidence as she got them all seated to be fed and said, “Colonel … sir … you went an’ left the
soap at the creek. The girls fetched it back. It’s a chore making soap. I’d take it kindly if you wouldn’t forget to fetch it back … Colonel.”
It was a noisy meal. It could not have been otherwise with nine children. Bess and one of the older girls kept food coming.
Davy heard a dog bark above the noise in the cabin and paid no attention until Jesse looked up from his platter with his head cocked as he said, “Now who’s comin’?”
Two boys went to look from the doorway, returned, and said they had seen no one.
The dogs continued to bark. Davy listened to one particular dog, old Ned, his favorite bear dog. He leaned to arise. Across from him Jesse stood up, saying, “Darned varmints, country’s gettin’ full of ’em.” He went to the doorway, stepped outside under the overhang, and squinted across the clearing in which direction the dogs were snarling.
The gunshot was loud because the man who fired was close to the final fringe of trees.
Everyone inside heard the shot and also heard something strike the cabin’s outside wall. Davy was on his feet in seconds.
Jesse was lying on one side with an outflung arm. His blood darkened where hard ground absorbed it. With Bess helping, they got Jesse inside, placed him flat out near the fireplace atop a bearskin rug, and Davy knelt to cut the shirt where blood ran. Bess told one of the girls to get a basin of hot water from the stove; she told another girl to get the children into the loft where they were to be quiet.
She elbowed Davy aside, rolled up her sleeves, and, when the water arrived, she told the girl who had brought it to fetch the herb box and her sewing kit. She faced her husband over the inert figure on the rug. “Mind the boy,” she said.
Reno was near the open door, reaching for Jesse’s rifle when Davy approached, took the weapon from the lad, and leaned it aside as the boy looked up with wet eyes. “I got to do it, Mister Crockett. I got to do it. First my dog, then my folks … seems everything I love gets killed. He’s going to die, ain’t he?”
