The next year of Davy’s life was one of hard work and no pay. He had been at home but a short time when his father told him that if he would work for six months for a man named Abraham Wilson, Wilson would in return give up a note of John Crockett’s for thirty-six dollars. As a reward, Davy could thereafter work for himself, without waiting to become of age. The boy fulfilled the compact without missing a day, in a place where some of the roughest of the settlers made a practice of meeting to drink and gamble. At last the note was his, and the joy of his father at its surrender was Davy’s recompense.
It was always a satisfaction to Davy Crockett to know that his father was a man who honestly tried to pay his debts. The son appears to have had the same spirit. When he asked to be given work at the home of “an honest old Quaker, John Kennedy,” he found that the man held another note of his father for forty dollars. Davy was offered the note for another six months’ work, and with a keen desire to do his duty, and to ease his father’s burdens as much as he could, he disregarded his newly acquired right to work for his own account, and started in. At the end of the time he received the note, borrowed a horse, and went home for a visit.
“Some time after I got there,” Davy afterwards said, “I pulled out the note and handed it to my father, who supposed Mr. Kennedy had sent it for collection. The old man looked mighty sorry, and said to me that he had not the money to pay it, and didn’t know what he should do. I then told him I had paid it for him, and it was then his own; that it was not presented for collection, but as a present from me. At this he shed a heap of tears; and as soon as he got a little over it, he said he was sorry he could not give me anything, but he was not able, he was too poor.”
For two months, after going back to the Quaker’s, Davy worked to get something decent to wear. The last good clothing he owned had been left with Adam Myers, together with his seven dollars of hard-earned cash, when he had quit that troublesome person, a few days out from Baltimore. This was nearly three years ago, so it is easy to imagine the boy’s shabby appearance. About the time when Davy was able to spruce up and aspire to polite society of the kind about him, he fell in love with the Quaker’s niece, who had come on a visit from North Carolina, and who was much older than he. All the symptoms of what the mountaineers called “calf love” were forthcoming. He couldn’t keep out of the girl’s sight, yet nearly choked when he tried to talk to her. When he had reached the proper state of desperation, he acted with his usual headlong energy, and told the young lady that he would die without her. He says that the girl listened kindly enough, but told him that she was to marry a son of the Quaker.
Davy concluded that his troubles were mostly due to his lack of learning. He was now in his seventeenth year, with a record of four days at school. He soon arranged with the old Quaker’s son, who kept a school a mile or so away, to work for him two days in the week, for board and tuition, and go to school the other four days. This plan was followed for six months.
“In this time,” says Davy, in his later account of his boyhood, “I learned to read a little in my primer, to write my own name, and to cipher some in the first three rules of figures. And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life.”
Davy had now grown to be a stout young fellow, and as he had learned to use a rifle with great accuracy he became a successful hunter. This was to a great extent a warrant for his plans for securing a wife, and he laid siege to the heart of a pretty young girl whom he had known since his early days. His courting was done without the knowledge of the Quaker, with whom he was now living. In the evening, when all were asleep, Davy would let himself out of the up-stairs window, by means of a sapling, and ride ten miles to the girl’s home, always returning before daylight. She at last agreed to marry him, and the day was set.
Lovers were not then given to sentimental tokens of affection. A plug of sweet tobacco, or a bladder of snuff, for dipping, was quite the thing to show the state of a young man’s feelings. Flowers were nothing but “yarbs,” and the present of a bouquet of may-flowers or laurel-blossoms would have caused inquiry as to his sanity. The mountaineer took no more notice than the Indians of the beautiful things in nature.
A few days before the expected wedding, Davy set out, as he told his employer, for a hunt, deer being then numerous. Instead of hunting, he went to a shooting-match on the way to the girl’s home. Making a deal with another rifleman, who must have had a little money, they took chances in the shoot for a beef, and when it was over, Davy had won. After selling the prize, the partners each had five dollars, and with that in his pocket, and his head above the clouds, the boy went to claim his bride. Two miles from the girl’s home her uncle lived, and there he found her sister. As soon as he began to talk with her, he saw that something troubled her, and then the whole pitiful story came out: the girl had played with him, and was to be married the next day to another man. For a time Davy was speechless. His pride was hurt, and he turned homeward his “lonesome and miserable steps,” like a wounded animal, stricken with mortal pain. He was thought to be sick for several weeks, for he was too proud to tell his trouble, and in his story of suffering there is ample evidence of the strength of his attachment to those whom he loved.
For some time Davy was too low-spirited to care for anything, even hunting; but one day he took his rifle and set out for the woods. On his way home, he stopped at the cabin of a Dutch widow, whose daughter, he says, was “as ugly as a stone fence.” It was this girl, however, who pointed out to him how great a mistake he made in “mourning over the loss of a single fish, when the sea was full of others as good.” She told him of a pretty Irish lass who was to be at a reaping bee in a few days, and induced him to come, too. By the end of the evening the charms of Polly Finlay took possession of his thoughts and Davy found life more worth living. As in so many cases, the course of true love did not run smooth, for the girl’s mother had selected another suitor for her daughter, and she bitterly opposed Davy’s suit.