The room of the tavern in which the wagoners spent the spare hours was large and dingy, built of logs, and had been the scene of more than one desperate quarrel. There were enough bullet-holes in the logs to prove it.
Jackson whispered to a constable, and under the directions of the latter every one left the room except Jackson and the thief. Ten minutes afterwards the latter came out of the room, without his rifle or knife, and sullenly left the place. The horses and the wagon-load of corn were left behind, and were afterwards turned over to the man from whom they had been stolen. Davy, who was a lad of eight or nine years at the time, had been terrified by the threats of the corn-thief, and always wondered at the quiet way in which Andrew Jackson had disposed of him.
The small boy’s days are short, but full of zest. Having as yet no conscience, or at least a dormant one, he feels no regrets for his misdeeds, but sleeps the sleep of the just, and wakes with all his faculties for mischief whetted. Where “two or three are gathered together,” there is always danger in the air. Davy had brothers whose experiences gave him a good start, and he “profited by their example.” Up to the age of five, when he danced with rage on the banks of the shore where he had been left alone, he tells us that he never had worn any breeches. From this we infer that as he was easy to overhaul in flight, and was without any protection from the usual application of punishment, he had to grow and be clothed before he became a serious source of trouble. An Irishman fresh from the Old Sod will tell you that “a boy’ll be after huntin’ trouble before his ears are dry.” And once started, he never quits.
In Davy’s time there were no jam closets for him to rob, for the cupboard was always empty, except for the great loaves of bread that were baked from corn and rye. Everything being devoured as fast as it was cooked, none of the boy’s time was taken up with watching the pantry, and his time was his own. If there happened to be such neighborhood events as corn-huskin’s, ’lasses-b’ilin’s, log-rollin’s, bean-stringin’s, or butter-stirrin’s, which still prevail in the mountains, there was a respite for his victims. Upon one occasion, when his parents had gone to a corn-husking, Davy and one of his brothers, with another boy, rounded up all the hogs that were fattening on beech-nuts in the woods, penned them up, cut off their tails, and let them go. It was some weeks later when their villainy was detected. They were forced to confess that they were guilty, and that the tails had been roasted in hot ashes and eaten. Such mild pastimes as robbing birds’ nests were diversified by practical jokes on the travelling public, and many a beating fell to the lot of the Crockett boys. One of the tricks they played was to take the calves away from their bovine mothers after dark. This meant all-night bawling, and human wakefulness, until the cows were united with the lost offspring. If Elisha had lived in the Tennessee mountains, the bears would have been busy all the time.
When Davy was twelve, in 1798, he had become a strong and useful lad, with a fully developed conscience. The wishes of his parents were the only law he had known, and when at last the time came when his father said to him, as Saul to him of old, “David, go, and the Lord be with thee,” he went forth as a pilgrim. It is not certain with what words he was sent forth, but he seems to have made no appeal from the bargain that sent him four hundred miles over the mountains, on foot, in the keeping of a stranger. Perhaps he had come to know that his father found it hard to feed so many mouths. At any rate, he took up the long march with an old German, Jacob Siler, who was bound to Virginia with a herd of cattle, where he proposed to remain. How many have read with sympathy and keen appreciation Davy’s simple story of his departure “with a heavy heart,” perhaps never to return!
Siler treated the boy kindly, and paid him five or six dollars for his help. When he reached the end of his journey, he tried to persuade Davy to stay with him. At first Davy thought it his father’s wish that he should remain, so for some weeks he tried to be content; but the yearning to see his family again was strong within him. One day, as he was playing in the road, there came along three familiar faces, those of a man named Dunn and two sons, each with a good team. The sight of them was like a sight of home, for they were bound to Knoxville, and the way led past the lowly Crockett inn, and Davy was soon telling his plight to sympathetic listeners. As his disappearance in the daytime would soon be known and might result in his being brought back, they told him that if he could get to the place where they were to put up for the night, seven miles away, they would take him home. All the tiresome journey there, Davy had come on foot, and at the prospect of riding all the way back, heaven opened before him.
To his delight, he found that the “good old Dutchman and his family” had gone to a neighbor’s. Davy’s own story of what followed is this:
“I gathered my clothes and what little money I had, and put them all together under the head of my bed. I went to bed early that night, but I could not sleep. For though I was a wild boy, yet I dearly loved my father and mother, and I could not sleep for thinking of them. And then the fear that I should be discovered and called to a halt filled me with anxiety: and between my childish love of home, on the one hand, and the fears of which I have spoken, on the other, I felt mighty queer.”
It was three hours before daylight when Davy crawled out of his bed. He got away from the house without waking any one, and found it snowing hard, eight inches having already fallen. In the absence of moonlight, it was a difficult matter to reach the main highway, half a mile off; but once in that, he steered his way towards the place appointed, guided by the opening made through the woods. He was two hours trudging through snow up to his knees, and as his tracks were covered as fast as they were made, the Siler family must have wondered at his disappearance.