Davy found the Dunns up and feeding their teams, and was kindly received. As he warmed himself by the fire, he forgot his struggle with the storm in his thankfulness for their goodness and help. As soon as breakfast was over, the wagoners set out, and the boy found himself counting the seemingly endless miles of the homeward journey. When they reached the Roanoke valley, his desire to get home was too great for him to endure the slow progress of the loaded wagons. He could travel twice as fast afoot, so at the house of John Cole, on the Roanoke, he thanked his kind friends for what they had done for him, and started out alone on what must have been a tramp of three hundred miles.
He was near the first crossing of the river in a few hours, and dreaded it, as he would have to wade or swim to the other side, in water that was very cold. Then he heard the clatter of horses’ feet behind him, and a cheery hail from a man who was returning from where he had sold some stock. He had an extra horse, saddled and bridled, and as he had also a soft spot in his heart for boys, in a moment Davy was mounted, as proud as a king. In this way he travelled until within fifteen miles of home, when he went his way on foot, full of gratitude towards the stranger for his goodness towards a “poor little straggling boy.”
[III.]
DAVY TAKES TO THE WOODS
Davy is welcomed home—A school-house in the mountains—He makes an enemy—Wildcat style of fighting—Davy takes to the woods—John Crockett cuts a stout hickory switch—Davy is off for Virginia again—He goes to Baltimore—The clippers and the privateer—Prevented from sailing for London—He leaves his self-appointed guardian and starts for home—He crosses New River through slush ice—The trail in spring—A strange boy at the family table—“It’s Davy come home!”
Davy reached his father’s inn the same night, and his welcome may be imagined. It was late in the fall, and he lived at home until the red flames of the sumac and the poison oak were again fiery spots and streaks upon the hills. Then John Crockett took it into his head to send the boy to a school near-by. A rude log cabin, with benches hewn from logs and a floor of earth, offered its single room to those who came. A great slab of wood, three feet wide, and standing on hickory stakes, reached across the room, and was used as a table for the scholars. “Readin’, spellin’ an’ cipherin’” were the principal studies. Writing, of course, was taught, but the quill pens and poor ink they had to use were as hard to get as was paper, and the blackboard seldom made a penman of an awkward lad.
On the fourth day Davy spent in school he had an altercation with a boy larger and older than he. When the children were dismissed, Davy hid in the bushes and waited for his enemy. As the boy was passing the ambush, Davy “set on him like a wildcat, scratched his face to a flitter-jig, and made him cry for quarter in good earnest.”
Young Crockett was now in a bad fix, for he knew there was a flogging in store for him. The next day, and for several days, he left home in the morning, ostensibly for school, but spent the time in the woods, until the children went home. His brothers attended the same school, but he had persuaded them to say nothing of his “playing hooky.” When the schoolmaster wrote to John Crockett, telling him of Davy’s absence, the whole story came out.
“I was in an awful hobble,” Davy wrote of this, “for my father was in a condition to make the fur fly. He called on me to tell why I had not been to school. I told him that I was afraid to go, for I knew I should be cooked up to a cracklin’ in no time. My father told me, in a very angry manner, that he would whip me an eternal sight worse if I didn’t start at once to school.”