The boy was soon hired to pay another of his father’s debts. When Davy expected to be paid in money, the man gave him a note instead. But Davy was glad to be able to help in this way. Another time he went and hired out on purpose to pay a bill his father owed. As his wages were small, it took a long time to pay a few dollars.
When Davy was thirteen he could not read nor write. At that time he was working for a good Quaker neighbor. The boy asked permission to work two days a week, just to pay his board, and spend the other days in school. Young Crockett learned “the three R’s—Readin’, ’Ritin’, ’Rithmetic”—well enough to do the simple business of pioneer life.
Davy’s highest ambition was to own a horse and a gun. When he had a rifle and a pony he thought he was old enough to marry a girl of seventeen. He seems not to have thought much about having a home of his own. The boy bridegroom took possession of a deserted log cabin. The bride’s father gave them a cow, and the good Quaker lent the young couple fifteen dollars to start housekeeping. Davy Crockett wrote, after they had bought many fine things with that fifteen dollars, “We were then fixed up pretty grand, so we thought.”
After three years the young Crocketts owned, besides the horse and gun, two cows, two calves, two colts and two children. But now that he had a home of his own, the young hunter was too restless to stay in it. When that region became so thickly settled that neighbors lived within a mile or two of one another, the nervous young pioneer moved hundreds of miles, to a newer country where he could find “elbow room.” His devoted wife took their little children and went with him to the rougher region among Indians, bears, and other wild animals.
Davy Crockett found friends wherever he went. He was happy-hearted and full of funny stories. He had a humorous way of saying things that pleased those rough-and-ready western people. His homely yarns had a meaning deeper than the surface, like those told twenty years later by a young man named Abe Lincoln. Crockett’s backwoods stories and western slang were quoted all over the country. He told of “treeing a coon” once, and of how, as he was about to shoot, the raccoon exclaimed, “Don’t shoot, I’ll come right down. I know I’m a gone coon!” “I’ll come right down” and “I’m a gone coon” became popular expressions everywhere.
Crockett became a great hunter. He killed all the bears in the country around him and had exciting times hunting big game wherever he lived. He was wise and sensible in helping and advising his neighbors. The people in that pioneer country elected David Crockett a justice of the peace. They did not care whether he knew much about common law so long as he was possessed of common sense.
When the Creeks and other Indians in the southern states went on the warpath and murdered hundreds of people, General Jackson, the great man of Tennessee, led thousands of white men to kill all the Indians known to have taken part in that massacre, just as he would have tried to rid the country of dangerous bears or snakes. When Davy Crockett got the word he told his patient little wife, “I’m going to help fight the Indians.”
“Oh, Davy,” she exclaimed, “what will become of us—hundreds of miles from all my friends? The Indians will come and kill us while you are away.”
But Davy Crockett could not stay. “I’ve got to go,” he said. “My country needs me, and if we don’t fight and kill the Indians they will come and kill us all, that’s sure.”