American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (34 page)

They rode steadily, reining their horses south to Bolivar, then onto the well-traveled road heading west toward Memphis, where they planned to hole up for a few days for a series of unofficial sendoffs. Crockett’s celebrity preceded him, as usual, so that even without a Whig-tailored itinerary, the word-of-mouth buzz was that Crockett was coming. He took his time to visit with old acquaintances along the way, and some, having heard that a small band was heading toward Texas, took it as a muster-call and were packed up and ready to join as he passed through their towns. Riders joined their party along the way, some with real intentions of sticking it out, others just for the bragging rights—to say they had ridden the trail in the company of the great David Crockett.

While Crockett’s intentions had been clear at the outset—this was an extended scouting and hunting expedition—news of the uprisings in Texas had some men’s dander up, and certainly some of those who strung along the military road from Jackson to Bolivar believed they were heading south to fight for freedom. On October 5, Sam Houston had written an appeal from Texas to the American citizens, and it appeared with remarkable celerity just two days later in the
Red River Herald,
which printed the following near-panicked exclamation: HIGHLY IMPORTANT FROM TEXAS!!!! WAR IN TEXAS
—General Cos landed near the mouth of the Brazos with 400 men.
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The story received a great deal of attention and wide circulation, appearing also in the
Arkansas Gazette
and filtering around the region to many papers, including the
Lexington Observer,
the
Kentucky Reporter,
and the
Commonwealth,
most including Houston’s personal appeal:

War in defence of our rights, our oaths, and our constitutions is inevitable, in Texas!
If volunteers from the United States will join their brethren in this section, they will receive liberal bounties of land. We have millions of acres of our best lands unchosen and unappropriated. Let each man come with a good rifle, and one hundred rounds of ammunition, and come soon.
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The references to “liberal bounties of land” piqued the interest of many and the allusions to “millions of acres” of essentially free land were not lost on the entrepreneurial mind of David Crockett. Whether he intended to or not, Crockett had become the de facto leader of what resembled a small military band, and as one onlooker reported, seeing Crockett and the men depart Jackson, “Col. Crockett went on some time ago at the head of 30 men well armed and equipped.”
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The natural-born leader of men now traveled with an entourage.

Crockett and company trotted into Bolivar, where Crockett was hosted by his friend Dr. Calvin Jones, the very man who had given him such equitable terms in leasing him his Gibson County farm.
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Dr. Jones could not help but be impressed by the bustling crowds that poured onto the streets in advance of Crockett’s arrival, and he noted that “every eye was strained to catch a glimpse of him.”
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Jones added that as Crockett rode through town “every hand extended either in courtesy or regard,” some reaching out to pat him on the back or brush against his shoulder. The treatment Crockett received from complete strangers, the awe, the cheers and shouts of good luck, proved to Jones that David Crockett was no ordinary man, he was a full-blown legend in the flesh. Dr. Jones later admitted that he was “more of a Lion than I had supposed.”
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As they rode on toward Memphis, some of the group begged off, perhaps realizing the gravity of their potential journey, so that by the time they reached Memphis on November 10 they were a small hunting party again. Crockett looked forward to dismounting and sidling up to the bar with a few of his old cronies, including his good friend and patron Marcus Winchester. Crockett liveried his chestnut and checked into the City Hotel, freshened up a bit, then spent the day walking about the town, reconnecting with old friends and gathering a kind of posse as he went. By nightfall the boys were in a reveling mood, piling into the half-brick, half-frame Union Hotel bar.
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Their numbers bursting to the walls of the smallish establishment, the crew decided they needed better comfort to take a social horn, so they backed out and headed to a proper emporium, Hart’s Saloon on Market Street, where the drinking began in earnest. The men ordered round after round, and soon the place was loud and smoky, with shouting over the bar tab and proprietor Royal Hart worried that he was going to get stiffed, as Gus Young, who had done most of the ordering, assured Hart he would pay for the drinks the next day.
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Hart wasn’t keen on the idea, and was close to drubbing the intoxicated Young when Crockett intervened, offering to pay for the liquor himself. Soon the lot of them were arguing over who would pay, and in the end the tab was taken care of and the rowdy gang now lifted Crockett onto their shoulders and carried him down the street to the next venue, McCool’s.

There, the boisterous band of brothers hoisted Crockett right onto the bar and demanded a speech from the legendary man. He knew what they wanted to hear, and he’d made this short speech more than once. He hushed the group as they raised their glasses, and offered up this rendition:

My friends, I suppose you are all aware that I was recently a candidate for Congress in an adjoining district. I told the voters that if they would elect me I would serve them to the best of my ability; but if they did not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas. I am on my way now.
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With that, the theatrical Crockett leapt from the bar, and into the shouting and cheering mass. Owner and barkeep Neil McCool lost his cool when he saw Crockett’s grimy boots staining the linen on his bar top, and he flew into a rage, demanding that the rowdy bunch leave. A scuffle commenced, with items like sugar crushers and tumblers flying through the air, some broken glass, and most embarrassing of all, McCool’s wig being yanked from his head and tossed about from person to person, his shiny bald dome coming as a delicious surprise to the locals.
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The sensible Crockett suggested they disperse and hit the sack, for he had a long journey ahead of him, and as they had already been booted from one bar, perhaps they should cut their losses. But the momentum had them rolling, and the diehards of the group dragged Crockett to Jo Cooper’s on Main. Here Crockett submitted to a couple more impromptu speeches, his words by now slurring. Cooper liked having Crockett in his place, and he happily “brought out liquors in quantities. He had the largest supply and the best quality on the bluff, but only sold by the barrel or cask.”
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The men partied for hours, drinking themselves into a staggering stupor which they finally took home to their beds at an hour closer to morning than night.

Crockett was no stranger to the odd hangover, but the one that greeted him on November 11 must have been memorable; still, Crockett managed to roust himself, shake off the cobwebs, gather his boys, and head down to the Catfish Bay ferry landing, where he would cross the “American Nile” and step onto Arkansas soil. Winchester and some other Memphis old timers like Edwin Hickman and C. D. McLean escorted Crockett and his traveling companions onto a large flatboat used to ferry folks across the river. An aspiring young journalist named James D. Davis followed the historic walk “in silent admiration” down to the water, with no way of knowing that those would be the final steps that David Crockett would ever take in his home state of Tennessee. Davis recounted the scene, claiming to remember it “as if it were yesterday”:

He wore that same veritable coon-skin cap and hunting shirt, bearing upon his shoulder his ever faithful rifle. No other equipment, save his shot-pouch and powder-horn, do I remember seeing. I witnessed the last parting salutations between him and those few devoted friends. He stepped into the boat. The chain untied from the stob, and thrown with a rattle by old Limus into the bow of the boat, it pushed away from the shore, and floating lazily down the little Wolf, out into the big river, and rowed across to the other side, bearing that remarkable man away from his State and kindred forever.
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Knowing he would have an audience, Crockett may well have been wearing his Nimrod Wildfire regalia for effect, the consummate showman giving his audience what they wanted to see. He’d stuffed his dress attire deep in his saddle bags, figuring a formal fête or dinner might offer itself along the way to Texas.
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The hoots and hollers diminished as they entered the bigger water and finally there was just a knot of men waving good-bye from the banks. They were waving good-bye to more than a man. The onlookers stood and saluted the person who had become the legend, the self-made man who, lore had it, Old Hickory had commissioned to scale the Alleghenies and personally wring off the tail of Halley’s Comet.
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That night, and for the remainder of the nights of Crockett’s journey, those who paused to gaze skyward would have seen the languid but fiery luminescence of Halley’s Comet scoring its path across the southern sky and into the people’s memory, almost as if the conjuror Crockett had orchestrated the timing of his departure and the return of the feared and famous comet, to coincide.

Having crossed the river and disembarked in the Arkansas territory, Crockett and his company struck west, following the military road roughly 130 miles toward Little Rock. Crockett would likely have pondered, with some bitterness, that the road they traveled was part of the “Government’s” (aka Jackson’s) grand plan, used primarily to carry out the removal of eastern Indian tribes to the western territories.
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That ironic (and to him, unfortunate) fact would not have been lost on Crockett as he rode along. He was essentially following the Trail of Tears.

The men rode with purpose, and two long days in the saddle brought them to Little Rock, a young capital city now serving as a thoroughfare for people emigrating to the Red River country. The quiet community had perhaps heard rumors that Colonel Crockett was on the move and heading west, and some were already out lining the streets. Crockett had a deer slung over the saddle behind him, the limp carcass slapping at the flanks of his horse.

The group boarded at the Jeffries Hotel, hoping to rest for a night and then strike due south the next morning, but that plan was derailed when a small group of excited civic leaders paid a visit to the hotel to invite David Crockett to a banquet in his honor. The men could not find Crockett about his room or in the bar, but one spotted him out behind the hotel, where he bent over to butcher his recent kill, his knife and tomahawk bloody. One of the citizen leaders was a Colonel Robert Childers, an old acquaintance, and he barked out Crockett’s name. Pleased, Crockett lifted his head from his work, “Robertson Childers, as I’m alive,” he quipped. Crockett quickly took the opportunity to brag about the shot he’d made on the buck, just outside of Little Rock. Nodding to his trusty Old Bet, Crockett grinned, reminiscing about the shot. “Made him turn ends at two hundred yards.”
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They talked of the hunt, and Crockett realized that though he was tired, he would have no chance to escape the dinner party.

Knowing at least one of the community leaders, Crockett shifted into performance mode, stepping up for a patented anti-Jackson harangue, recalling his recent election defeat and his reasons for being there, and the predominantly anti-Jackson audience ate it up, stomping and cheering wildly.
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He was heading to Texas, he told them, with no intention of coming back. The evening festivities proved a grand success, and his remarks were met with general enthusiasm, as evidenced by an article that appeared a few days later in the
Arkansas Gazette:

A rare treat. Among the distinguished characters who have honored our City with their presence, within the last week was no less a personage than Col. David Crockett . . . who arrived . . . with some 6 or 8 followers, from the Western District of Tennessee, on their way to Texas . . . Hundreds flocked to see the wonderful man. In the evening, a supper was given him, at Jeffries’ Hotel, by several Anti-Jacksonmen, merely for the sport of hearing him abuse the administration, in his out-landish style.
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In public forums such as these, especially if he performed impromptu, Crockett rarely disappointed his audiences. The hundreds who lined the streets and riverbanks to watch the charismatic man would remember him always, and tell their children, and their children’s children, that they had seen “the real critter himself.” Some would make up their own tall tales of their experiences with him. One surfaced soon after he left, that in a Little Rock drinking establishment, Crockett was offered a shot of “Ozark corn,” a crude and discolored form of grain alcohol. Not wanting to offend the offering host, Crockett eyeballed the stuff, then belted it back in one quick swoop, grimacing mightily. The story goes that Crockett later admitted, “Gentlemen, I et my victuals raw for two months afterwards. My gizzard so all-fired hot, that the grub was cooked afore it got settled in my innards.”
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