David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [88]
Invigorated by the notion that a bear might be nearby, Crockett staggered on through the freshly broken snow. “I followed the trail till it led me home, and I then found it had been made by my young man that lived with me, who had been sent by my distressed wife to see, if he could, what had become of me, for they all believed that I was dead.” As soon as Crockett stumbled through the cabin door, Elizabeth and their children swarmed around him, sobbing tears of joy and rejoicing that he was alive and had once again bested death. “When I got home I wasn’t quite dead, but mighty nigh it; but I had my powder, and that was what I went for.”18
Crockett took a few horns and collapsed into bed. During the night a heavy rain came and turned to sleet, but “in the morning all hands turned out hunting,” he recalled. Some of the hunters left Crockett’s cabin determined to find turkeys along the river, but Crockett wanted larger game. “I told them, I had dreamed the night before of having a hard fight with a big black nigger, and I knowed it was a sign that I was to have a battle with a bear; for in a bear country, I never know’d such a dream to fail.”19
Crockett set out with his hounds looking for bear. This time he found much more than he expected, and this January 1823 hunt became one of Crockett’s favorite stories. The episode was described with great relish and flair in the Narrative.
According to Crockett, he set out along the Rutherford Fork of the Obion River near Reelfoot Lake and quickly bagged a pair of fat turkeys. Lugging the birds over his shoulder, he pushed on but was “infernal mad,” with his hounds continually “barking up the wrong tree” when he encountered “about the biggest bear that was ever seen in America.”20 The bear looked “like a large black bull” and was so intimidating that at first even his dogs were afraid to attack. Eventually they took off after the bear. They chased him into a thicket and up a large black oak tree. Crockett took the turkeys from his back, hung them on a sapling, and “broke like a quarterhorse after my bear.” Cradling his rifle, he climbed through brambles and vines to within about eighty yards of the tree.
With the bear facing him, Crockett primed his gun and fired. The bear raised a paw and snorted as Crockett reloaded and fired once more. The big animal tumbled from the tree and immediately one of Crockett’s best hounds cried out in pain. Without hesitating, Crockett charged with his tomahawk in one and butcher knife in the other. When he drew near, the bear released the dog and focused his attention on the approaching man. Crockett, seeing his wounded dog had crawled off, raced back to his rifle. He loaded the weapon a third time, turned, and fired, this time killing the bear.21
Crockett blazed a trail to his cabin with his tomahawk and recruited one of his brothers-in-law, probably Abner Burgin, and Flavius Harris to help him retrieve the meat. They returned to the kill site with the four horses necessary to carry the dressed meat home.
“We got there just before dark, and struck up a fire, and commenced butchering my bear,” recalled Crockett. “It was some time in the night before we finished it; and I can assert, on my honour, that I believe he would have weighed six hundred pounds. It was the second largest I ever saw. I killed one, a few years after, that weighed six hundred and seventeen pounds…. We got our meat home, and I had the pleasure to know that we now had plenty, and that of the best; and I continued through the winter to supply my family abundantly