This salvo produced a most remarkable effect upon Crockett, whose eyes appeared to acquire a dull glaze as I spoke, as if the sheer force of my oratory had staggered him. He looked at me open-mouthed for a long moment before shaking his head and replying: “I don’t reckon I know of no immortal bird nor any melancholy dame. Here’s what I do know, Cricket. Someone saw that review of yourn and sent it to me in an envelope. Whoever done it was too yaller to set down his name, but I got my suspicions.

“Now, you may not know it, shut away here in this hen-coop of yourn, but I got me a passel o’ inimies in the guv’ment these days who’re jest lookin’ for any way to make me look foolish. The Great Man hisself is tryin’ to see to it that I don’t get re-elected on account of he can’t bring me to heel, try as he might. But Davy Crockett is no man’s man ’cept his own. I will never fetch and carry at the whistle of Andy Jackson nor anyone else.

“Now, that there review of yourn is just the sort o’ shot-and-powder my inimies are hopin’ will bring me down. Callin’ me a buffoon and an ignoramus and whatnot. So here’s what I got to say to you, Crickett: You speak prime, all right. Why, when it comes to dealin’ words, I can’t cut and shuffle with you nohow. But that book of mine is as true and honest as I knowed how to make it. It may be poor on grammar and spellin’. But while you was learnin’ how to dot your i’s and cross your t’s, I was fighting injuns in the Creek War alongside Ol’ Hickory hisself, afore he got so all-fired high and mighty.”

The sincerity of this utterance could not be doubted, though its point had so far eluded me, I propounded to Crockett the question of why he had troubled to seek me out.

“Why, that’s as plain as the curls on a buffalo’s hide,” he replied. “I expect you to write out an apology and see that it gets printed in that high-toned magazine.”

“Impossible!” I cried. “Your request would compel me to violate the most sacred principles of my profession. The critic, like the poet, must set aside every consideration other than an absolute and unwavering fidelity to the immutable laws of artistic truth.”

“Dang your hide, Cricket!” Crockett exclaimed. “Can’t you never say a straight word?”

“Here is my word, Colonel Crockett. I cannot—will not—do as you request.”

Crockett’s cheeks ballooned outward. He blew out a long sigh, shrugged his massive shoulders, and said: “Then I don’t suppose there’s no way around it. You and me must fight, Cricket.”