The sight of the crowd gathered before the boarding house so offended my sense of propriety that I felt a sudden impulse to forgo the entire affair and return to my chambers at once, Crockett’s insolent challenge unanswered. By then, however, I was near enough to my destination to perceive an anomalous look upon the faces of many of the individuals, who displayed none of the excited eagerness one might expect in the circumstances, but rather a distinct appearance of uneasiness, even distress. Stepping closer, I managed to distinguish a few anxiously muttered words emanating from their midst: “Murder … Butchery … Poor woman!”

My curiosity piqued, I approached the individual most proximate to me—a stout, bewhiskered gentleman standing at the edge of the crowd—and inquired as to the cause of the gathering.

“Why, haven’t you heard?” he replied. “A most horrible crime has been perpetrated on these premises.”

“Crime!” I exclaimed. “Of what nature?”

“Foul murder,” he replied. “The poor widow Macready herself—slaughtered like a lamb in her own bedchamber!”

I gasped in horror at this revelation. “And who was the culprit?”

“That is a mystery as yet unresolved. Even at this moment, officers of the police are gathered within, investigating the monstrous deed.”

“Yes,” interjected the handsome matron beside him, clutching a knitted shawl to her capacious bosom. “They are being assisted by none other than Colonel Davy Crockett, who—as good fortune would have it—has been lodging in this very establishment during his current visit to our city.”

“Why with Davy’s help, the police are certain to apprehend the killer in no time .” The source of this observation was a young gentleman whose fastidious, if not foppish, attire—so strikingly inapt at that unseasonable hour—endowed him with the unmistakable aura of the dandy.

“If such an emotion were possible,” the bewhiskered gentleman proclaimed, “I would almost feel a measure of pity for the murderer. For if Davy gets his hands upon him, there will be the need for neither judge nor executioner.”

“You speak truly, friend,” observed the “dandy” “Why, do you recall the ferocious manner in which Davy subdued Ephraim Packer’s notorious gang of Mississippi river pirates, as reported in last month’s number of Crockett’s Almanac?”

“Recall it!” retorted the other. “Only yesterday, I was regaling my wife with the colorful particulars of that astonishing episode. She was transported with admiration as I recounted how Davy, though partly disabled by a pistol-shot inflicted by Packer’s cowardly lieutenant, Wicket Finney, defeated the latter in a savage bout of mortal combat.”

“To say nothing of Davy’s daring when, armed only with his hunting knife ‘Big Butcher,’ he dispatched no less than six of the murderous cutthroats.”