“When the folks back home chose to throw me out of Congress and elect a timber-toed rascal in my place, I told them that they might all go to hell, and I would go to Texas. There is a world of country to be settled out there, and a man may make a fortune for himself and his family quicker than it would take lightning to run around a potato patch.”

“I wish you well, Davy,” said I. “But the boundless and untamed expanse of the great Western frontier— rich though it may be in material opportunity—possesses little, if any, allure to me .”

“No,” Crockett said fondly, “I reckon you ain’t the wilderness type, Eddie.”

At that moment, as though to recall his attention to more pressing obligations, Crockett’s magnificent black stallion shook his great head and emitted a snort.

“Reckon I’d best be on my way,” said Crockett, patting the creature on the neck.

“Won’t you stay and have dinner with us, Colonel?” exclaimed Muddy.

“No thank you, ma’am,” said the frontiersman. “I have a heap of travelling to do before the sun goes down. But seeing you all again has made me feel happier than a soaped eel.”

“Thank you for the lovely gift,” Virginia said sweetly, if not (to my ears) with entirely wholehearted conviction.

Crockett, however, merely beamed with delight. “You are almighty welcome, Miz Virginny,” he said.

All at once, a young, freckle-faced boy at the front of the crowd exclaimed: “But Davy, ain’t you going to tell us a story?”

“Ain’t got time, young ’un,” replied the frontiersman. “But Mr. Poe here is a mighty splendiferous storyteller—and if you ask him real polite, I am tolerable certain that he will tell you all about the rip-roarious times him and me had together.”

He inserted a foot in the stirrup of his saddle and swung himself onto his steed “Farewell, friends!” he cried, doffing his coonskin cap and waving it high in the air.

Then he wheeled his horse around and, sitting erect in the saddle, trotted off in a westerly direction—towards the wild, majestic territory where Immortality awaited.

HAROLD SCHECHTER is a professor at Queens College, the City University of New York, where he teaches courses in American literature and culture. Renowned for his true-crime writing, he is the author of five nonfiction books: Bestial, Deviant, Deranged, Depraved, and, with David Everitt, The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers