Employing the superior agility which, from the earliest days of my youth, had permitted me to excel in sundry feats of athletic prowess, I hurried to the side of this imposing stack and began to climb. Within moments, I was seated on the lid of the uppermost crate, a situation which afforded me an unobstructed view over the heads of the crowd.

Though I could now perceive them clearly, my ability to hear Crockett and his two companions—who were engaged in a heated consultation—was limited by the distance which separated me from the three men. From the gestures of Captain Russell, however—as well as from the few muted words I was able to discern by straining my auditory faculties to the utmost—I inferred that he was urging Crockett to hold back until further reinforcements could arrive. Crockett, however—as I could see both from the emphatic shakings of his head and the resolute set of his features—was in no humor to comply.

Turning back towards the tightly sealed door of the shanty, Crockett began to declaim in a voice whose sheer, far-projecting sonority would have been the envy of the fabled Athenian orator, Demosthenes. Obviously intended for the benefit of his audience—as much as for the unseen antagonist to whom it was presumably addressed—the frontiersman’s vociferous speech carried easily to the farthest reaches of the crowd.

“Hans Neuendorf!” he shouted. “Give yourself up, and you’ll be shown more mercy than ever you showed that poor old widder-lady! If you don’t, why Davy Crockett’ll come in there and fetch you out quicker’n hell can scorch a feather!”

A long moment passed during which the frontiersman’s resounding ultimatum received no reply. Then, a booming male voice issued from the interior of the shack. Though somewhat muffled by the wooden enclosure, the words were of sufficient volume to be heard by everyone present, especially since a profound and intensely charged silence had fallen over the expectant crowd.

“I don’t know nuthin’ ’bout no widder-lady,” called the still-invisible Neuendorf from the sanctuary of his tumbledown abode. Though his tone was emphatic, his slurred and irregular enunciation suggested that—even at that unseasonable hour—the speaker had already indulged in alcoholic consumption to the point of near inebriation.

“One thing I do know,” he continued. “You set one toe over my doorsill, and I’ll give you first-rate hell, you big-mouthed son-of-a-bitch. I ain’t afraid of you, nor any man.”