Expanding his chest to its fullest extent, Crockett threw back his head and roared, “Why, you infarnal varmint! You best be afeard! I am David Crockett—sired by an airthquake, half-brother to the alligator, and a near relation to the small-pox on my mother’s side! I can out-wrassle a panther, tote a steamboat on my back, and play rough-and-tumble with a lion. I’m a rip-roarer, I tell you. My daddy can lick any man in Tennessee, and I can lick my daddy. I can walk like an ox, run like a fox, swim like an eel, fight like the devil—and swallow a whippersnapper like you whole without chokin !”

And with that, he clenched his hands into a pair of enormous fists and beat a fierce tattoo on his swollen chest.

Though Crockett’s peroration—so characteristic of that ritual boasting associated with the backwoods “screamer”—drew an appreciative roar from his assembled admirers, it made little apparent impression on Neuendorf.

“Far as I’m concerned, you ain’t nuthin’ but a low-down, meddlin’ hound-dog,” cried the latter from within his abode. “I ain’t no murderer, Crockett. But I ain’t no coward, neither. You want me, I reckon you’ll just have to come in here and git me. And if that ain’t to your likin’—why, you can just kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass!”

At this insolent, indeed profane, retort, a gasp rose from the crowd. From my perch atop the packing crates, I could see a flush of the most intense outrage suffuse the frontiersman’s countenance. Flinging off his coat, he hurled it to the ground, let out a cry akin to the blood-curdling “war-whoop” of the savage Comanche, and—lowering one massive shoulder—projected himself with all the force and ferocity of a maddened bull at the shanty’s flimsy door, which gave way with a splintering crash.

As the enraged frontiersman disappeared inside the shack, a tumultuous cheer burst from the crowd, as though from a single, exultant throat. Whisdes, whoops, and cries of “Go get ’im, Davy!” and “Give ’im hell, Colonel!” issued from the lips of Crockett’s excited followers; while other, markedly coarser voices bellowed, “Tear the egg-suckin’ bastard to pieces, Hansie!” and “Rip his friggin’ head off!”

Transpiring as it was within the confines of Neuendorf’s cramped habitation—whose single, narrow window was boarded up against the inclement weather that had prevailed for the past several days—the battle was inaccessible to the sight of the crowd. But its ferocity was evident from the frightful sounds that continually emerged from the shanty: the splintering of wood—the shattering of crockery—the savage thud of fist against flesh—the furious cries—the bitter curses. The little building itself began to quiver and quake—so violendy that it seemed as if its very walls might collapse from the frenzy of the combat.