“Why, that’s just what brung me here tonight, Cricket! After the police was forced to set Neuendorf free, Captain Russell come to see me and told me all about your little palaver this morning. Thinks I—‘There’s more to this-here Cricket feller than meets the eye.’”

“I am, of course, deeply touched by your heartfelt encomium,” I replied with more than a hint of wryness in my tone. “But as to the precise purpose of your visit,” I continued, “I must confess that I remain in the dark.”

“That’s easily answered. I’m here to lay out a proposition—that you ’n’ me hook up together! Why, with that rattlin’ good head of yourn and my own—if I may say—uncommon endowments, I reckon we’ll catch that low-down murderer quicker’n a blind horse can bump into a fence post!”

So startling was Crockett’s proposal that, for a moment, I was rendered utterly incapable of speech. “Am I to understand,” I inquired at last, “that you are suggesting a partnership between us?”

“You have struck the nail bang on the head, Cricket.”

Another moment passed as I struggled to digest this extraordinary development. “And what of the police? Surely it is the responsibility of duly appointed law officers, and not of private citizens, to engage in the pursuit and apprehension of notorious criminals.”

Plucking his wide-brimmed hat from his knee, Crockett uncrossed his leg and leaned forward in his chair. “No disrespect meant to Captain Russell and his boys, but I don’t take much stock in ’em, Cricket They ain’t no different from any other constabulary I ever struck—so saddled with doin’ things accordin’ to the book that they move as slow as cold molasses in January. And anyways,” he added with a grin, “I ain’t no private citizen. I am a real sure-enough U.S. congressman!”

“So you are,” I repled, arranging my features into an expression that—while falling short of a smirk—nonetheless conveyed a fair degree of skepticism.“Indeed, at the risk of wrongfully impugning your motives, I cannot help suspecting that they are not wholly untainted with considerations of a political nature.”

This observation elicited a singular response in the normally buoyant frontiersman. Far from offending him, it appeared to plunge him into a mood of solemn introspection. His smile faded, his brow contracted, and—casting his gaze downward—he nodded in a slow, reflective manner. When, after the passage of several silent moments, he opened his mouth to speak, it was in a tone of unwonted gravity, “You ain’t entirely uncorrect, Cricket,” he conceded. “Catchin’ the heinous miscreant that kilt poor ol’ Mrs. Macready sure wont do me no harm come election day, I won’t deny it.”