He therefore pushed on several miles, to the hut of a settler whom he knew.  He was, by this time, too much accustomed to the rough and tumble of life to feel any anxiety about the future.  Arriving at the cabin, it so chanced that he found a man, by the name of Jesse Cheek, who was just starting with a drove of cattle for Virginia.  Very readily, David, who had experience in that business, engaged to accompany him.  An elder brother also, either weary of his wretched home or anxious to see more of the world, entered into the same service.

The incidents of this journey were essentially the same with those of the preceding one, though the route led two hundred miles farther into the heart of Virginia.  The road they took passed through Abingdon, Witheville, Lynchburg, Charlottesville, Orange Court House, to Front Royal in Warren County.  Though these frontier regions then, seventy-five years ago, were in a very primitive condition, still young Crockett caught glimpses of a somewhat higher civilization than he had ever encountered before in his almost savage life.

Here the drove was sold, and David found himself with a few dollars in his pocket.  His brother decided to look for work in that region.  David, then thirteen years of age, hoping tremblingly that time enough had elapsed to save him from a whipping, turned his thoughts homeward.  A brother of the drover was about to return on horseback.  David decided to accompany him, thinking that the man would permit him to ride a part of the way.

Much to his disgust, the man preferred to ride himself.  The horse was his own.  David had no claim to it whatever.  He was therefore left to trudge along on foot.  Thus he journeyed for three days.  He then made an excuse for stopping a little while, leaving his companion to go on alone.  He was very careful not again to overtake him.  The boy had then, with four dollars in his pocket, a foot journey before him of between three and four hundred miles.  And this was to be taken through desolate regions of morass and forest, where, not unfrequently, the lurking Indian had tomahawked, or gangs of half-famished wolves had devoured the passing traveller.  He was also liable, at any time, to be caught by night and storm, without any shelter.

As he was sauntering along slowly, that he might be sure and not overtake his undesirable companion, he met a wagoner coming from Greenville, in Tennessee, and bound for Gerardstown, Berkeley County, in the extreme northerly part of Virginia.  His route lay directly over the road which David had traversed.  The man’s name was Adam Myers.  He was a jovial fellow, and at once won the heart of the vagrant boy.  David soon entered into a bargain with Myers, and turned back with him.  The state of mind in which the boy was may be inferred from the following extract taken from his autobiography.  I omit the profanity, which was ever sprinkled through all his utterances: