David was now anxious to get married immediately.  It will be remembered that he had bought a horse; but he had not paid for it.  The only property he had, except the coarse clothes upon his back, was a rifle.  All the land in that neighborhood was taken up.  He did not even own an axe with which to build him a log cabin.  It would be necessary for him to hire some deserted shanty, and borrow such articles as were indispensable.  Nothing could be done to any advantage without a horse.  To diminish the months which he had promised to work in payment for the animal, he threw in his rifle.

After a few weeks of toil the horse was his.  He mounted his steed, deeming himself one of the richest men in the far West, and rode to see his girl and fix upon his wedding-day.  He confesses that as he rode along, considering that he had been twice disappointed, he experienced no inconsiderable trepidation as to the result of this third matrimonial enterprise.  He reached the cabin, and his worst fears were realized.

The nervous, voluble, irritable little woman, who with all of a termagant’s energy governed both husband and family, had either become dissatisfied with young Crockett’s poverty, or had formed the plan of some other more ambitious alliance for her daughter.  She fell upon David in a perfect tornado of vituperation, and ordered him out of the house.  She was “mighty wrathy,” writes David, “and looked at me as savage as a meat-axe.”

David was naturally amiable, and in the depressing circumstances had no heart to return railing for railing.  He meekly reminded the infuriate woman that she had called him “son-in-law” before he had attempted to call her “mother-in-law,” and that he certainly had been guilty of no conduct which should expose him to such treatment.  He soon saw, to his great satisfaction, that the daughter remained faithful to him, and that the meek father was as decidedly on his side as his timid nature would permit him to be.  Though David felt much insulted, he restrained his temper, and, turning from the angry mother, told her daughter that he would come the next Thursday on horseback, leading another horse for her; and that then he would take her to a justice of the peace who lived at the distance of but a few miles from them, where they would be married.  David writes of the mother: 

“Her Irish was too high to do anything with her; so I quit trying.  All I cared for was to have her daughter on my side, which I know’d was the case then.  But how soon some other fellow might knock my nose out of joint again, I couldn’t tell.  Her mother declared I shouldn’t have her.  But I knowed I should, if somebody else didn’t get her before Thursday.”

The all-important wedding-day soon came David was resolved to crush out all opposition and consummate the momentous affair with very considerable splendor.  He therefore rode to the cabin with a very imposing retinue.  Mounted proudly upon his own horse, and leading a borrowed steed, with a blanket saddle, for his bride, and accompanied by his elder brother and wife and a younger brother and sister, each on horseback, he “cut out to her father’s house to get her.”