The next morning, Crockett took a young man with him and went out into the woods to bring in the game he had shot.  They brought in two of the bucks, which afforded them all the supply of venison they needed, and left the others hanging upon the trees.  The boatmen then pushed their way up the river.  The progress was slow, and eleven toilsome days passed before they reached their destination.  Crockett had now discharged his debt, and prepared to return to his cabin.  There was a light skiff attached to the large flat-bottomed boat in which they had ascended the river.  This skiff Crockett took, and, accompanied by a young man by the name of Flavius Harris, who had decided to go back with him, speedily paddled their way down the stream to his cabin.

There were now four occupants of this lonely, dreary hut, which was surrounded by forests and fallen trees and briers and brambles.  They all went to work vigorously in clearing some land for a corn field, that they might lay in a store for the coming winter.  The spring was far advanced, and the season for planting nearly gone.  They had brought some seed with them on their pack-horse, and they soon had the pleasure of seeing the tender sprouts pushing up vigorously through the luxuriant virgin soil.  It was not necessary to fence their field.  Crockett writes: 

“There was no stock nor anything else to disturb our corn except the wild varmints; and the old serpent himself, with a fence to help him, couldn’t keep them out.”

Here Crockett and his three companions remained through the summer and into the autumn, until they could gather in their harvest of corn.  During that time they lived, as they deemed, sumptuously, upon game.  To kill a grizzly bear was ever considered an achievement of which any hunter might boast.  During the summer, Crockett killed ten of these ferocious monsters.  Their flesh was regarded as a great delicacy.  And their shaggy skins were invaluable in the cabin for beds and bedding.  He also shot deer in great abundance.  The smaller game he took, of fat turkeys, partridges, pigeons, etc., he did not deem worth enumerating.

It was a very lazy, lounging, indolent life.  Crockett could any morning go into the woods and shoot a deer.  He would bring all the desirable parts of it home upon his shoulders, or he would take his pack-horse out with him for that purpose.  At their glowing fire, outside of the cabin if the weather were pleasant, inside if it rained, they would cook the tender steaks.  They had meal for corn bread; and it will also be remembered that they had sugar, and ten gallons of whiskey.

The deerskins were easily tanned into soft and pliant leather.  They all knew how to cut these skins, and with tough sinews to sew them into hunting-shirts, moccasins, and other needed garments.  Sitting Indian-fashion on mattresses or cushions of bearskin, with just enough to do gently to interest the mind, with no anxiety or thought even about the future, they would loiter listlessly through the long hours of the summer days.