Ozark Country

by Ozark Country (retail) (epub)

  “I wus jist a kid of a boy, ’bout ten, I reckon,” began Tobe, “when th’ match I’m tellin’ ye about happened. Th’ Mullins clan lived over in the Bug Tussle neighborhood then an’ me an’ pap rode over hyar t’ try out his rifle gun, Ole Buck, agin th’ Woodville fellers. They had shootin’ matches regular them days, most ever’ Saturday evenin’.

  “Ole Buck wus a monster gun with a fifty-six-inch bar’l. Hit wus made by an ole gunsmith named Hankins in Kentucky. Hit had a double set o’ triggers an’ a lock that took a cap. Pap could pick out a squirrel’s eye at thirty steps ’thout no trouble.

  “In them days we shot fer beef. A feller would drive a steer t’ th’ match, butcher hit an’ sell chances on th’ beef. Get maybe ten er twelve dollars out’n it. Th’ first- an’ second-best shots got th’ hindquarters, th’ third an’ fourth got th’ front quarters, th’ fifth got th’ taller an’ th’ hide, an’ the sixth got t’ pick th’ lead out’n th’ tree.

  “A feller got six shots fer a silver dollar. In this here shoot twelve men taken chances, but Bim Steele frum Bee Crick, havin’ only fifty cents in cash money, had only took three shots. That left three shots over but Bum Tuttle, who had butchered th’ steer, said t’ go ’head, an’ if nobody didn’ want th’ three extras, he’d take ’em hisself.

  “Pap had cleaned Ole Buck t’ suit him an’ had greased his patchin’s with taller frum th’ taller box that set in th’ right side o’ th’ stock o’ th’ gun. He laid his cleanin’ rag an’ stick on a stump right handy-like. He then cut out a paper fer th’ mark an’ tacked hit on a piece o’ board that had a black spot burned on it. All th’ men fixed their marks that thar way, cuttin’ a V out’n th’ paper, four by five inches, an’ layin’ it agin th’ burnt part o’ th’ board so that it would show up well.

  “Th’ front sight o’ pap’s rifle gun wus made out’n a silver coin an’ wus jist a little off, but pap had shot Ole Buck so many times that he knowed jist how t’ hold it t’ center th’ mark. I wus t’ set pap’s board up fer him an’ I sure wus a-honin’ fer som o’ that thar beef.1 Crops had been scanty over at Bug Tussle that year an’ we didn’t have much t’ eat. Some beef along with our beans an’ taters would taste mighty good, I thought.

  “When hit come pap’s turn t’ shoot, I set th’ board an’ ducked behind a big tree. Pap laid Ole Buck cross th’ log an’ fired. I run t’ th’ board expectin’ a center shot. You can guess how I felt when I seed that pap, th’ best shot in th’ Bug Tussle neighborhood, had jist nicked th’ edge o’ th’ paper. Fer some reason Ole Buck had gone wild.

  “Pap took th’ other five shots he’d paid fer but they all went th’ same way, splatterin’ here an’ thar all over th’ danged board. I jist couldn’t understand hit fer Ole Buck wus a good gun an’ hadn’t never done that way before. An’ Zeke Mullins wus given up t’ be th’ best shot in th’ country.

  “After firin’ th’ sixth shot, pap called me over t’ whar he wus an’ give me a half a dollar.

  “‘Tobe,’ he says, ‘see Bum Tuttle an’ buy them other three shots quick. Cy Watkins put rosin on my wipin’ rag an’ throwed me off.’

  “I hurried an’ bought th’ three extra chances an’ then went with pap t’ the blacksmith shop whar he give th’ gun a good cleanin’ with wood ashes an’ coal ile. Then we went back fer him t’ take th’ three shots.

  “I set up th’ board an’ waited. Pap rested Ole Buck on th’ log an’ took a steady aim. I thought he never wus goin’ t’ pull that thar front trigger. At last th’ ole gun spoke an’ I didn’t lose no time gettin’ t’ th’ tree. He had centered th’ fork o’ th’ V as purty as ye’d ever seen.

  “I stuffed th’ hole with leaves an’ he shot ag’in. ’Nother center, cleanin’ out th’ leaves jist as nice as ye please. I stuffed th’ hole th’ second time an’ th’ third shot jist lapped th’ hole ’bout half an’ half. This give us three quarters o’ beef an’ I wus th’ happiest kid in them parts.

  “Pap didn’t say nary word ’bout th’ rosin on his wipin’ rag. He figgered he’d git even with Cy th’ next time they swapped horses enyway.”

  Hunter’s Paradise

  Game authorities estimate that there are less than fifty black bears now living in the wild state in the forests and canebrakes of Arkansas. Deer are more plentiful, being found in sixteen of the seventy-five counties of the state. Wild turkeys thrive in the wilder sections of the hills under the protection of watchful game wardens. All three of the Ozark states (Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma) are succeeding in propagating deer and turkey but things are not going so well with bruin. This noble animal is having a struggle to survive with civilization pushing him on every front.

  Time was when black and brown or cinnamon bears roamed the Ozark region in great numbers. They lived upon small mammals, frogs, fish, bees and their honey, ants, fruits, berries, and roots. By early fall the animals were sleek and fat and considered a prize kill by hunters. The young are born in midwinter while the mother is hibernating. These babies are smaller than kittens and do not open their eyes for several days after birth.

  Folklore gives the bear a high intelligence rating. It is said that during the rutting season the male bear will mark every object he passes with his claws as he trails the female. If another comes along on the courting quest and cannot make a mark higher than his predecessor, he gives up the chase. I have seen scratches on the walls of caves and cliffs, said to be the markings of bears, but I have no proof of their authenticity.

  Bear hunting was a favorite sport in the early days and many are the stories told of encounters with these animals. Two hunters in the Ouachita hills tried hitching a yoke of oxen to a live bear and, in the words of the participants, “hell really broke loose.” It happened in the Greasy Cove country where the mountains are high and the hollows deep. The men had crippled a black bear and lost it in the rough terrain of the mountainside. After searching for some time, they discovered the leg of a bear protruding from a shelf of rock far up on the side of the cliff. It was impossible to reach the spot so the men decided to lasso the leg and pull the carcass from the crevice. Everything was made ready with the oxen hitched to one end of the rope and the other ready for the throw. One of the hunters was an expert roper and easily tossed a loop over the protruding leg. But when the rope tightened, it was discovered, much to the hunters’ surprise, that the bear was alive and not even wounded. It was a ferocious female sunning herself in front of her lair and guarding her cubs. It was too late to make amends. As the rope tightened, the bear went into action and pandemonium resulted. The frightened oxen plunged into the woods, dragging bruin from the cliff. The men grabbed their guns but circumstances alter cases and gunpowder was wasted. The steers broke their yoke and parted company. The bear got loose from the rope and disappeared in the underbrush. It all happened so quickly that neither of the hunters had opportunity to fire a shot.

  Fox, both red and gray, inhabit all parts of the Ozark region and timber wolves continue to trouble the farmer by taking toll of his lambs, pigs, and poultry. Wildcats of the bobtailed variety are quite plentiful in many sections, but the panther or “painter” is now a legendary shadow stalking the aisles of the past with stealthy tread. The smaller game consists of squirrels, rabbits, quail, and migratory fowl. Raccoon, opossum, mink, muskrat, and skunk are the chief fur-bearers of the region. Beaver and otter were plentiful along the streams in the old days but they have gone the way of the elk and the buffalo. The ferocious wild hog with its powerful “tushes” is a thing of the past

  Fifty years ago the Ozark region was a hunter’s paradise. Tall tales are told, and retold, by old-timers who hunted in this era preceding the machine age. At that time, hunting wild game was both a sport and a business.

  Sam Hudson of Newton County, Arkansas, is an example of the rugged type of woodsman who leaned upon ax and rifle for a living. It is said by his descendants that he killed hundreds of buffalo, and rode nine packs of hounds to death during his lifetim
e. Hudson and some of his relatives were chasing a bear when they discovered the great cavern now known as Diamond Cave.

  Hudson came from Tennessee more than one hundred years ago and settled on Panther Creek, a branch of Buffalo River. The log house which he built for his home is still standing and in good condition. It stands near the mouth of Diamond Cave and is viewed by thousands yearly. This vigorous pioneer cleared up three farms and was married three times. His three wives bore him forty children. He was an expert gunsmith and repaired more than a thousand guns during his residence in the Ozarks. The region he selected for his home was an untamed stretch of wilderness, for he was a Davy Crockett type of man—liked elbow room and plenty of it. But other settlers followed him and he courted their daughters, repaired their guns, and led them on many hunting excursions.

  One of Hudson’s best-known adventures, told in Fred Allsopp’s Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, was a death struggle with a huge panther. The hillsman was cutting a bee tree and had stopped to rest when he noticed the big cat a few steps away, “sitting down with its forelegs elevated.” Sam wasn’t afraid of the devil himself, so he sailed a chip at the beast to see what would happen. He didn’t have long to wait. The animal advanced a few feet and sprang in his direction. Hudson had no gun with him so he used his ax as a defense weapon. But he swung so hard that the handle flew from his hands, leaving him at the mercy of the ferocious beast. But the pioneer was not easily daunted, though he had no hunting knife and had to fight with his bare hands. When the animal sprang at him with open mouth, he rammed his fist and forearm into its throat almost to the elbow, at the same time pounding the beast over the heart with his left fist. The heavy blows caused the panther to relax its grip, and a few more blows killed it. Hudson’s right arm was badly torn by the beast’s fangs and he carried ugly scars the rest of his life.

  A symbol of extravagant folklore in the Ozarks is the legendary tales concerning the wild razorback hog. Popular legend states that this ferocious animal descended from a herd of swine brought into this country by Hernando de Soto in 1539. Some historians say that the hogs escaped from the Spaniards while they were battling the Chickasaw Indians in what is now Alabama. They ran wild, multiplied, crossed the Mississippi, and took up residence in the forests and canebrakes of Arkansas.

  J. Frank Dobie, in his Vaquero of the Brush Country, confirms this legend by quoting the statement that de Soto and his six hundred men had thirteen sows with them when they landed in Florida in 1539. A year later this brood stock had increased to three hundred swine and the adventurers subsisted largely on pork for the time being. The daily allowance was half a pound to the man and it was eaten with boiled herbs. Not all the animals were killed for food, however, and the herd continued to increase in size. But the theory that these hogs were the seed that produced the wild boar of the Ozarks is based upon pure legend.

  Regardless of its origin, the wild boar has a reputation for ferocity seldom equalled in frontier lore. To have three hundred pounds of enraged hog charging at express-train speed might lead one to believe that the brute was sired by a cyclone and mothered by a witch. To shoot into the mass of wild ham would establish the theory that the monster had been suckled by a gowrow of the pachyderm family.2 A more plausible solution, however, is that it descended from ordinary barnyard hogs which escaped from early settlers and went wild. But the animal was once the terror of the backhill country. To meet it in the woods was to flirt with the graveyard. The species is now almost extinct, but not forgotten. In November 1927, Ozark Life magazine carried a news item of a wild boar episode in southern Missouri. Here it is:

  Armed with a twelve-gauge shotgun, and twenty feet from the hog when he discovered it, the farmer fired a load of number four shot into the animal’s left eye. The enraged boar immediately charged him and he fired a second volley from not more than ten feet, striking the beast between the eyes. The third load, fired into the neck at the base of the skull when the animal was within two feet of the gun, stunned it long enough for the farmer to kill it with a knife thrust into its heart.

  In general appearance it resembled our domesticated Poland China hog. Though in only moderate good flesh, its weight was estimated at five hundred pounds. The tusks, or tushes, were three-fourths of an inch thick and an inch wide where they emerged from the jaw. In form, they described a complete semicircle, measuring nearly a foot in circumference. About two inches from the tip, the tushes had been worn to a razor edge on two sides, and had points as keen as any knife blade.

  There are two theories regarding the name “razorback.” One is that the term was applied because of the animal’s lean, skinny back. The man who wrote Three Years in Arkansas probably held to this theory, as the cover of his book has a picture showing two men sawing a log with a razorback hog for a saw. Others say the name comes from the razor-like edge on the back of the tusks. But regardless of its origin, the word “razorback” has popular appeal and is the adopted emblem of athletic teams at the University of Arkansas.3

  Perhaps the leading outdoor sport in the Ozarks is foxhunting. There are many strings of hounds in the backhills, veterans of the chase, “honin’ t’ scent.” They will stick to Reynard’s trail throughout the night, radiating music that is sweet to the hillsman’s ears. The fox may outsmart the dogs but that doesn’t matter. Love for the chase is bred in the bone of both man and dog. It is a passion whose fires never die.

  “One of the best chases I ever had was on a moonlight night about a month ago,” said an old-timer whose avocation is foxhunting. “I took the dogs over on the glade where we can usually find a trail. The dogs had not been out for quite a while and they were covering every bit of the ground back and forth in front of my horse as we went along. It wasn’t long before Old Trump found the trail, stuck his head up, and bawled as loud and long as he could. In an instant all the pack fell in behind him and the chase was on.

  The varmint led the dogs over the roughest country it could find, trying to escape them, but you can’t lose these dogs of mine once they get on a warm trail. Their noses are as sensitive as the needle to the pole. The varmint took them across the creek and over the ridge until they were almost out of hearing.

  But after a little while I could tell they were coming back. Their voices grew plainer as they came near, and they were really making music. I never heard them so much in earnest as they were that night. They passed to the west of me, almost in sight, and then they circled to the east and passed a dense thicket of brush. Suddenly they barked as if they were about to take hold of the animal.

  It was a wolf they had started and these animals are about the smartest that roam the woods. When the pups are young both the male and female help in protecting them. When one of the parents is out foraging the other stays close by the young to see that nothing molests them.

  It was the mother wolf the dogs had jumped, and she had tried hard to lose them, but failing to do so, had circled back to the den where the sire stood guard. When they neared the brush patch the male wolf ran out and took a position behind his mate, playing along until he had pulled the dogs off her track. The mother then circled back to her pups and the old dog wolf led the hounds as straight away from those pups as he could. I sat on my horse and listened to them as their voices gradually faded from my hearing. The wolf took them into the distant hills so far away that it was way up in the morning of the next day before they all came back.

  The passenger pigeon, or “wild pigeon” as the pioneers called it, migrated to the Ozarks each fall in the early days. These birds came in such flocks that they “blotted out the sun.” Millions of these pigeons came to the hill country to feed on the abundant mast of the forest. Hunting was engaged in both for profit and for pleasure. Nets were used to capture the birds and a thousand or more were frequently taken at one haul. These were packed in barrels and freighted to the nearest railroad points where they were shipped to eastern cities. Harold Wales says that the New York market alone would take one hundred barrels a d
ay for weeks, without a break in price. Prices ranged from seventy-five cents to $1.50 a dozen.

  The last big hunt by Indians in the northern section of the Ozarks occurred in Camden County, Missouri, in 1846. These Indians were Delawares and had been moved to the Indian territory several years earlier but they were permitted to return on hunting trips. They camped a few miles above Linn Creek at a spot now covered by the Niangua Arm of the Lake of the Ozarks, two miles above the mouth of the Niangua. This was no warring band but the palefaces took note of their presence. The Indians held religious services at their camp and several white people went to hear the sermon by the Indian preacher. “He preached Christianity as it is taught in the Bible,” was the report of one of the listeners. Strange ammunition for the Indian to use on the paleface so soon after the tumultuous years of removal, but such is the record of history. Gospel is a great relief after tomahawks and poisoned arrows.

  But religion did not weaken the ardor of the hunt. The Ozarks woods must have been teeming with game for this band of Indian hunters killed two hundred deer, seven bears, a vast number of wild turkey, raccoon, and other small game. The meat was cured on scaffolds suspended above slow fires and taken away with them at the end of the hunt, which lasted three weeks. It was the last organized Indian hunt in the northern section of the Ozarks.

  Fisherman’s Luck

  Bill Biles, a White River habitant, once told me that, when he was a boy, the fish were so plentiful in Ozark streams that they “pushed one ’nother out of th’ water, clean up on th’ bank.” Perhaps he was referring to redhorse suckers at shoaling time. I have seen great schools of these fish swarming in the water, thick as ants in a bed. But game fish travel in smaller schools and are more cautious in their antics. They test the angler’s skill with almost incredible ingenuity.