The Turnbo Manuscripts

by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925


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A YOUNG SHEEP HERDER’S ADVENTURE WITH A WOLF
By S. C. Turnbo

One of the oldest men in Baxter County, Ark., was Jimmie Graves, who was born in Montgomery County, North Carolina, in 1818, and died in Baxter County January 3, 1901, aged 83 years. His remains received interment in the Tribbet graveyard on Pigeon Creek one mile above the mouth. Tom Graves, son of Jimmie Graves, was born in Baxter County in 1859. One damp drizzly day when he was 10 years old his father put him to herding sheep. At noon he went to the house for dinner and returning back to the flock of sheep which was ¼ mile from the house he saw a black wolf run in among the sheep to catch one but failed to get one. Then the wolf left the sheep and started up the hill that Tom was coming down. This was on a bald hill or glade with not a tree within 100 yards and was on the head of Big Pigeon Creek in Baxter County. As Tom came down the hill he ran between the sheep and wolf and he supposed the wolf would run on but the animal stopped and turned around and looked Tom square in the face and stood with its mouth open. Tom hallooed and screamed for help but the wolf stood there a half an hour before the wolf moved away a few jumps and stopped again. Tom went on with his screams and yells until finally the wolf made two more long jumps then he got down on a run and was gone. The wolf was in 15 feet of him and was enough to frighten any boy to death almost.

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