The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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SHOT A SORREL MARE FOR A DEER
By S. C. Turnbo
A few years before the Civil War commenced a man of the name of Elijah Barnes lived on White River near the Mat Hoodenpile Grave Yard in Keesee township in Marion County, Ark. Barnes lived here until the latter part of 1862 when he moved to Newton County, Ark. and lived on the Buffalo River near Jasper the county seat of Newton refering to the time when Mr. Barnes lived on White River he hunted and killed deer. But owing to defective vision he was not always a successful hunter. He was an old man and was not able to travel through the forest like a young hunter but he was always trying to hunt and as we remarked above he killed deer but not very many of them. One day Mr. Barnes crossed the river and hunted in a hollow that empties into a sloo where the old settlement road lead across the iseland and lead up the bank at the upper end of the old Allin Trimble farm in Franklin township. As the old man made his way slowly along through the grass in this hollow he noticed an animal the color of a deer that was standing some distance in a clump of bushes that he pronounced to be a big buck. It was a long way to shoot at it and only part of its body was visible through the bresh and without taking time to ascertain whether it was a deer or not he leveled his rifle at it and fired and the supposed buck run off through the thicket out of sight. He did not follow it but returned back across the river and reported that he "shot a big buck across the river and it run off like a horse". Allin Trimble owned a sorrel mare he called Mary Blane and this hollow was her grazing ground. And Barnes had shot her instead of a buck. Fortunately Mr. Trimble happened to find her in time and took her home and extracted the bullet which had lodged in the flesh and by careful treatment the wound healed over.
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