The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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KILLING A MARE WITH AN AX
By S. C. Turnbo
Bad stock and bad fence makes bad neighborship. A man who turns bad stock foot loose on the range to bother his neighbors who has bad fence cannot expect to get along together like good neighbors ought to. It is the duty of every settlement to treat each other respectful and if trouble should happen to get up among them they should remove the cause at once. In many cases disturbance Is Me diseases if the cause is removed It will settle itself and so if a neighbor keeps bad stock to interrupt his neighbor his neighbor will kick vigorously until this stock is curb in such a way that it will not trouble any more. If a neighbor has bad fence the one who owns the bad stock will hollow "fix your fence" then my stuff won’t bother you. So if you have rogueish stock keep them in hand so that they won’t be a source of trouble to your friend and if your fence is bad get it in better shape so it won’t cause some of your neighbors stock to break into your enclosures and lay the ground work to cause your friends stock to be mean. So this will do on this subject for the present and we will relate a little story of this kind that John Whitfield gave to me one day in the Indian Territory. He said that the year after the war closed his parents lived on Bowens Ridge in Woodruffe County, Ark., and about 16 miles north east of the town of Augusta. My father raised a crop of corn in a field that was enclosed with 3 bad fence, one of our neighbors of the name of Tom Bowen owned an old mare he called Mollie which would go into the field when she got ready and that was as often as she was turned on the outside of the lot. Father notified Owen several times to keep his mare out of the field to which Bowen took little notice. He seemed careless and would make no efforts to prevent her from getting into the field, and the old mare kept on jumping into the field and destroying the corn. Father continued to turn her out and send her home with word to keep her out or words, to that effect. Until he lost his patience and temper and noticing her In the field one morning he went and turned her out and went and caught his old mare he called Pokahontas or "Poka" for short and pickng up the chopping ax he mounted old Poka and galloping up to old Mollie he struck her on the hip with the blade of the ax. Old Mol started off running with the blood dripping from the wound. Father followed on after her and struck her hip, with the ax when ever he got in reach of her and continued to follow her and out on her until she fell and died in the road. And then father sent Bowen word what he had done. This caused a feud between them which lasted many years and probably would have never ended in peace but after I had grown up to be a man and Ed Bowen a son of Bowens had grown to be a man too, we met one day and proposed to droly our part of the grudge and made friends, this made a favorable impression on the old folks and they got together end settled it all for good and were good neighbors to each other as long as we lived in that locality. Bad stock and bad fence was the source of all this trouble." said Mr. Whitfield.
The writer will add that he did not give the foregoing account to encourage someone else to kill a mare that gets into fields but to show that roguish stock and a fence that is gone to rack is one cause of some people doing wrong to remove the cause is the one side to take care of his stock and the other side to repair his fence.
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