The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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AN EXPECTED FIGHT BETWEEN A DOG AND WOLF DID NOT PAN
OUT
By S. C. Turnbo
Between the breaks at the three hollows called the Mahan pine Branch or Stillhouse and the Cowpen which lead into Little North Fork is a hill that was known among the settlers as Bald Mountain. A settlement road leads along the Nat Richmond place over this hill and intersects with the main road leading from Dugginsville to Pontiac. "Many years ago," said John Mahan, "my father, Isaac Mahan, constructed a wolf pen trap on this hill but only caught one wolf in it which was half grown. I and my father had went to the pen and finding the young wolf in the pen we concluded to have some fun with it and a bobtailed dog we had with us we called Tripp. He was a yellow colored dog. We decided that we would enjoy a fight between this dog and the wolf. We poked the wolf until we got him irritated and restless, and while he was running around on the inside of the pen we got hold of his hind feet and pulled his hindlegs out under the lower log, then we took hold of the dog’s hind legs and my father took off his yarn suspenders that my mother had knit and tied the wolf’s and dog’s hind legs together. Then raising the trap we taken the wolf out to witness a fierce fight between the little dog and young wolf, but we were disappointed in seeing the fun and sport as we expected. Both animals kept their heads as far apart as they could and showed their teeth and looked in opposite directions. We did our best to get them both angry enough to fight but instead of growing furious they both sulled and finding that we could not get a fight out of them we killed the wolf and scalped it and we ought to have did likewise with the dog but we let him go free. In a few days afterward my father took the scalp to Rockbridge, the then county seat of Ozark County, and sold it for $5 which was some consolation in tieing the wolf’s and dog’s tail together with the yarn suspenders."
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