Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 68, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 November 1916 — YANK, THE TURK [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

YANK, THE TURK

by Charles Frederick

—URKEY had been a V part, the principal part, J Jj of the Scott’s Thanks- ® giving bill of fare ever

since Bob could remember, real Vermont turkey that they raised on their Vermont farm and fed with corn from the Vermont hills. But the particular hill on which the Scott acres

lay seemed better suited to the turkeys than to the corn; and, along in the very early spring of 1861, Bob’s father decided to try a newer country to the South and West. Late March found them breaking a clearing for a new farm in East Tennessee. They got their corn in, although a little late; they bred a few hogs and a small flock of sheep; but, when they wanted Turkey, they didn’t go to the barnyard for it, but up into the hills; for father’s trusty rifle and trusty eye were a combination no wild turkey could hope to escape.

There were plenty of rumors of war while the Yankee from Vermont was carving out a home there in the South. When war came, that Yankee made his way overland and enlisted in the company from his old Valley in Vermont, leaving Bob to take the responsibility of the Tennessee farm on his young shoulders. Bob did very well; and, when November came in due course, he got the rifle down from its pegs above the fireplace and went up the hills in search of a bird. He had been up there before with his father, but this was his first turkey hunt alone. < There was a trail that led from the hog-lot up to the ridge, and along the ridge, among the granddaddy poplars and cherries and the sweetgum orush. Bob followed it until three that afternoon without so much as a sign of :urkey; and, as he had no intention of spending a night in the hills, it oegan to look as though he must return empty-handed. Then suddenly he heard a racket off

there to the east of the trail — ' ‘Whir-r-r-r-’’ Some great living thing swept across the ridge like a cloud. Bob’s gun was up to his shoulder in an instant, although he_ shook with as bad a case of buck fever as a boy ever had. “Bang!” he blazed away at the flying cloud. It did not stop. He must have missed. But as the report died aw’ay he heard

the whir change to a flutter, and the flutter to a thud, arid the thud to a struggle in the brush down the hillside. He followed the sound of that struggle till he came upon the bird, and bird It was, a turkey not so big of body as Us spread of wings had indicated, but a turkey none the less fit to grace the Scott Thanksgiving board. The shot had broken its right wing. The boy decided to tote it home as it was, and he soon had it slung from his rifle barrel over his shoulder and was picking his way down the mountainside to find the trail at a lower point. It was moonlight when he reached the hog-yard, and then the house, with his trophy, which was now quite still. Having exhibited the bird to his mother and young sister, he laid it in the hay loft in the stable, and, after a full recital of his hunt, went to bed, as tired a boy as ever bagged a turkey, and probably more tired than any boy who never did. Now, a most surprising thing happened the next morning. When Bob opened the stable door the turkey was still there, but it was standing on both feet and with one wing trailing on the ground. And, instead of fluttering away as a regular wild turkey should, it looked up at him with a look half curiosity and half appeal. It hopped a few steps away when he approached, and then allowed Bob to touch It with his hand. “Well, fellow,” said Bob, “you don’t seem to be very much a-scart.”

He looked at the wounded wing, then scratched hfs head a moment, and then

was off to the cabin on a run, shutting the stable door behind him. When he returned he went to work with bandages. He may not have been much of a surgeon or a bonesetter, but what he lacked in skill he made up in good intentions. Meanwhile his en- ! thuslasm regard- j ing the Thanksgiving feast rather oozed away from him. “If it’s all the

same to you, ma,” he said that night, “I’d a-just as soon have bacon fer dinner tomorrow.” “All right, sonny,” the mother laughed and agreed. And that is how Yank became a member of the Scott family. • For Yank he was named. To Southern ' partisans it was a term of opprobrium, but to Bob a term of affection —so everybody was satisfied. By good financiering in the spring Mrs. Scott was able to add a small flock of fowls to the Scott possessions, ■ including some turkeys. With these ' Yank mingled, not without a tinge of condescension. He never did recover ( the use of that wing, but he could run like a dog, using the good left wing as a plane now and then to lift him to the top of a fence. If Olive Chanute, the inventor of the aeroplane, had seen Yank, we might have had that invention a half century before we did. Yank showed no disposition to leave 1 the Scott place, seeming to prefer the

good corn to woodland pickings. It was seldom that any word or rumor trickled through from Bob’s father, and then there was a silence of months that left the Scott household very solemn indeed. The sympathies of the neighbors were Southern; but, be it recorded to their credit, they treated the Scotts with just as much kidjjness as if the head of the family not gone into the Union army. But when the guerrillas began to operate in the valleys below, there was reason for some uneasiness, regardless of one’s sympathies. One morning, just at the break of dawn, there was a cautious knock on the cabin door. Trembling with apprehension, the family roused itself. The latch lifted, but the man who entered was clothed in blue. Bob could scarcely believe that this red-bearded man was his father. His story was short and soon told. He had been wounded and separated from his regiment. When he recovered, he was assigned, quite willingly, to a detail to round up the guerrillas; and, as he was familiar with the vicinity he was now scouting on their trail. He was to lie quiet that day, gathering such information as he could, and return to hls comrades that 1 night. “I tell you, pop,” cried Bob. “I’ll go ■ down below and see what I can see j and let you know!”" It appealed to the | boy’s desire for adventure and to the soldier’s desire for information. So, after some reluctance and many cautions, the boy was allowed to go. To ' divert suspicion, for the turkey would attract more attention than the. boy, ; Yank was permitted to accompany him. i The boy and the bird were familiar figures in the neighborhood. Three miles from home a voice laughed, “Here’s a turk fer your dinner, captain,” and Bob' found he had walked into a hornets’ nest They took ' the two to a cabin a little back from i the pike and asked the boy a few ques-1 tions, without gaining any information.' Nor did he loose his hold on Yank, . though the bird struggled to be free. A black-browed giant entered

“There’s a Yank up on the ridge in a cabin thar, and a hundred of ’em yonder on the tother side.” “Y o u fellahs make a ride for it at sundown,” said the captain, “and grab that Yank. They are the fellahs that hung Jed Speed. We’ll have a little hangin’ party ourselves.” What could Bob do to warn his father? Run for it himself? That was hopeless.

Then he thought of Yank. Hardly knowing why, he let go his hold. There was a squawk and a flutter, a man at the door was nearly knocked from his feet, and a feathered thing that half ran and half flew made for the pike and the woods beyomj. “He got away!” “Thar goes your dinner, captain,” and a half-dozen shots all came at the same instant. As for the boy, he poured outdoors with the rest and plunged into the woods back of the cabin. Two hours later a turkey, both of whose wings drooped now, the left one stained with blood, fluttered into the Scott clearing. To go to the boy was the father’s first thought, to go for help the second and better one. It was a bit risky, but over the ridge he went and down the mountainside. Bob circled and crossed the pike a mile above. On a white stone by the road he saw a drop of red. “Well, they hit him but didn’t git him,” he said. That evening, Just as the sun dipped to the West, there was another hornets’ nest on the ridge. But this time it was the enemy that walked into it,

There was time for only a few shots. But the guerrilla captain heard them in the valley below and decided that it would be well to move on, leaving his missing men to join him as best they could. But they never did. Next night, 20 miles away, the captain turned to one of his men and asked: “Do you reckon that fool bird had anything to do with it?” As for Yank, the battle-scarred veteran, what was one wing more or less? He lived to see peace return to the mountains, and to all Tennessee, and to the nation. And you may be sure he never played the principal part in any Thanksgiving dinner. (Copyright. 191®, Western Newspaper Union.)

There have been times in the history of the country when Thanksgiving day was rather the occasion of expressions of hope for blessings to come than of gratitude for those being enjoyed, but even so the nation has not been unmindful of its peculiar position as the most fortunate of the countries of the earth. Much more, then, should there be thankfulness on every side today when not only are the people of the land enjoying peace while thousands mourn abroad, but with peace is plenty in contrast with the hunger that stalks elsewhere to carry out the horror that shot and shell did not complete.

Blazed Away at the Flying Cloud.

Cautious Knock on the Cabin Door.

Familiar Figures in the Neighborhood.

Cause for Thanks.