"Bud" Phillips, the author of "Ozark Cousins", "New Ozark Cousins",
"Buffalo Boogers", and "Buffalo Tales", plus several more books,
wrote me a short time ago and gave me permission to use his stories
written in and about the area of Newton County,Arkansas.

From his" BUFFALO BOOGERS", 'Tales of strange, scarey, and mysterious
happenings in the Buffalo River country of Northern Arkansas',
published in 1980, comes this tale.

The peoples' names mentioned in his stories do not necessarily give
peoples real names, but may be fictitious.

It's a lonely and remote hollow there on Upper Richland.
No one lives near it now. Indeed,travelers seldom pass by the mouth
of that dark, bushy cleft in the towering Ozark Mountains, but those
who do are sometimes surprised to hear the distinct crowing of a
rooster. But per chance some one might develop hopes for a pot of
simmering dumplings, let him be warned that the rooster he hears would
be well over a hundred years old and would make mighty tough eating!

Upper Richland was the haunt of several roving bands of vicious
bushwackers during the Civil War, and other such groups often passed
up or down the valley on their predatory travels. A man by the name
of *Standridge lived in the area and by the valley road at the outbreak
of the War of Rebellion(Civil War)..

As the war years dragged on and local conditions worsened, the man
decided to move his family far back into a hidden hollow. This, he
hoped, would make for greater safety and the dreaded bushwhackers and
no-gooders might not discover their dwelling place so far from their
beaten paths.

Early one morning a band of these bushwhackers was riding up Richland.
As they rode silently along they heard the sound of a rooster crowing
far back in the hollow where Mr. Standridge and his family lived.
Following the sound of the rooster's crowing, they came upon the hidden
cabin and in a little garden by it, the father and a teenage son were
plowing.

Standridge was shot down at the side of his plow while the son was
killed as he attempted to climb over a rail fence at the back side of
the garden. The murderers then killed the rooster and at gun point,
forced Mrs. Standridge to cook it for them, as her husband and son lay
dead within sight of the kitchen door.

Years later, and long after the little clearing in the hollow had grown
over with brush, a young man was returning at daybreak from a dance
which had been held far down Richland . As he passed by the hollow he
was startled to hear the distinct crowing of a rooster in the vicinity
of the long-deserted Standridge homestead. He, thinking that perhaps
new neighbors had moved in, decided to go in and see who they might be.

But the cabin lay in ruins, the truck garden patches were still overgrown
in thick brush and there was not a single sign of human habitation.
Yet, clearly and loudly a crowing came from somewhere. The young man
later declared that he got close enough to the sound to have "reached
out and wrung the rooster's neck" yet he could not see or locate the
ghostly fowl. He finally decided that he was searching for a hant and
quickly left the hollow far behind.

And many others after that, reported hearing the strange sound in the
remote, lonely hollow. Perhaps at daybreak, but just as often at
midnight, noon, or evening, the silence of the dark and heavy woods of
the area might be broken with the long, strident crowing of a rooster.
And who knows , if you go there now you may hear it for yourself!

*This Mr. Standridge was a close relative of Bud Phillips'step-
grandmother, Mary Jane Standridge Maggard.

Copyrighted 1980 by Bud Phillips.

Bud Phillips, himself, was born in Johnson County, Arkansas but still
has Kinfolks in and around Newton County.
He is, after all, a Kinfolk.

As I sit here typing this story to send to the Newton County Times on
my computer, the banty roosters nearby and far away are crowing in a
chorus-----how befitting for this story.