The crude old rough rock chimney may yet stand in a remote hollow
near to where Rock Creek empties into Big Buffalo.

On a cold and snowy day in 1867, a little chunk fire brought meager
warmth and feeble light into the windowless log cabin, which then
stood with the old chimney.

Near that fire on a primitive shuck bed,a young husband lay very ill
with the flu. A sick little five-year-old boy snuggled close to him.
For days the young mother had ministered to her husband and son but
on that black, frigid, and snowy day she had suddenly come down in
labor with her second child.
The situation was desperate.
There was no one to go for help, yet help must be had.
But the anguished cries of pain from the stricken mother, the
feverish hard breathing of the prostrate husband, and the weak
whimperings of a sick and frightened little boy, were all but
drowned out by the roaring of the icy wind over the hills and around
the isolated cabin. No one could hear the cries or know the need..or
could they?

The young man who was so very sick there that day had married his
brother's widow. The cabin had been home to that brother and his wife
before he went to serve in the Union Army, leaving her and a baby
son there alone.
Then came Pea Ridge where the young soldier was killed.
Just after the close of the war, the younger brother had married the
widow and had taken charge of the rough hillside farm, where he was
trying valiantly to provide for her and his brother's small son.

In that time of desperation so long ago, both the sick husband and
the travailing mother were thinking of an old doctor, who had settled
down the river at present Carver and near the mouth of Big Creek,
but who could go for him??
Finally, the husband, summoning up strength borne of desperation,
shakily arose from his bed, saying that he must go. But his pain
wracked wife still begged him not to.

Snow was swirling thru the trees and around the cabin, whipped and
driven by a bitterly cold wind. The frozen road was long and rough as
it wound back and forth across the Buffalo toward the doctor's farm,
too long and rough for a fever weakened man.
She knew that even if he could make it, which was unlikely, he would
probably develop pneumonia, which in those days nearly always meant
certain death.
But as the young husband struggled to dress himself, there came a
call at the yard gate, faintly at first in the roaring wind, but
louder as the unexpected visitor drew near the front door.
When the door swung open, the old doctor from Carver stood before it,
his black hat covered in snow and icicles hanging from his beard.
Motioning toward a tall figure at the gate, he informed the stunned
husband that a stranger had come to his house urging him to come with
him quickly to a home where his help was needed.

The sick man opened the door wide to admit the good doctor and then
looked in wonderment toward the gate, to see who could have known of
their perilous condition, and with intention to bid the strange
messenger in.
But his words froze on is lips ,for there thru the swirling snow he
saw his dead soldier brother standing tall and strong and smiling to
him. Then with a slow wave of the hand the specter seemed to just
melt away into the flying snowflakes.
The brother still cared.

The above tale is just one of many stories written by Bud Phillips
in his "Buffalo Boogers Book". The book includes tales of strange,
scarey and mysterious happenings in the Buffalo River country of
Northern Arkansas.
Bud gave me permission to use his stories on my Newton County,
Arkansas Website.
Copyright 1980 by Bud Phillips

Evelyn Flood
Rkinfolks@yahoo.com

8 Sept 2005