"SARER."
The rainy season had now set in in good earnest all through Nebraska,
and while the natives have typhoid fever and malaria to a more or less
extent, yet most of them live through it, but people from the dry
mountain regions that have been used to pure air and water all their
lives fare worse from these fevers ten times over than the natives, and
Dillbery Ike fell a victim right in the start. One evening soon after
we left Grand Island I noticed his face was flushed very red, and he
complained of a dull headache, but as he had the headache a good deal
ever since the railroad police had scalped him at Cheyenne in mistake
for a striker, I didn't think so much of his headache. But when I come
to look at his tongue and feel his pulse I found every indication of
high fever. In a few hours he was out of his mind and talked of shady
mountain sides, babbling brooks and clear mountain springs of water, and
he talked of his hosses and cattle, his cow ranch and alfalfa meadows,
but most of all he talked of "Sarer."
Now Dillbery had only one romance in his life that we knew of, and that
happened in this way: Several decades previous to our story the few
families living in the vicinity of Dillbery's ranch in Utah had got
together and built an adobe school-house, and voting a special tax on
the piece of railroad track that run through their part of the country
had raised enough money to pay for the school-house and hire a
school-teacher. At first each of the three married women in the
neighborhood wanted to teach the school. Then each of them offered to
take turns about teaching it so they could divide the money, but their
husbands, who was the directors, wanted a school-marm, so as to have a
little young female blood diffused through the atmosphere in that part
of the country, and after advertising for a school teacher, the New
England brand preferred, got hundreds of answers very shortly. So
putting their heads together they selected one that had a kind of crab
apple perfume attached to the application, and was worded in such way as
to give the reader a notion of pleading blue eyes, with a wealth of
golden brown hair and heaving bosom, not too young to teach school nor
too old to be romantic and sympathetic, and closed a deal with her to
come West and teach their school. She had signed her name Sarah Jessica
Virginia Smythe, but was always known as Miss Sarer. When she was about
to arrive at the railroad station, thirty miles away, all the married
men wanted to go and meet her. All of them had particular business in at
the station that day, but none of their wives would stand for it. They
said that Dillbery Ike was a bachelor and the proper one to get her.
[Illustration: _The Arrival of Miss "Sarer."_]
Now Dillbery Ike was a long, gangling, bashful, backward plainsman,
never had a sweetheart and was considered perfectly harmless around
women by every one who knew him. The old married men finally agreed to
let Dillbery meet the school-marm, but not till each had went through a
stormy scene with his wife, in which that good woman had threatened to
tear the blanket right in two in the middle with such forcible language
that you could almost hear it ripping. Dillbery had got shaved, had his
hair cut, put on his best black suit he had bought from a Sheeny, the
pants being a trifle of six or eight inches too short for him at the top
and bottom both, his coat rather large in the waist, but short at the
wrists like the pants; and hitching his mules to his spring wagon, he
started bright and early to the station of Kelton, Utah. He arrived
about noon, him and his mules white with alkali dust, and finding that
the train was twenty-three hours late, stayed at the section house till
next day, there being no hotel in Kelton. When the train came along next
day about noon, a large, portly lady of uncertain age, with her
frizzed-up hair turning grey, her hands full of wraps, lunch baskets,
sofa pillows, telescope grips, umbrellers, band-boxes and bird cages,
climbed off the train, and the baggageman put off a large horse-hide
trunk, from which most of the hair had been worn off, or perhaps
scalped off in the troublous times when Washington was crossing the
Delaware. When she got this old, bald-headed looking trunk and a couple
of shoe boxes with rope handles (that were probably full of Century
Magazines) piled up with her other baggage, the newsboy said it looked
like an Irish eviction.
When Dillbery saw this old man-hunter and all her luggage, his heart
failed him, and he went to the saloon three times to liquor up before he
got sand enough to talk to her. Of course, Dillbery expected to marry
her, no matter what she was like, as the whole neighborhood where he
lived had planned it ever since the school-marm was talked of, and he
couldn't expect to disappoint the neighbors and still continue to live
there. Still she wasn't exactly what he had figured in his mind after
reading a great many novels about the rosy-cheeked, small-waisted,
dainty-feet, lily-white hands, wondrous brown hair, blue-eyed New
England darlings, with pretty sailor hats and tailor-made suits, who
come West to teach our schools and incidentally marry the most expert
roping, best broncho-busting, chief cowpuncher. And now here was this
dropsical-looking old girl, with fat, pudgy-looking hands and feet like
a couple of poisoned pups, with all this colonial luggage.
However, Dillbery was obliged to take charge of her and her traps, as he
called them, and when he was finally ready to start, had got everything
on the spring wagon, even to the bird cages, and after getting a final
drink with the boys and filling a bottle to take along, he loaded the
old girl in and whipping up his mules, disappeared in a cloud of alkali
dust.
Dillbery sat on his end of the seat, frightened out of his wits, and
Sarah Jessica Virginia Smythe sat on the other end, but, of course, sat
on all the vacant seat left by Dillbery, 'cause she couldn't help it,
she was built that way, and was even more afraid of Dillbery than he was
of her. Although she had always been hunting a man, yet she was in a
wild country and a stranger; not a house in sight and night coming on,
was with a savage-looking man, who was, undoubtedly, very drunk, and
acting very strangely to say the least. As time went on Dillbery got
dryer and dryer, and studied a good deal how to get a drink out of his
bottle without letting Sarah see him. Finally he concluded he could make
some excuse that the load was slipping; he might get around back of the
wagon to fix it, and under cover of the darkness quietly get a drink
out of his bottle. So when they were crossing a canyon in an unusually
lonely spot, he stopped the mules and muttering something about the
load, he started to get out, but Sarah thought her hour had come, and
throwing her arms (which were like pillow bolsters) around Dillbery's
neck, began to scream and piteously beg him not to do her any wrong. The
more Dillbery Ike tried to explain, the more Sarah Jessica cried,
screamed and sobbed, till finally with a despairing sigh, like unto the
collapse of a big balloon, she fainted clear away on his breast, pinning
him over the back of the seat, his spinal column slowly but surely being
sawed in two over the sharp edge. The horror of poor old Dillbery, when
he realized that death from a broken back was only a question of her not
coming out of the dead faint, which she seemed to have gotten an
allopathic dose of, cannot be described.
When some time had elapsed and she showed no signs of animation, he made
a great struggle to get from under her; but it was a vain attempt, he
was nailed down as completely as a piece of canvas under a paving block.
And when it came over him that he was doomed to this ignominious death,
when he fully realized what people would think about him when they found
him in this compromising position, and the cowboys would facetiously all
agree that he looked like a Texas dogie steer hanging dead on a wire
fence after a Wyoming blizzard; when he felt that peculiar, loud buzzing
in his ears that is a premonition of death, he made one final desperate
struggle, and spitting out a lot of grey hair, hair pins and pieces of
switch, which had accumulated in his mouth, he screamed with all the
strength of his lungs in one long despairing cry, the one word "Sarer."
Now in Dillbery Ike's delirium and raging fever on the stock train, he
kept continually giving tongue in a long, blood-curdling, soul-freezing,
despairing cry to that one word "Sarer." Night and day we had to listen
to that heart-broken cry. Finally, when the fever was at its highest
stage I consulted the conductor of our special about getting a doctor
and he advised me to go back to the last town we had passed through,
where there was a good physician and get him. He said that we would have
plenty of time, as there was a lonely sidetrack just ahead of the train.
So walking back about ten miles to this town, I secured the services of
a doctor, and getting a livery rig we soon caught up with the special.
When the doctor had examined Dillbery's tongue and pulse and had put his
ear to Dillbery's heart while he was giving one of his despairing cries
for "Sarer," he wrote a prescription in some kind of foreign language
which he interpreted to us, as he said he had written it down as a mere
form to show that he could write in a foreign language. He said our
friend was very sick and the one thing that would save his life was to
get "Sarer" for him. Now, of course, that was an impossibility, but he
said all we needed was an imitation "Sarer," something that looked like
her and was about her size and form, so after explaining to him what
"Sarer" was like, he drove back to town, and when he caught up to us
again, brought into the car a wonderful dummy made out of a large sack
of bran with a head tied on it composed mainly of a sack of hair, such
as plasterers use to mix mortar with. He had a large, but not too large,
Mother Hubbard dress on this wonderful dummy, and the whole well
perfumed with Florida water. When we laid this imitation "Sarer" in the
emaciated arms of poor old Dillbery, his eyes grew moist for a moment,
and straining it to his breast he gave a contented sigh or two,
whispered "Sarer, Sarer," and dropped off into a healthy slumber, and
the doctor said he would live.
EATS UP "SARER."
Dillbery slept for a long time, and awoke somewhat refreshed, but
somewhat under the influence of his animal scalp, and no one being in
the car, the spirit of the goat probably overtook him, as he devoured
the head of the dummy "Sarer," which will be remembered consisted of
plastering hair. Then the spirit of the sheep and the pig coming over
him, he devoured the sack of bran, and laying down in front the stove
like a Newfoundland dog, he went to sleep. Thus I found him on my return
to the car. But, alas! his stomach was too weak to digest all the stuff
he had consumed and in a few hours he was in a raging fever and calling
for "Sarer" again. But, of course, he had devoured "Sarer," and we had
nothing to fix up in the place of the dummy. And while it was
heart-rending to hear his sobbing cry for "Sarer" growing weaker and
weaker as the night wore on, yet we could only listen and hope. About 4
o'clock in the morning his cries stopped and he seemed to be sleeping
for a few minutes, and then opened his eyes and took my hand and in a
weak but rational voice told me the story of his boyhood in the
following words:
[Illustration: _Dillbery Ike's Darling Mother Under Arrest._]
He said he was born in the mountains in Virginia. He was the only child,
so far as he knew, of a moonshiner's daughter. His mother was not an
unhappy woman, he said, when she had plenty of snuff and moonshine
whisky; in fact, was quite gay at times. No one, not even his mother,
knew exactly who his father was. Some people said it was a revenue
officer and some said it was the member of Congress from that district,
but most people thought it was a live stock agent of one of the western
railroads. However this may be, he thrived on corn pone, dewberries,
wild honey, and sow bosom, and as soon as he got old enough helped his
mother cut wood and haul it to town in a two-wheeled hickory cart drawn
by a steer. They lived with his grandfather, who was quite a prominent
man in that part of Virginia and who was finally killed by revenue
officers. His mother was sent to the pen for selling moonshine whiskey
and he was taken charge of by a family who immigrated to Utah. He said
the last time he saw his darling mother 'twas at their old home in the
mountains in Virginia. The steer was hitched to the cart one beautiful
spring morning. The sun's rays was just kissing the mountain tops, when
two revenue officers had appeared at their home, and after a lively
scrap with his mother they had succeeded in arresting her. Not though
till she had thoroughly furrowed their cheeks with her finger nails and
plenteously helped herself to sundry handfuls of their hair, after which
she had peacefully seated herself in the cart and was placidly chewing a
snuff stick in each corner of her mouth, when the steer and cart
disappeared around a bend in the mountain road, and fate had decreed he
should never see her again.
The family that took charge of him were neighbor moonshiners and had a
day or so after this took place traded off their Virginia estate for a
team of antique mules and a linch-pin wagon, and storing a goodly supply
of moonshine whiskey, apple jack, corn meal and bacon in the wagon,
loaded the family, consisting of nine children, himself included, in the
wagon, and immigrated for Utah. He said as long as he was with these
people he was treated like one of the family, but as they immigrated
back to Virginia the next year they left him in Utah with a poor family
and he was hungry many times, and was always telling the children he
associated with how big the dewberries grew where he came from, so the
other children nicknamed him Dewberry, which was finally changed to
Dillbery and that name had stuck to him ever since.
After finishing the story of his boyhood, Dillbery lay quiet for a short
time and then motioning me to bend down close to him he whispered to me
not to bury him in Nebraska where, he said, the only way a man could
hope to be resurrected was in the shape of a yellow ear of corn, to be
fed to a yellow steer, followed by a yellow hog and the hog meat eaten
by a yellow-whiskered malarial Populist, and so on. After I promised to
see that he was buried on his ranch in Utah, he asked me to sing that
old cowboy song, "Oh! give me a home where the buffalo roams, a place
where the rattlesnake plays."
THE PASSING OF DILLBERY IKE.
'Twas a dismal night on a way-car, the rain pattering on the roof
o'erhead,
The man who has told this story was alone with the silent dead.
The voice that had been calling for Sarah was hushed and stilled at last,
He had finished telling the story of his childhood's checkered past.
No more would he ride the ranges, no more the mavericks brand,
Nor subdue the bucking broncho, in that far western land;
Never again to meet the school-marms, when they came traveling West
Under the guise of school teaching, to get in a bachelor's nest.
Dillbery folded his hands gently, as he quietly went to sleep,
In the death that knows no waking, for which no shipper could weep;
While some of his life had been stormy, of hardships he'd had his share,
Pen cannot paint a cattleman's troubles, nor picture his heart sick care.
When he's got his cattle on a special, and getting a special run,
Death for him hasn't a single terror, he longs for it to come;
And so with poor old Dillbery, when his weary eyes closed in death,
Blotted out his sorrows and troubles, all blown away with his last
breath.
He had gone to meet his grandfather, and get some of his latest brew,
For who shall say that old moonshiner had quit distilling some mountain
dew;
For all say the other world is better, we'll get what we like over there,
While of our joys here we are stinted, in the hereafter we get double
share.
His eyes grew bright with a vision that he saw on the other side,
He got a glimpse of a right good cow country, just before he started
to ride;
And his eyes lit up with a gladness, his face o'erspread with hope,
As without a trace of sadness, his spirit rode away in a lope.