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: