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.