Banner Mountain Girl # 60 -“Whicker Bill” Riley

“Whicker Bill” Riley
(1903—1925)

I always thought Maude Henry
and her three daughters were so
pretty ridin’ their mules. They rode
them mules wherever they went. Maude
was a widder woman—had been for six
years when their four mules got stole,
right out of that shabby, old barn settin’
on the side of Brock Mountain. One of ‘em
was Maude’s bug-eyed mule, called Ned.
That critter was half-blind, I tell ya’ fer sure.
The sheriff, he nailed up a poster
down at the courthouse—a picture took
last May of Maude and her girls ridin’
them mules to a cousin’s weddin’.
Yesterday mornin’ the Henrys walked
two miles to Kill Devil Creek, where they
come to my hangin’. Them and everybody
else in Waycross County. I swore
up and down that I didn’t steal
them mules. They hung me anyway.

© Freeda Baker Nichols

NOTE:  This may be a Spoon River Poem, but I don’t guarantee that it is! 🙂