y stood throwing each
other sentences all sprightful and sagacious for a while. And then
this feathered Jackson flies up in his saddle and raises his little
stewpot of a hat, and trots off in the direction of his mutton ranch.
By this time I had turned the sand out of my boots and unpinned myself
from the prickly pear; and by the time he gets half a mile out of
Pimienta, I singlefoots up beside him on my bronc.

"I said that snoozer was pink-eyed, but he wasn't. His seeing
arrangement was grey enough, but his eye-lashes was pink and his hair
was sandy, and that gave you the idea. Sheep man?--he wasn't more than
a lamb man, anyhow--a little thing with his neck involved in a yellow
silk handkerchief, and shoes tied up in bowknots.

"'Afternoon!' says I to him. 'You now ride with a equestrian who is
commonly called Dead-Moral-Certainty Judson, on account of the way I
shoot. When I want a stranger to know me I always introduce myself
before the draw, for I never did like to shake hands with ghosts.'

"'Ah,' says he, just like that--'Ah, I'm glad to know you, Mr. Judson.
I'm Jackson Bird, from over at Mired Mule Ranch.'

"Just then one of my eyes saw a roadrunner skipping down the hill with
a young tarantula in his bill, and the other eye noticed a rabbit-hawk
sitting on a dead limb in a water-elm. I popped over one after the
other with my forty-five, just to show him [20]. 'Two out of three,'
says I. 'Birds just naturally seem to draw my fire wherever I go.'

[FOOTNOTE 20: O. Henry was an expert marksman with a pistol,
a skill he picked up on the Texas ranches.
Marksmanship plays an important role in another
story in this book, "The Princess and the Puma."]

"'Nice shooting,' says the sheep man, without a flutter. 'But don't
you sometimes ever miss the third shot? Elegant fine rain that was
last week for the young grass, Mr. Judson?' says he.

"'Willie,' says I, riding over close to his palfrey, 'your infatuated
parents may have denounced you by the name of Jackson, but you sure
moulted into a twittering Willie--let us slough off this here analysis
of rain and the elements, and get down to talk that is outside the
vocabulary of parrots. That is a bad habit you have got of riding
with young ladies over at Pimienta. I've known birds,' says I, 'to be
served on toast for less than that. Miss Willella,' says I, 'don't
ever want any nest made out of sheep's wool