rd that I'll never call upon
her again.'

"'That's fair,' I says, and I shook hands with Jackson Bird. 'I'll get
it for you if I can, and glad to oblige.' And he turned off down the
big pear flat on the Piedra [21], in the direction of Mired Mule; and
I steered northwest for old Bill Toomey's ranch.

[FOOTNOTE 21: piedra--(Spanish) stone; a rocky place]

"It was five days afterward when I got another chance to ride over to
Pimienta. Miss Willella and me passed a gratifying evening at Uncle
Emsley's. She sang some, and exasperated the piano quite a lot with
quotations from the operas. I gave imitations of a rattlesnake, and
told her about Snaky McFee's new way of skinning cows, and described
the trip I made to Saint Louis once. We was getting along in one
another's estimations fine. Thinks I, if Jackson Bird can now be
persuaded to migrate, I win. I recollect his promise about the pancake
receipt, and I thinks I will persuade it from Miss Willella and give
it to him; and then if I catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I'll
make him hop the twig.

"So, along about ten o'clock, I put on a wheedling smile and says to
Miss Willella: 'Now, if there's anything I do like better than the
sight of a red steer on green grass it's the taste of a nice hot
pancake smothered in sugar-house molasses.'

"Miss Willella gives a little jump on the piano stool, and looked at
me curious.

"'Yes,' says she, 'they're real nice. What did you say was the name of
that street in Saint Louis, Mr. Odom, where you lost your hat?'

"'Pancake Avenue,' says I, with a wink, to show her that I was on
about the family receipt, and couldn't be side-corralled off of the
subject. 'Come, now, Miss Willella,' I says; 'let's hear how you make
'em. Pancakes is just whirling in my head like wagon wheels. Start her
off, now--pound of flour, eight dozen eggs, and so on. How does the
catalogue of constituents run?'

"'Excuse me for a moment, please,' says Miss Willella, and she gives
me a quick kind of sideways look, and slides off the stool. She ambled
out into the other room, and directly Uncle Emsley comes in in his
shirt sleeves, with a pitcher of water. He turns around to get a
glass on the table, and I see a forty-five in his hip pocket. 'Great
post-holes!' thinks I, 'but here's a family thinks a heap of cooking
receipts, protecting it with firearms. I've known outfits that
wouldn't do that much by a family feud.'

"'Drink this here down,' sa