ys Uncle Emsley, handing me the glass of
water. 'You've rid too far to-day, Jud, and got yourself over-excited.
Try to think about something else now.'

"'Do you know how to make them pancakes, Uncle Emsley?' I asked.

"'Well, I'm not as apprised in the anatomy of them as some,' says
Uncle Emsley, 'but I reckon you take a sifter of plaster of Paris and
a little dough and saleratus and corn meal, and mix 'em with eggs and
buttermilk as usual. Is old Bill going to ship beeves to Kansas City
again this spring, Jud?'

"That was all the pancake specifications I could get that night. I
didn't wonder that Jackson Bird found it uphill work. So I dropped the
subject and talked with Uncle Emsley for a while about hollow-horn and
cyclones. And then Miss Willella came and said 'Good-night,' and I hit
the breeze for the ranch.

"About a week afterward I met Jackson Bird riding out of Pimienta as
I rode in, and we stopped on the road for a few frivolous remarks.

"'Got the bill of particulars for them flapjacks yet?' I asked him.

"'Well, no,' says Jackson. 'I don't seem to have any success in
getting hold of it. Did you try?'

"'I did,' says I, 'and 'twas like trying to dig a prairie dog out of
his hole with a peanut hull. That pancake receipt must be a
jookalorum, the way they hold on to it.'

"'I'm most ready to give it up,' says Jackson, so discouraged in his
pronunciations that I felt sorry for him; 'but I did want to know how
to make them pancakes to eat on my lonely ranch,' says he. 'I lie
awake at nights thinking how good they are.'

"'You keep on trying for it,' I tells him, 'and I'll do the same.
One of us is bound to get a rope over its horns before long. Well,
so-long, Jacksy.'

"You see, by this time we were on the peacefullest of terms. When
I saw that he wasn't after Miss Willella, I had more endurable
contemplations of that sandy-haired snoozer. In order to help out the
ambitions of his appetite I kept on trying to get that receipt from
Miss Willella. But every time I would say 'pancakes' she would get
sort of remote and fidgety about the eye, and try to change the
subject. If I held her to it she would slide out and round up Uncle
Emsley with his pitcher of water and hip-pocket howitzer.

"One day I galloped over to the store with a fine bunch of blue
verbenas that I cut out of a herd of wild flowers over on Poisoned Dog
Prairie. Uncle Emsley looked at 'em with one eye shut and says:

"'Haven't ye hear