u ever taste the pancakes that Miss
Learight makes?'

"'Me? No,' I told him. 'I never was advised that she was up to any
culinary manoeuvres.'

"'They're golden sunshine,' says he, 'honey-browned by the ambrosial
fires of Epicurus. I'd give two years of my life to get the recipe for
making them pancakes. That's what I went to see Miss Learight for,'
says Jackson Bird, 'but I haven't been able to get it from her. It's
an old recipe that's been in the family for seventy-five years. They
hand it down from one generation to another, but they don't give it
away to outsiders. If I could get that recipe, so I could make them
pancakes for myself on my ranch, I'd be a happy man,' says Bird.

"'Are you sure,' I says to him, 'that it ain't the hand that mixes the
pancakes that you're after?'

"'Sure,' says Jackson. 'Miss Learight is a mighty nice girl, but I can
assure you my intentions go no further than the gastro--' but he seen
my hand going down to my holster and he changed his similitude--'than
the desire to procure a copy of the pancake recipe,' he finishes.

"'You ain't such a bad little man,' says I, trying to be fair. 'I was
thinking some of making orphans of your sheep, but I'll let you fly
away this time. But you stick to pancakes,' says I, 'as close as the
middle one of a stack; and don't go and mistake sentiments for syrup,
or there'll be singing at your ranch, and you won't hear it.'

"'To convince you that I am sincere,' says the sheep man, 'I'll ask
you to help me. Miss Learight and you being closer friends, maybe she
would do for you what she wouldn't for me. If you will get me a copy
of that pancake recipe, I give you my word 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, in the direction of Mired Mule; and I
steered northwest for old Bill Toomey's ranch.

"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 w