ackson 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 heard the news?'

"'Cattle up?' I asks.

"'Willella and Jackson Bird was married in Palestine yesterday,' says
he. 'Just got a letter this morning.'

"I dropped them flowers in a cracker-barrel, and let the news trickle
in my ears and down toward my upper left-hand shirt pocket until it
got to my feet.

"'Would you mind saying that over again once more, Uncle Emsley?' says
I. 'Maybe my hearing has got wrong, and you only said that prime
heifers was 4.80 on the hoof, or something like that.'

"'Married yesterday,' says Uncle Emsley, 'and gone to Waco and Niagara
Falls on a wedding tour. Why, didn't you see none of the signs all
along? Jackson Bird has been courting Willella ever since that day he
took her out riding.'

"'Then,' says I, in a kind of yell, 'what was all this zizzaparoola he
gives me about pancakes? Tell me /that/.'

"When I said '