Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

“I went back and said to Uncle Emsley: ‘Did you say a sheep man?’

“ ‘I said a sheep man,’ says Uncle Emsley again. ‘You must have heard tell of Jackson Bird. He’s got eight sections of grazing and four thousand head of the finest Merinos south of the Arctic Circle.’

“I went out and sat on the ground in the shade of the store and leaned against a prickly pear. I sifted sand into my boots with unthinking hands while I soliloquised a quantity about this bird with the Jackson plumage to his name.

“I never had believed in harming sheep men. I see one, one day, reading a Latin grammar on hossback, and I never touched him! They never irritated me like they do most cowmen. You wouldn’t go to work now, and impair and disfigure snoozers, would you, that eat on tables and wear little shoes and speak to you on subjects? I had always let ’em pass, just as you would a jackrabbit; with a polite word and a guess about the weather, but no stopping to swap canteens. I never thought it was worthwhile to be hostile with a snoozer. And because I’d been lenient, and let ’em live, here was one going around riding with Miss Willella Learight!

“An hour by sun they come loping back, and stopped at Uncle Emsley’s gate. The sheep person helped her off; and they 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 eyelashes 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. ‘Two out of three,’ says I. ‘Birds just naturally seem to draw my fire wherever I go.’

“ ‘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 by a tomtit of the Jacksonian branch of ornithology. Now, are you going to quit, or do you wish for to gallop up against this Dead-Moral-Certainty attachment to my name, which is good for two hyphens and at least one set of funeral obsequies?’

“Jackson Bird flushed up some, and then he laughed.

“ ‘Why, Mr. Judson,’ says he, ‘you’ve got the wrong idea. I’ve called on Miss Learight a few times; but not for the purpose you imagine. My object is purely a gastronomical one.’

“I reached for my gun.

“ ‘Any coyote,’ says I, ‘that would boast of dishonourable⁠—’

“ ‘Wait a minute,’ says this Bird, ‘till I explain. What would I do with a wife? If you ever saw that ranch of mine! I do my own cooking and mending. Eating⁠—that’s all the pleasure I get out of sheep raising. Mr. Judson, did you 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