right 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
