O. Henry



   The Pimienta Pancakes

    While we were rounding up a bunch of the Triangle-O cattle in the Frio bottoms
a projecting branch of a dead mesquite caught my wooden stirrup and gave my  ankle 
a wrench that laid me up in camp for a week.
    On the third day of my compulsory idleness I crawled out near the grub  wagon, 
and reclined helpless under the conversational fire of Judson Odom, the camp cook. 
Jud was a monologist by nature, whom Destiny, with customary blundering,  had  set 
in a profession wherein he was bereaved, for the greater portion of his  time,  of 
an audience.
    Therefore, I was manna in the desert of Jud's obmutescence.
    Betimes I was stirred by invalid longings for something to eat  that  did  not 
come under the caption of "grub." I had visions of the  maternal  pantry  "deep as 
first love, and wild with all regret," and then I asked:
    "Jud, can you make pancakes?"
    Jud laid down his six-shooter,  with  which  he  was  preparing  to  pound  an 
antelope steak, and stood over me in what I felt to be  a  menacing  attitude.  He 
further endorsed my impression that his pose was resentful by fixing upon me  with 
his light blue eyes a look of cold suspicion.
    "Say, you," he said, with candid, though not excessive, choler, "did you  mean 
that straight, or was you trying to throw the gaff into me? Some of the boys  been 
telling you about me and that pancake racket?"
    "No, Jud," I said, sincerely, "I meant it. It seems to me I'd swap my pony and 
saddle for a stack of buttered brown pancakes with some first crop,  open  kettle, 
New Orleans sweetening. Was there a story about pancakes?"
    Jud was mollified at once  when  he  saw  that  I  had  not  been  dealing  in 
allusions. He brought some mysterious bags and tin boxes from the grub  wagon  and 
set them in the shade of the hackberry where I lay reclined. I watched him  as  he 
began to arrange them leisurely and untie their many strings.
    "No, not a story," said Jud, as he worked, "but just the  logical  disclosures 
in the case of me and that pink-eyed snoozer  from  Mired  Mule  Canada  and  Miss 
Willella Learight. I don't mind telling you.
    "I was punching then for old Bill Toomey, on the San Miguel. One  day  I  gets 
all ensnared up in aspirations for to eat some canned grub that hasn't ever  mooed 
or baaed or grunted or been in peck measures. So, I gets on my  bronc  and  pushes 
the wind for Uncle Emsley Telfair's store at the Pimienta Crossing on the Nueces.
    "About three in the afternoon I throwed my bridle rein over  a  mesquite  limb 
and walked the last twenty yards into Uncle  Emsley's  store.  I  got  up  on  the 
counter and told Uncle Emsley that the signs pointed to  the  devastation  of  the 
fruit crop of the world. In a minute I had a bag of crackers  and  a  long-handled 
spoon, with an  open  can  each  of  apricots  and  pineapples  and  cherries  and 
greengages beside of me with Uncle Emsley busy chopping away with the  hatchet  at 
the yellow clings. I was feeling like Adam before  the  apple  stampede,  and  was 
digging my spurs into the side of the counter and working with my twenty-four-inch
spoon when I happened to look out of the window into the yard  of  Uncle  Emsley's 
house, which was next to the store.
    "There was a  girl  standing  there -  an  imported  girl  with  fixings  on - 
philandering with a croquet maul and amusing  herself  by  watching  my  style  of 
encouraging the fruit canning industry.
    "I slid off the counter and delivered up my shovel to Uncle Emsley.
    "'That's my niece,' says he; 'Miss Willella Learight, down from Palestine on a 
visit. Do you want that I should make you acquainted?'
    "'The Holy Land,' I says to myself, my thoughts milling some as I tried to run 
'em into the corral. 'Why not? There was sure angels in Pales -  Why,  yes,  Uncle 
Emsley,' I says out loud, 'I'd be awful edified to meet Miss Learight.'
    "So  Uncle  Emsley  took  me  out  in  the  yard  and  gave  us  each  other's 
entitlements.
    "I never was shy about women. I never could understand why some  men  who  can 
break a mustang before breakfast and shave in the dark, get  all  left-handed  and 
full of perspiration and excuses when they see a bold of calico draped around what 
belongs to it. Inside of eight minutes me and Miss Willella  was  aggravating  the 
croquet balls around as amiable as second cousins. She gave me  a  dig  about  the 
quantity of canned fruit I had eaten, and I got back at  her,  flat-footed,  about 
how a certain lady named Eve started the fruit trouble  in  the  first  free-grass 
pasture - 'Over in Palestine, wasn't it?' says I, as easy  and  pat  as  roping  a 
one-year-old.
    "That was how I acquired cordiality  for  the  proximities  of  Miss  Willella 
Learight; and the disposition grew larger as time  passed.  She  was  stopping  at 
Pimienta Crossing for her health, which was very good, and for the climate,  which 
was forty per cent hotter than Palestine. I rode over to see her once  every  week 
for a while; and then I figured it out that if I doubled the  number  of  trips  I 
would see her twice as often.
    "One week I slipped in a third trip; and that's where  the  pancakes  and  the 
pink-eyed snoozer busted into the game.
    "That evening, while I set on the counter with a peach and two damsons  in  my 
mouth, I asked Uncle Emsley how Miss Willella was.
    "'Why,' says Uncle Emsley, 'she's gone riding with Jackson Bird, the sheep man 
from over at Mired Mule Canada.'
    "I swallowed the peach seed and the two damson seeds. I  guess  somebody  held 
the counter by the bridle while I got off; and then I walked  out  straight  ahead 
till I butted against the mesquite where my roan was tied.
    "'She's gone riding,' I whisper in my bronc's ear, 'with Birdstone  Jack,  the 
hired mule from Sheep Man's Canada. Did you get that, old Leather-and-Gallops?'
    "That bronc of mine wept, in his way. He'd been  raised  a  cow  pony  and  he 
didn't care for snoozers.
    "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  jack-rabbit;  with  a 
polite word and a guess about the weather, but no stopping  to  swap  canteens.  I 
never thought it was worth while 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 eye-lashes 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 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 win. I recollect his promise about  the  pancake  receipt, 
and I thinks I will persuade it from Miss Willella and give it to him; and then if 
I catches Birdie off of Mired Mule again, I'll make him hop the twig.
    "So, along about ten o'clock, I put on a wheedling  smile  and  says  to  Miss 
Willella: 'Now, if there's anything I do like better than the sight of a red steer 
on green grass it's the taste of a  nice  hot  pancake  smothered  in  sugar-house 
molasses.'
    "Miss Willella gives a little jump on  the  piano  stool,  and  looked  at  me 
curious.
    "'Yes,' says she, 'they're real nice. What did you say was the  name  of  that 
street in Saint Louis, Mr. Odom, where you lost your hat?'
    "'Pancake Avenue,' says I, with a wink, to show her that I was  on  about  the 
family receipt, and couldn't be side-corralled off of  the  subject.  'Come,  now, 
Miss Willella,' I says; 'let's hear how you make 'em. Pancakes is just whirling in 
my head like wagon wheels. Start her off, now - pound of flour, eight dozen  eggs, 
and so on. How does the catalogue of constituents run?'
    "'Excuse me for a moment, please,' says Miss Willella,  and  she  gives  me  a 
quick kind of sideways look, and slides off the stool. She  ambled  out  into  the 
other room, and directly Uncle Emsley comes  in  in  his  shirt  sleeves,  with  a 
pitcher of water. He turns around to get a  glass  on  the  table,  and  I  see  a 
forty-five in his hip pocket. 'Great post-holes!' thinks I, 'but here's  a  family 
thinks a heap of cooking receipts, protecting it with firearms. I've known outfits 
that wouldn't do that much by a family feud.'
    "'Drink this here down,' says 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 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 'pancakes' Uncle Emsley sort of dodged and stepped back.
    "'Somebody's been dealing me pancakes from the bottom of the  deck,'  I  says, 
'and I'll find out. I believe you know. Talk up,' says I, 'or we'll mix  a  panful 
of batter right here.'
    "I slid over the counter after Uncle Emsley. He grabbed at his gun, but it was 
in a drawer, and he missed it two inches. I got him by the front of his shirt  and 
shoved him in a corner.
    "'Talk pancakes,' says I, 'or be made into one. Does Miss Willella make 'em?'
    "'She never made one in her life and I never  saw  one,'  says  Uncle  Emsley, 
soothing. 'Calm down now, Jud - calm down. You've got excited, and that  wound  in 
your head is contaminating your sense of intelligence.  Try  not  to  think  about 
pancakes.'
    "'Uncle Emsley,' says I, 'I'm not wounded in the head  except  so  far  as  my 
natural cognitive instincts run to runts. Jackson Bird told me he was  calling  on 
Miss Willella for the purpose of finding out her system of producing pancakes, and 
he asked me to help him get the bill of lading of the ingredients. I done so, with 
the results as you see. Have I been sodded down with Johnson grass by a  pink-eyed 
snoozer, or what?'
    "'Slack up your grip in my dress shirt,' says Uncle  Emsley,  'and  I'll  tell 
you. Yes, it looks like Jackson Bird has gone and  humbugged  you  some.  The  day 
after he went riding with Willella he came back and told me and her to  watch  out 
for you whenever you got to talking about pancakes. He said you was in  camp  once 
where they was cooking flapjacks, and one of the fellows cut  you  over  the  head 
with a frying pan. Jackson said that whenever you  got  overhot  or  excited  that 
wound hurt you and made you kind of crazy, and you went raving about pancakes.  He 
told us to just get you worked off of  the  subject  and  soothed  down,  and  you 
wouldn't be dangerous. So, me and Willella done the best by you we knew how. Well, 
well,' says Uncle Emsley, 'that Jackson Bird is sure a seldom kind of a snoozer.'"
    During the progress of Jud's story he had been  slowly  but  deftly  combining 
certain portions of the contents of his sacks and cans. Toward the close of it  he 
set before me the finished product - a pair of red-hot, rich-hued  pancakes  on  a 
tin plate. From some secret hoarding he also brought a lump  of  excellent  butter 
and a bottle of golden syrup.
    "How long ago did these things happen?" I asked him.
    "Three years," said Jud. "They're living on the Mired Mule Ranch  now.  But  I 
haven't seen either of 'em since. They say Jackson Bird was fixing  his  ranch  up 
fine with rocking chairs and window curtains all the time he was putting me up the 
pancake tree. Oh, I got over it after a while. But the boys kept the racket up."
    "Did you make these cakes by the famous recipe?" I asked.
    "Didn't I tell you there wasn't no receipt?"  said  Jud.  "The  boys  hollered 
pancakes till they got pancake hungry, and I cut this recipe out of  a  newspaper. 
How does the truck taste?"
    "They're delicious," I answered. "Why don't you have some, too, Jud?"
    I was sure I heard a sigh.
    "Me?" said Jud. "I don't ever eat 'em."

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