Page:Heart of the West (1907).djvu/76

 “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 Cañada.’

“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 Cañada. 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 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.