West Texas, running roughly parallel to and west
of the Frio.]

"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 [18] on a visit. Do you want that I should make you
acquainted?'

[FOOTNOTE 18: Palestine is a town in East Texas, but Jud mistakes
it for the Holy Land.]

"'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 bolt 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
wa